Parenthood is a highly valued life goal, independent of one’s sexual orientation. However, the majority of studies exploring young adults’ parenthood plans have relied exclusively on samples of heterosexual individuals. This study aimed (i) to explore differences in parenthood intentions as a function of sexual orientation, (ii) to investigate to what extent sociodemographic and psychological characteristics predict parenthood intentions of lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) and heterosexual individuals, (iii) to test the mediating effect of stigma between sexual (...) orientation and parenthood intentions, and (iv) to identify and characterize profiles of prospective parenthood (through cluster analysis). Data were gathered using an online survey from 375 self-identified LGB and heterosexual young adults without children in Portugal, with a mean age of 25.83 years old (SD = 4.49). Findings indicated that LGB individuals were less likely to intend to have children than heterosexual individuals; furthermore, among LGB individuals, lesbian women expressed stronger intentions to have children than did gay men. Similarities between heterosexual and LGB young adults were observed concerning the psychological determinants of parenthood intentions. Four distinctive profiles of prospective parenthood were identified: aspiring parents not anticipating stigma, aspiring parents anticipating stigma, childfree intent, and childfree ambivalent. Lesbian and bisexual women mostly populated the childfree ambivalent cluster, in contrast the aspiring parents anticipating stigma cluster contained an overrepresentation of men, including sexual minority men. Professionals may want to attend to communalities and specificities of prospective parenthood as a function of sexual orientation, in order to provide unbiased and culturally competent support to sexual minority individuals. (shrink)

Don Marquis is well known for his future like ours theory, according to which the killing beings like us is seriously morally wrong because it deprives us of a future we can value. According to Marquis, human fetuses possess a future they can come to value, and thus according to FLO have a right to life. Recently Mark Brown has argued that even if FLO shows fetuses have a right to life, it fails to show that fetuses have a right (...) to use their mother's body, evoking Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous violinist case. In the wake of Brown's conclusion, Marquis presents a new argument—the parenthood argument —which he believes shows that abortion is seriously morally wrong. Here I argue that the PA fails to show abortion is seriously morally wrong for the same reasons FLO fails to show abortion is seriously morally wrong. (shrink)

According to the causal theory of parenthood, people incur parental obligations by causing children to exist. Proponents of the causal theory often argue that gamete donors have special obligations to their genetic offspring. In response, many defenders of current gamete donation practices would reject the causal theory. In particular, they may invoke the ‘too many parents problem’: many people who causally contribute to the existence of children – for instance, fertility doctors – do not thereby incur parental obligations. This (...) article argues that the conclusions commonly drawn by causal theorists, and by their critics, are premature. Causal theorists have a promising response to the too many parents problem. This response, however, defuses the moral concern that many causal theorists have raised about gamete donation. A similar point, it is argued, applies to Rivka Weinberg’s ‘Hazmat Theory’. -/- . (shrink)

The Ethics of Parenthood argues for original views about the right to raise one's biological children, about paternalism, about reacting differently to bad behavior because the wrongdoer is "only a child," about what raising a child requires, and about the obligations that parents and children have after the children are grown.

Superior recognition of positive emotional facial expressions compared to negative expressions is well established. However, it is unclear whether this superiority effect differs between non-parents and parents, for whom emotion perception (EP) is an indispensable skill. Although EP has been shown to be modulated by the neuropeptide oxytocin, a central factor in the development of parental care, very little research has addressed the relationship between EP skills, the transition to parenthood, and plasma oxytocin levels. In the present study, we (...) assessed EP abilities with a test battery and measured plasma oxytocin in 77 non-parent and 79 parent couples and applied structural equation modelling to the data. The results showed increased happiness perception abilities in both parents and individuals with elevated oxytocin levels. Furthermore, non-parents showed superior abilities to recognise anger expressions. No significant associations were found regarding the perception of other basic emotion categories or with a general EP factor. The findings are consistent with previous research indicating that elevated oxytocin levels are associated with enhanced EP abilities. They also extend the existing literature by demonstrating that mothers and fathers, regardless of their oxytocin levels, exhibit increased EP superiority. (shrink)

An extensive body of research documents that women experience a motherhood penalty at work whereas men experience a fatherhood premium. Yet much of this work presupposes that employers are aware of a worker’s parental status. Given the different consequences that parenthood has on outcomes such as pay and promotions, it is conceivable that men and women may deploy their status as parents differently when interacting with employers. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a racially diverse sample, this article examines how (...) mothers and fathers working in the service sector use their parental status when negotiating work and child care responsibilities. Mothers, particularly black mothers, were less likely to openly discuss their children at work. In some cases, women purposefully concealed from their employers the fact that they were mothers or found other ways of signaling their commitment to their jobs. Fathers, on the other hand, were more likely to discuss their children with their employers and overwhelmingly characterized their managers as understanding of their parenting obligations. Together, these findings help us understand how mothers and fathers navigate the consequences of parenthood in the workplace and add nuance to previous studies of motherhood penalties and fatherhood premiums. (shrink)

Reproductive techniques and practices, ranging from ordinary birth-control measures and artificial insemination to embryo transfer and surrogate motherhood, have greatly enhanced our range of reproductive choices. As a consequence, they pose a number of difficult moral and legal questions with regard to the formation of a family and our conception of parenthood. A view that is becoming increasingly common is that parental rights and responsibilities should not be based on genetic relationships but should instead be seen as arising from (...) agreements or contracts between individuals. Accordingly, a man who consents to his wife's artificial insemination by donor (AID) and not the sperm donor, is the legal father of the child; in surrogacy agreements, the intending mother, and not the surrogate, has the right to raise the resulting child. While agreeing that biology should not form the basis for assigning legal parenthood, I argue that the theory of intentional parenthood, despite being put forward as a liberal theory, is geared toward or will have the function of protecting the nuclear family and inhibiting the formation of alternative family forms. (shrink)

In a recent publication Tom Douglas and Katrien Devolder have proposed a new account of genetic parenthood, building on the work of Heidi Mertes. Douglas and Devolder’s account aims to solve, among other things, the question of who are the genetic parents of an individual created through somatic cell nuclear transfer (i.e. cloning): (a) the nuclear DNA provider or (b) the progenitors of the nuclear DNA provider. Such a question cannot be answered by simply appealing to the folk account (...) of genetic parenthood, according to which the genetic parents of an individual are those individuals who produced the egg and sperm, respectively, which fused to create the embryo. It cannot be so as in cloning there is no fertilization as such. In this article I critically examine Douglas and Devolder’s new account of genetic parenthood and demonstrate that it is vulnerable to counterexamples that exploit the lack of a condition specifying that genetic parents should cause a child’s coming into existence. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that there is value in the biological tie between parent and child. An implication of this is that adoption is often considered a less desirable alternative to procreation. This paper offers a philosophical defence of adoptive parenthood as a valuable and authentic form of parenthood. While previous defences have suggested that society’s valorisation of the biological tie is unjustified, I argue herein that the conception of the biological tie that features in the normative discourse (...) on parenthood is too narrowly genocentric. Against this genocentric conception, recent work in the philosophy of biology has emphasised the roles of joint determination, dynamic construction, and extended inheritance in development, which I suggest can substantiate a more inclusive conception of the biological tie. Accordingly, I propose that adoptive parents form a rich variety of biological ties with their children, some of which are as heritable and formative as genetic relatedness. (shrink)

Reproductive techniques and practices, ranging from ordinary birth-control measures and artificial insemination to embryo transfer and surrogate motherhood, have greatly enhanced our range of reproductive choices. As a consequence, they pose a number of difficult moral and legal questions with regard to the formation of a family and our conception of parenthood. A view that is becoming increasingly common is that parental rights and responsibilities should not be based on genetic relationships but should instead be seen as arising from (...) agreements or contracts between individuals. Accordingly, a man who consents to his wife's artificial insemination by donor (AID) and not the sperm donor, is the legal father of the child; in surrogacy agreements, the “intending mother,” and not the surrogate, has the right to raise the resulting child. While agreeing that biology should not form the basis for assigning legal parenthood, I argue that the theory of intentional parenthood, despite being put forward as a liberal theory, is geared toward or will have the function of protecting the nuclear family and inhibiting the formation of alternative family forms. (shrink)

In this paper I examine what I take to be the best case for reproductive human cloning, as a medical procedure designed to overcome infertility, and argue that it founders on an irresolvable tension in the attitude towards the importance of being ‘genetically related’ to our children implied in the desire to clone. Except in the case where couples are cloning a child they have previously conceived naturally, cloning is unable to establish the right sort of genetic relation to make (...) couples the parents of their cloned child. If anybody is the genetic parent of a cloned child it is the natural parent(s) of the DNA donor. Paradoxically, in order to resist the claims of the parents of the donor to the cloned child, the argument for human reproductive cloning must place more weight on the intention to parent a child, than we do in cases of ordinary reproduction. It must insist that the parental relation is established by the intentions of the couple who bring a clone into the world and not by their genetic relation to the child. The emphasis placed on intention as establishing the parental relationship works to undermine the justification for cloning in the first place. For cloning to play a useful role as a reproductive technology, it must allow couples to become parents who could do so no other way. However, to the extent that intention is sufficient to establish parenthood, adoption or surrogacy, which are existing alternatives to cloning, will serve equally well to allow couples to become parents. (shrink)

Parenting our biological children is a centrally important matter, but how, if it all, can it be justified? According to a contemporary influential line of thinking, the acquisition by parents of a moral right to parent their biological children should be grounded by appeal to the value of the intimate emotional relationship that gestation facilitates between a newborn and a gestational procreator. I evaluate two arguments in defence of this proposal and argue that both are unconvincing.

This co-authored contribution takes the form of a dialogue between Carmen Dell’Aversano and Florian Mussgnug. The two discussants explore the concepts of parenthood, reproduction and care in the context of the unfolding global environmental crisis. Arguing from the perspectives of queer theory, literary studies and climate justice, they call for new strategies and attitudes towards procreation, beyond the strictures of colonizing frames of knowledge and hegemonic cultural practices. More specifically, Dell’Aversano and Mussgnug move the debate around assisted reproductive technologies (...) in new, speculative directions that are centred on shared vulnerability and kinship, and which remain fully attentive to human and non-human relations and shared responsibilities on a warming planet. (shrink)

Summary. Disputes about pediatric, educational, and other child-related matters may reflect more general concepts of parenthood, including parental rights and responsibilities. These concepts may be child-centered, focusing either on a child’s needs or on a child’s development. Needs and development are not wholly distinct or in competition, but some parents may emphasize one or the other and, in case of conflict, favor one over the other. Such emphasis and preference tends to distinguish parents as child-carers and parents as child-raisers (...) (in most cases, adult-raisers). So distinguished, these kinds of parental focus involve different temporal perspectives (present and future), as well of different categories of assessment and analogies (associated with nursing and teaching). (shrink)

We seek to develop a plausible conception of genetic parenthood, taking a recent discussion by Heidi Mertes as our point of departure. Mertes considers two conceptions of genetic parenthood—one invoking genetic resemblance, and the other genetic inheritance—and presents counter-examples to both conceptions. We revise Mertes’ second conception so as to avoid these and related counter-examples.

Bioethics, Volume 35, Issue 7, Page 680-687, September 2021.

This paper seeks to explore the limits of individualizing parenthood in Serbia, gleaned from the example of gender socialization of children. The main thesis is that the noted limits to individualization of parenthood in contemporary society have a particular Serbian manifestation due to the country’s familism. The study traces the ideology of familism through normative aspects of gender structures within contemporary Serbian society, that is, by analyzing the presence and forms of expression of the patriarchal matrix in upbringing (...) practices of parents, the most significant element of which is the ethics of good parenthood. The analysis shows that individualization of parenthood and more egalitarian patterns of gender socialization occur above all due to the dynamic within the marital relationship, one which abandons the concept of sacrificial parenthood. The analysis presented here is based on data collected in empirical research of upbringing practices in contemporary Serbia. (shrink)

Biomedicine has opened up new possibilities for parenthood. Once resigned to remaining childless or pursuing adoption, infertile couples can now pursue options such as gamete donation, in-vitro fer...

A critical review of four recent works that reflect current conflicts and tensions among feminists regarding new reproductive technologies: In Search of Parenthood by Judith Lasker and Susan Borg; Ethics and Human Reproduction by Christine Overall; Made to Order, Patricia Spallone and Deborah Steinberg, eds. and Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine, Michelle Stanworth, ed. Their positions are evaluated against the background of growing feminist dialogue about the future of reproduction and the bearing of reproductive innovations on such related (...) issues as racism, sexuality, motherhood and abortion. (shrink)

Some responses to analogies between abortion and infanticide appeal to Judith Jarvis Thomson's argument for the permissibility of abortion. I argue that these responses fail because a parallel argument can be constructed for the permissibility of infanticide. However, an argument on the grounds of a right to choose to become a parent can maintain that abortion is permissible but infanticide is not by recognizing the normative significance and nature of parenthood. -/- Certaines réponses aux analogies entre l'avortement et l'infanticide (...) font appel à l'argument de Judith Jarvis Thomson en faveur de la licéité morale de l'avortement pour désamorcer ces analogies. Je soutiens que ces réponses échouent parce qu'un argument parallèle peut être construit en faveur de la licéité de l'infanticide. Cependant, un argument reposant sur le droit de choisir de devenir parent permet de soutenir que l'avortement est autorisé mais que l'infanticide ne l'est pas en reconnaissant le sens et la nature normatifs de la parentalité. (shrink)

Cases of non-traditional family-making offer a rich seam for thinking about normative parenthood. Gamete donors are genetically related to the resulting offspring but are not thought to be normative parents. Gestational surrogates are also typically not thought to be normative parents, despite having gestated a child. Adoptive parents are typically thought to be normative parents even though they are neither genetically nor gestationally related to their child. Philosophers have paid attention to these kinds of cases. But they have not (...) paid attention to what the people who have engaged in these forms of family-making have to say about what they’re doing and, more specifically, how they answer the questions: “Who is the normative parent? And why?” Paying attention to their answers reveals two things. First, accounts of parenthood from people involved in two forms of non-traditional family-making – reproduction with gestational surrogacy and reproduction with donated eggs – are mutually inconsistent. This is not surprising. What is surprising is that the contradictory aspects of the views evince a common commitment to, as I shall put it, naturalizing parenthood. The central goal of this paper is to explain what that means, but rough idea is that in naturalizing parenthood, prospective parents aim to put the features that make someone a normative parent beyond the reach of human agency. I conclude by briefly suggesting that we should think of the grounds of normative parenthood – and the very task of theorizing about the grounds of normative parenthood – in a way that avoids the need to naturalize altogether. (shrink)

In this article I examine a recent approach to regulating assisted reproduction, whereby use of some kind of medical intervention ‘triggers’ laws governing legal parenthood that are more favourable to intending parents and sperm providers. I argue that although perhaps an improvement on the previous legal framework, these laws are problematic for three important reasons. First, they are prone to violating parental rights and unjustly imposing substantial burdens on individuals. Second, they are discriminatory. Third, even if we take a (...) pragmatic approach to the question of parenthood in these cases, these laws fail to properly consider the welfare interests of children. Finally, I conclude by showing that my argument does not entail adopting a laissez-fair attitude to conception using third-party sperm. (shrink)

In Nigeria, reproduction is highly valued, with many people desiring to produce a child ‘in their own image and likeness’. Previously, aspiring parents often resorted to adoption. Today, the availability of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) has provided options other than adoption for those desiring to procreate. Through ARTs, aspirations for a family may be attained through an exchange of reproductive goods and services, and not necessarily through traditional heterosexual relationships. ARTs have altered the perception of parenthood as it exists (...) in Nigeria, and courts face a difficult task in defining parenthood within Nigerian jurisprudence, as they can only adjudicate based on extant law. Although ARTs provide greater individual choices for fulfilling the desire to procreate, they raise a number of ethical and legal issues that evolving legal systems, such as that in Nigeria, are ill‐equipped to manage. This paper describes the traditional assignment of parenthood under indigenous laws and other sources of law within the Nigerian jurisprudence. We carried out an in‐depth study of the Nigerian legislative framework and found that there are no laws directly regulating parenthood, procreation and ARTs in Nigeria. We also found that the extant laws are only tangentially related and do not answer the relevant questions sufficiently well, especially concerning succession, nationality and assignment of responsibility in collaborative reproduction. We conclude by highlighting the need for and recommending a regulatory framework on ARTs with a particular focus on providing a definition for parenthood achieved through ARTs in Nigeria. (shrink)

_Procreation, Parenthood, and Educational Rights_ explores important issues at the nexus of two burgeoning areas within moral and social philosophy: procreative ethics and parental rights. Surprisingly, there has been comparatively little scholarly engagement across these subdisciplinary boundaries, despite the fact that parental rights are paradigmatically ascribed to individuals responsible for procreating particular children. This collection thus aims to bring expert practitioners from these literatures into fruitful and innovative dialogue around questions at the intersection of procreation and parenthood. Among (...) these questions are: Must individuals be found competent in order to have the right to procreate or to parent? What, if anything, can justify parents' special authority over, or special obligations toward, their children, particularly children they biologically procreate? How is the relationship between the right to procreate and the right to parent best understood? How ought liberal societies understand the parent-child relationship and the rights and claims it gives rise to? A distinguishing feature of the collection is that several of its chapters address these issues by drawing on philosophical work in the realm of education, one of the most controversial areas in the ethics of parenthood. This book represents a distinctive synthesis of topics and literatures likely to appeal to scholars and advanced students working across a wide range of disciplines. (shrink)

In this book, Joseph Millum explains how parental rights and responsibilities are acquired, what they consist in, and how parents should go about making decisions on behalf of their children. In doing so, he provides a set of frameworks to help solve pressing ethical dilemmas relating to parents and children.

At what point do stepparents become moral parents to the children under their care? What are their rights and duties prior to that point? What are their rights and duties once moral parenthood has been established? In this paper, I argue that we must fundamentally re-think the role of stepparents in children’s lives. More specifically, I argue that our social norms around romantic and familial relationships make it very difficult for stepparents and their children to have their core interests (...) simultaneously protected. The upshot of my discussion is not only that we must rethink what stepparents owe children under their care, but that stepparents are often morally entitled to shared custody of a child irrespective of the status of the romantic relationship she enjoys with the child's biological or adoptive parent. (shrink)

Surrogacy is a type of medically assisted reproduction (MAR), which is considered to be a relatively simple medical procedure. However, psychosocially, ethically and legally, it is extremely complicated. There has been a significant increase in interest in the procedure lately. This is largely due to the fact that it is now available to groups of applicants other than traditional heterosexual couples of reproductive age. Its purpose is to examine various approaches to determining what is legally acceptable as parenthood after (...) surrogacy. Our conclusion is that the wishes and rights of the individual actors (intended parent(s), surrogate mother, future child, gamete donors and society as a whole) are incompatible and contradictory. None of the probable solutions suggested from different perspectives can ensure that the wishes and rights of all are fulfilled at the same time. (shrink)

Common sense morality and legislations around the world ascribe normative relevance to biological connections between parents and children. Procreators who meet a modest standard of parental competence are believed to have a right to rear the children they brought into the world. I explore various attempts to justify this belief and find most of these attempts lacking. I distinguish between two kinds of biological connections between parents and children: the genetic link and the gestational link. I argue that the second (...) can better justify a right to rear. (shrink)

This chapter analyses the implications of findings in epigenetics for the ascription of moral responsibility for children. It contrasts shared understandings of procreative responsibility and discusses its extension to include all (individual or collective) actors who influence a child’s gene expression. It also problematizes the focus on biology in this process, using the example of epigenetics as a crossover between social and biological factors that contribute to a child’s life. Epigenetics blurs the boundary between biology and the environment, and thus (...) allows an analysis of contributions to children’s lives that goes beyond classical dualistic categories such as genetic versus environmental or biological versus social. The analysis is undertaken against the broader background of the determination of moral responsibility for children. (shrink)

What exactly is it that makes someone a parent? Many people hold that parenthood is grounded, in the first instance, in the natural derivation of one person's genetic constitution from the genetic constitutions of others. We refer to this view as "Geneticism". In Part I we distinguish three forms of geneticism on the basis of whether they hold that direct genetic derivation is sufficient, necessary, or both sufficient and necessary, for parenthood. Parts two through four examine three arguments (...) for geneticism: the property argument, the causal argument, and the parity argument. We conclude that none of these arguments succeeds. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of a number of research studies conducted within the field of parenthood and reproduction in a variety of Western cultures, including Slovakia and the countries of Eastern Europe. The main aim of this overview is to analyse two key indicators on Second Demographic Transition: delaying marriage and parenthood until later on in life and the growth in cohabitation as an alternative living arrangement and childbearing as part of that. The author points out that (...) the majority of parents opt to have a first child and this brings normative and emotional fulfilment. Most young people do not reject this, but simply postpone it until later on in life. The hypothesis is postulated that the decision on whether to have further children is to a larger extent rationally based and is more dependent on weighing up the incentives available from the state. The article emphasises, on the basis of a comparison of the results of various empirical studies, that the same patterns of reproductive behaviour can produce markedly different consequences and outcomes within various subgroups of the population. It is recommended that current research into parenthood and reproduction should be extended so that studies are conducted into similar groups within subpopulations across different countries—in contrast to the current prevailing research that is focused on single countries or in comparing different countries as a whole. It is also recommended that the scope of the research be extended to compare a number of different subpopulations with similar value and life-style configurations as opposed to the majority of the current narrowly-focused approaches that concentrate on examining the differences in reproductive behaviour patterns of a section of the population selected on the basis of education. (shrink)

Definition of the problem The present article focuses on the current international ethical debate on “responsible implementation” of expanded carrier screening to public healthcare systems. Expanded carrier screening is a novel genetic test which aims to provide information to couples about whether both partners carry a genetic variation for the same recessively inherited condition. It was introduced to the market by commercial laboratories in the U.S. in 2010; since about 2015, however, international debates have emerged on how and why to (...) offer the screening as a public health service. Arguments It is shown that, initially, enhancement of couples’ reproductive autonomy, not prevention of recessive disorders, has been established as the ethically well-founded aim and guiding principle of responsible implementation. Recently, however, in 2019, three well-known Dutch bioethicists argued that this aim has been embraced without much reflection and should therefore be replaced with the guiding principle of “responsible parenthood”. According to the latter, autonomous reproductive decision-making of couples or women is morally acceptable solely when carrier screening is done only during pregnancy. Before pregnancy, by contrast, couples are held to have a moral duty to take preventive measures if their future children are at risk of being affected by one of the “worst” recessive conditions. In the present paper, both of these conflicting ethical framings of expanded carrier screening are critically examined. Conclusions While the aim of reproductive autonomy also has problematic aspects, the notion of “responsible parenthood” is much more objectionable since it challenges voluntary participation in carrier screening, argues for directive genetic counseling, limits reproductive self-determination of women and couples, and introduces dubious concepts to the debate. (shrink)

Procreation and Parenthood offers new and original essays by leading philosophers on some of the main ethical issues raised by these activities.

Stimulated by development of reproductive technologies, many current bioethical accounts of parenthood focus on defining parenthood at or around birth. They tend to exclude from their scope some parent-child relationships that develop later in a child’s life. In reality, a parent-child relationship can emerge or dissolve over time: the parents of person A as an adolescent or adult may be different to her parents when she is a young child. To address this aspect of parenthood, we propose (...) a new ‘mutuality account’ of parenthood, grounded in the concept of ontological security. We argue that in most cases a parent-child relationship exists if there is mutual ontological security between the parent and child. We suggest that this mutual ontological security is constituted and sustained by shared frameworks of reality and cohesive personal narratives. Our intention is to broaden the conceptual understanding of parenthood, to include parent-child relationships that do not fall neatly into current bioethical accounts, and to argue against the notion that objective physiological, causal, or social ties are necessary to ‘make’ a parent. (shrink)