Moral Parenthood and Moral Commitment

Abstract: In this paper I focus on the following question: what gives a person a moral right to parent a particular child? I first argue that the correct answer to this question must (i) take seriously the interests of both parents and children, (ii) include the claims of adoptive parents, and (iii) do justice to the entirety of the parent-child relationship. I then put forward a novel account of moral parenthood that meets all of these conditions. I call this account the commitment account. On this account, a moral parent is not someone who merely consents to the parental role or who merely played a role in the child’s existence; rather, a moral parent is someone who engages in certain kinds of moral actions due to a recognition of the value of the parent-child relationship.