When I was growing up, I used to have really fun birthday parties. However, these parties came with a price: I had to invite 2-3 kids that I absolutely could not stand because their parents were friends with mine. These kids were just the worst: They would cry, start fights, complain about dumb things, and generally devastate the vibes in the bounce-house.
Now, did I owe these clowns an invite? Did they have a right to attend my birthday party because it meant a lot to them? Or because their parents really wanted their children to come to the birthday party? No, probably not. The reason I invited these losers is that my parents funded the parties, and it seemed only fair to abide by their conditions in virtue of doing so. “Okay fine, they can come.”
I think this story has something interesting to offer about parenting. Every year, millions of procreators apply for custodial rights over their offspring. In virtually all cases, even in ones where the applicant shows signs of being a terrible parent, the state accepts these applications. These acceptances are incredibly generous: Ted Bundy retained parental rights over the child he fathered while in prison. Josh Duggar is still a father of his seven children despite serving a prison sentence for some very serious, child-related crimes. You can literally murder a child and still retain the legal ability to acquire parental rights over your offspring.
Why is the bar so low for the acquisition of parental rights? One intuitive answer is that parenting a child is one of the most significant things we will ever do, and depriving people of this right counts as a serious wrong. Maybe the state is like a parent forcing their child to invite a loser to their party; except in our case, the state is forcing a child into a significant relationship with a parent who has a very high chance of abusing them. Souring a birthday party is not that big of a deal, which is why the party-thrower should just accept the cost of inviting losers. But souring a parent-child relationship? That is something children are often not able to recover from.
So, what is the solution to this problem? In the past two decades, a group of philosophers have argued that the allocation of parental rights should not be given out like birthday party invites. Instead, someone should only have the right to raise some child only if doing so is in the child's best interests. Like I’ve mentioned in a previous post, this child-centered way of looking at things sounds really nice. Walter White, Logan Roy, and Kendall Roy all basically say the same thing: “Everything I’ve done in my life, I’ve done for my children.”
(Yes, I know: the irony about these characters is that they’re clearly self-deceived. But the claims have pull because they seem to most people like the correct way of doing things as a parent.)
But if we make things all about the child’s interests, I think things get awkward rather quickly. For example, James Dwyer has argued that when states are considering applications for parenting a particular child, they should take into account “characteristics of any interested persons that research shows correlate with good or bad welfare outcomes for children, and these certainly can outweigh benefits arising from biological relation” (414). Dwyer’s claim here is that if some fact about an applicant just correlates with bad outcomes, that should count against an applicant. We don’t even need to prove a causal connection; as long as there is correlation between some fact and bad welfare, that is a reason to decline an applicant.
Here is the awkward part: If we just need to prove correlation between some feature and bad welfare for children, this licenses some serious discrimination. Cases of child abuse correlate more frequently among impoverished minorities without college degrees than those who are white, affluent, and college-educated. Dwyer’s view essentially licenses racial and socioeconomic profiling in the allocation of parental rights: If an impoverished, minority procreator without a college education applies for parental rights, Dwyer says the state should count these as features against the applicant. That strikes me as seriously unjust.
Here is Dwyer’s reply: “But when adults are dating, we see nothing wrong with them counting these features as reasons against continuing an intimate relationship. They typically take into account the ‘other persons’ mental health problems, addiction, lack of education, criminal history, etc.’” (414). The example does have some pull: If you are on a date with someone who tells you they are addicted to hard drugs and have served long prison sentences, you are not a bad person for seeing these as reasons against going on a second date even if you recognize the person has these problems for reasons beyond their control (e.g., they suffered extreme child abuse).
Touché.
But the reason this is true is that some of these features serve as causal (not merely correlative) indicators of being unfit as a partner. Having a strong drug addiction, for example, serves as good evidence that a future relationship with this person will be tumultuous because the addiction will cause problems in the relationship. But other features about a person merely correlate with bad outcomes and do not obviously cause them. For example, you can consult statistics on intimate partner violence and see that one race is the most frequent offender. But, presumably, you would be a bad person if you counted the fact your date is a member of that race as a reason against going on a second date with them. This is just textbook racism.
What would be different in Dwyer’s case? Not much. The fact the state would count being a member of a race as a reason against granting parental rights is racist. I see no way around this conclusion.
But there is an additional problem: “Sure, race is not a causal indicator of bad outcomes, but poverty is. Should the fact a parent is impoverished count against granting them rights?”
Not necessarily. For one thing, the state is often quite complicit in poverty. There are cases where people obviously qualify for welfare, the state fails to give them sufficient welfare, and have to shoplift candy bars to continue living. In this case, the state is complicit in the citizen’s poverty: They would not be impoverished if the state fulfilled its duty to her and gave her sufficient welfare. So, imagine if the state denied this citizen parental rights because they are impoverished: What would be the response? “I only failed this test because you wronged me!” This is a case of compounded injustice: The state wrongs her by failing to give her adequate welfare and then wrongs her again by making her suffer the consequences of its failure.
But in cases where the state is not complicit in poverty, things may be different. If we have someone who is impoverished for spending money frivolously, then we have strong evidence the applicant is not fit to parent the child and that the state may be within its rights to deny parental rights to this person. But this is not because, as child-centered theorists say, the child is entitled to the best available parent. The reason is that the child is entitled to protection against neglect, and we suspect this particular applicant will neglect the child. So, poverty per se should not count against an applicant (contrary to child-centered theorists), especially when the state is clearly complicit. But poverty paired with some vicious explanation for the poverty may count against the applicant.
Where does this leave us? My tentative thought is this: the allocation of parental rights is not like the handing out of birthday party invites to people. Children are people with significant moral status, and just because raising a child would be important to someone does not mean they have a right to do so. But the allocation of parental rights is also not like dating. Counting some feature that correlates with bad outcomes as a reason against a relationship may not wrong the person you’re on a date with, but it almost certainly wrongs the person applying for parental rights.
Child-centered theorists, and their child welfare correlating indexes, should get bent! It is none of the state’s business whether or not I can afford rent this month; my $1500 fur-suit needed to be dry-cleaned after the latest anthro-con -and I will not let my (ill) perceived profligacy stand as the basis for the poaching of my cubs!