Procreation, Parenthood, and Educational Rights: Ethical and Philosophical Issues

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.

Jaime Ahlberg is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Florida. Her main areas of interest are ethics and political philosophy, with emphases in bioethics, education, and feminism. Recent publications include "Educational Justice for Students with Cognitive Disabilities" in Social Philosophy & Policy and "An Argument Against Cloning" (with Harry Brighouse) in Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

Michael Cholbi is Professor of Philosophy at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He has published widely in theoretical and practical ethics. His most recent work addresses paternalism, grief, and the ethics of suicide. His books include Suicide: The Philosophical Dimensions (2011) and Understanding Kant’s Ethics (2016).