Abstract
In this paper I argue that part of parental duty consists in enhancing the autonomy of children. This is because parents are causally and normatively privileged with regard to their children and how they fare. In addition, children need help to overcome their deliberative and volitional shortcomings. The challenge, however, is how the autonomy of children can be enhanced without interfering with their evolving capacity for autonomy. To meet this challenge, I show what kind of autonomy is at stake in such cases, and how it can be enhanced by parents. More precisely, I defend the claim that personal projects—that is, norm-governed, interconnected, and recurring acting types that express an identity-conferring commitment—provide one resource to help children come to fulfill at least one condition of autonomy. By coming to value personal projects, children can come to fulfill the “authenticity condition” of autonomy. The parental duty to enhance children’s autonomy therefore consists, in part at least, in enabling them to pursue and value personal projects. By responding to three objections—namely the objection from overdemandingness, from unreasonable projects, and from skepticism about projects as a necessary means for autonomy—I bolster my claim that personal projects are especially conducive to helping children develop value commitments that can be said to be their own.
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Notes
- 1.
Such as their health and safety.
- 2.
Such as their sense of being cared for and loved in a nurturing environment.
- 3.
In what follows, I am concerned with parenthood as a social relationship (rather than a biological or legal one).
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
But it leaves open the possibility that a non-autonomous life might not be worse overall than an autonomous one. This is the case because autonomy is but one constituent of a good life.
- 7.
This does not entail that the parental duty to enhance autonomy is weightier than other parental duties. I will not address the issue of how various parental duties can come into conflict, or how they might be balanced.
- 8.
See Schapiro (2003: 578), who thinks that children are unfit to govern themselves because they lack reason.
- 9.
Especially Noggle (2002: 101–10).
- 10.
See, e.g. Schapiro (1999: 730–1).
- 11.
It is only made precise for legal reasons by stipulating the age of majority. But this does not make it precise in other normative respects.
- 12.
It is a further question whether parents who lack autonomy themselves would be able to enhance the autonomy of their children. I am unable to sufficiently address that question here.
- 13.
I am unable to tackle the question why not-so-autonomous adults should not be interfered with at all, whereas the opposite seems to hold true for adolescents. Franklin-Hall (2013: 243), defends the view that different temporal positions in the life cycle can justify that minors and adults are held to different standards.
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- 15.
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This does not require any self-reflective capacities.
- 17.
Cf., e.g., Benson (1994: 650–68).
- 18.
Cf. Oshana (1998: 81–102).
- 19.
Cf. Mackenzie and Stoljar (Eds.), (2000).
- 20.
Cuypers and Haji (2007: 82), refer in this connection to the ‘problem of authenticity’.
- 21.
See Dworkin (2010a).
- 22.
Even though it might hold locally from an early age. For example, even small children are able to autonomously decide which clothes to wear, but they are not yet able to decide (at least not fully) what school to go to.
- 23.
Cf. Feinberg (1980: 148–51).
- 24.
I therefore agree with S. Olsaretti’s and P. Bou-Habib’s criticisms in this volume (2014) of what they call the autonomy as end-state or achievement view.
- 25.
Noogle (2002: 113). He adds, however, that parents must not try to force the child to keep them forever. He remains rather unclear how parents can help their children to acquire their own values.
- 26.
See Noggle (2005: 101), where he refers to the apparent ‘paradox of self-creation’.
- 27.
Scheffler (2010: 29). There has been very little work done on valuing, and I draw heavily from Scheffler’s proposal which he, however, makes independently from its normative importance for autonomy.
- 28.
Jaworska (2007: 529–68), draws attention to the normative significance of ‘caring’. She thinks that agents bear moral status due to their ability to care (which includes small children as well as Alzheimer’s patients). I draw from her work to shed light on caring as a proto-version of valuing.
- 29.
This does not rule out that adults can err in their carings too.
- 30.
- 31.
This presupposes at least an intersubjectivist understanding of value which I cannot defend at any length here.
- 32.
In what follows I draw from Betzler (2013: 101–26).
- 33.
Mullin (2007: 542ff) argues that love of other people is a source of autonomy for children.
- 34.
A. Mullin (forthcoming) draws attention to the importance of stable goals for autonomy. Projects as I understand them are a special kind of stable goal that gives rise to valuing.
- 35.
I take this to be a more substantive way of spelling out Callan’s view, according to which becoming autonomous is ‘as much learning autonomously to adhere to a conception of the good as it is learning autonomously to revise it’. Cf. Callan (2002: 137).
- 36.
This would be the case if these were immoral or risky projects.
- 37.
This includes the defense of an intersubjectivist theory of value. It is only on the assumption of such a theory that we can preclude cases of fundamentalist indoctrination or cases of projects the value of which is more than questionable.
- 38.
This paper draws from ideas that I developed in Betzler (2011), but it contains substantial elaboration. For valuable written comments on this version I am indebted to A. Bagattini, C. Budnik, A. Gheaus, A. Mullin, and N. Osborne. I am also grateful to A. Bagattini and C. Macleod for inviting me to revisit my ideas on enhancing children’s autonomy.
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Betzler, M. (2015). Enhancing the Capacity for Autonomy: What Parents Owe Their Children to Make Their Lives Go Well. In: Bagattini, A., Macleod, C. (eds) The Nature of Children's Well-Being. Children’s Well-Being: Indicators and Research, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9252-3_5
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