Social Justice and Family Values

1. Social Justice and Family Values Harry Brighouse University of Wisconsin, Madison and Adam Swift Centre for the Study of Social Justice University of Oxford

2. The issues Social Justice: The family is a key source of social injustice, but to abolish the family would be to violate people�s rights and to deny them very valuable goods What is the proper place for the family in a complete theory of social justice? Public Policy: There is a widespread sense, from left and right, that the family is under siege What policies would best promote - and distribute fairly - what is valuable about families?

3. Plan Relationship-goods account of the value of the family Policies concerning parental partiality Policies supporting parents Family values and poverty relief

4. Three stakeholders Parents and potential parents Children Third Parties (everyone not involved in the particular parent-child relationships)

5. The Relationship-Goods Account of Family Values The family is good for� meeting children�s developmental interests (moral, physical, cognitive, emotional) meeting children�s immediate interests including security providing a sense of continuity with the past (children) and future (parents) enabling parental enjoyment of a distinctively valuable relationship in which they are intimate with someone for whom they play a central fiduciary role (the non-fiduciary interest in acting as a fiduciary) NB: our account focuses on parents and children, not third party interests

6. Clarifications All children need parents Not all adults have a fundamental interest in being parents, but many do We do not assume that �families� consist, or should consist, of a heterosexual couple and their biological children

7. Parental partiality v fair equality of opportunity. Some advantage transmission mechanisms: gift/bequest elite schooling/private tuition network access parenting styles values transmission/ambition formation reading bedtime stories

8. Rawls�s rhetorical question �Should we abolish the family then?� Us: �No, because family values (as we have, correctly, described them) are more important than fair equality of opportunity and the family is crucial for their achievement. But we can, nevertheless, regulate the family and change the social environment to limit the conflict between fairness and what parents may legitimately partially do for their children�.

9. The family values test� When an activity: i) conflicts with some other important value like fairness/equality of opportunity AND ii) is not itself essential to realizing the value of the family AND iii) is such that removing/prohibiting it would, with appropriate other institutional measures, leave ample space for family values to be realized THEN it is a candidate for prohibition

10. Elite private schools v bedtime stories In feasible circumstances - though not always in current circumstances - elite private schooling is not justified by family values (ditto inheritance) Bedtime stories are justified by family values � even though they generate more unfairness than does elite private schooling

11. Reforming the social environment Protecting space for the realisation of family values is consistent with efforts to reduce the unjust impact of legitimate familial interaction E.g. reducing the inequality between outcome positions would make it less unjust that children from different families had unequal opportunities to achieve those positions

12. �and a qualification. Even when an activity need not be permitted on �family values� grounds it might be justified (or even required) to permit it on other grounds, such as long-run improvement in the all-things-considered well-being of the least advantaged E.g. there may be good reasons to permit elite private schooling, even if not reasons that invoke family values

13. Three sources of debate concerning family policy The theory of family values The weight of family values relative to other values Empirical claims about existing institutions and conjectures about the effects of reform proposals

14. Supporting Parents Two aims Enabling parents adequately to meet their children�s interests Facilitating parental enjoyment of the parent/child relationship

15. The family values guided policymaker will�. Identify the social mechanisms that inhibit achievement of the two goals Identify the feasible reforms that will most effectively promote the desired outcomes without undermining more important values

16. Three Conjectures Social institutions provide disincentives for parents to: have children and realise the relationship goods that come from having them (as well as third-party benefits) spend as much time with their very young children as would be optimal for the children�s emotional development spend as much time with their children throughout their childhood as would be optimal for the parents� full enjoyment of the relationship goods

17. Relevant mechanisms inhibiting the two goals �Fertility penalty� Many parents too poor to take time off work Employers� (rational) preference for full-time over part-time work, and for insecure part-time over secure part-time work Working hours too long More subsidy for childcare than for parental leave Gender pay gap makes it rational for women rather than men to take parental leave

18. Current policy is moving in the right direction: Increase in parental leave to 9 months paid, 3 months unpaid from April (with intention to increase further to 12 months) Right to request flexible work arrangements Right to up to 12 weeks unpaid parental leave Manipulating tax code to reduce child poverty Maintaining, and thinking of increasing, child benefit Surestart being given new emphasis on parenting skills and child development

19. But could do better� Expectations in labour market still out of step with needs of children and interests of parents �Well-being� or �quality of life� agenda not yet fully integrated or taken seriously and still subordinated to competitiveness/productivity considerations From parents� interest perspective, men in particular are missing out on relationship-goods

20. Gender Objection If gender inequality were essential for children�s needs to be met adequately, then we would need to weigh up value of children�s interests v value of gender equality. We doubt that it is Still, it could be that the most readily-accessible-from-here child-friendly policies are gender-inegalitarian If so, hard question: Should we pursue gender equality over meeting children�s developmental interests? Our view does object to gender inequality in so far as the incentive structure, social and economic, makes it harder for men than women to enjoy relationship-goods

21. Objection: pro-family measures are unfair transfers from non-parents. Responses: Non-parents still benefit net from behaviour of parents Parents would still face real costs relative to non-parents (promotion prospects etc) Information about net distribution of benefits and burdens can only be gleaned from looking at the whole tax/transfer system, not just one part of it

22. Misidentifying goods and maldistributing them One problem is that current policies undervalue relationship goods Another problem is that access to such goods is unfairly distributed Poverty makes it unduly difficult both for parents to meet their children�s interests and for them to enjoy the relationship goods This is yet another good reason to abolish poverty