Is having a loving family an unfair advantage?

First published:: Friday 1 May 2015 1:19PM
By:: Joe Gelonesi

Image: Is it good night for the bedtime story? (Keith Brofsky/ Getty Images)

Plato famously wanted to abolish the family and put children into care of the state. Some still think the traditional family has a lot to answer for, but some plausible arguments remain in favour of it. Joe Gelonesi meets a philosopher with a rescue plan very much in tune with the times.

So many disputes in our liberal democratic society hinge on the tension between inequality and fairness: between groups, between sexes, between individuals, and increasingly between families.

I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally.

The power of the family to tilt equality hasn’t gone unnoticed, and academics and public commentators have been blowing the whistle for some time. Now, philosophers Adam Swift and Harry Brighouse have felt compelled to conduct a cool reassessment.

Swift in particular has been conflicted for some time over the curious situation that arises when a parent wants to do the best for her child but in the process makes the playing field for others even more lopsided.

‘I got interested in this question because I was interested in equality of opportunity,’ he says.

‘I had done some work on social mobility and the evidence is overwhelmingly that the reason why children born to different families have very different chances in life is because of what happens in those families.’

Once he got thinking, Swift could see that the issue stretches well beyond the fact that some families can afford private schooling, nannies, tutors, and houses in good suburbs. Functional family interactions—from going to the cricket to reading bedtime stories—form a largely unseen but palpable fault line between families. The consequence is a gap in social mobility and equality that can last for generations.

So, what to do?

According to Swift, from a purely instrumental position the answer is straightforward.

‘One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.’

It’s not the first time a philosopher has thought about such a drastic solution. Two thousand four hundred years ago another sage reasoned that the care of children should be undertaken by the state.

Plato pulled few punches in The Republic when he called for the abolition of the family and for the children of the elite to be given over to the state. Aristotle didn’t agree, citing the since oft-used argument of the neglect of things held in common. Swift echoes the Aristotelian line. The break-up of the family is plausible maybe, he thinks, but even to the most hard-hearted there’s something off-key about it.

‘Nearly everyone who has thought about this would conclude that it is a really bad idea to be raised by state institutions, unless something has gone wrong,’ he says.

Intuitively it doesn’t feel right, but for a philosopher, solutions require more than an initial reaction. So Swift and his college Brighouse set to work on a respectable analytical defence of the family, asking themselves the deceptively simple question: ‘Why are families a good thing exactly?’

Not surprisingly, it begins with kids and ends with parents.

‘It’s the children’s interest in family life that is the most important,’ says Swift. ‘From all we now know, it is in the child’s interest to be parented, and to be parented well. Meanwhile, from the adult point of view it looks as if there is something very valuable in being a parent.’

He concedes parenting might not be for everyone and for some it can go badly wrong, but in general it is an irreplaceable relationship.

‘Parenting a child makes for what we call a distinctive and special contribution to the flourishing and wellbeing of adults.’

It seems that from both the child’s and adult’s point of view there is something to be said about living in a family way. This doesn’t exactly parry the criticism that families exacerbate social inequality. For this, Swift and Brighouse needed to sort out those activities that contribute to unnecessary inequality from those that don't.

Image: Does having a loving home life confer children with an unfair advantage? (Getty Images)

‘What we realised we needed was a way of thinking about what it was we wanted to allow parents to do for their children, and what it was that we didn’t need to allow parents to do for their children, if allowing those activities would create unfairnesses for other people’s children’.

The test they devised was based on what they term ‘familial relationship goods’; those unique and identifiable things that arise within the family unit and contribute to the flourishing of family members.

For Swift, there’s one particular choice that fails the test.

‘Private schooling cannot be justified by appeal to these familial relationship goods,’ he says. ‘It’s just not the case that in order for a family to realise these intimate, loving, authoritative, affectionate, love-based relationships you need to be able to send your child to an elite private school.’

In contrast, reading stories at bedtime, argues Swift, gives rise to acceptable familial relationship goods, even though this also bestows advantage.

‘The evidence shows that the difference between those who get bedtime stories and those who don’t—the difference in their life chances—is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don’t,’ he says.

This devilish twist of evidence surely leads to a further conclusion—that perhaps in the interests of levelling the playing field, bedtime stories should also be restricted. In Swift’s mind this is where the evaluation of familial relationship goods goes up a notch.

‘You have to allow parents to engage in bedtime stories activities, in fact we encourage them because those are the kinds of interactions between parents and children that do indeed foster and produce these [desired] familial relationship goods.’

Swift makes it clear that although both elite schooling and bedtime stories might both skew the family game, restricting the former would not interfere with the creation of the special loving bond that families give rise to. Taking the books away is another story.

‘We could prevent elite private schooling without any real hit to healthy family relationships, whereas if we say that you can’t read bedtime stories to your kids because it’s not fair that some kids get them and others don’t, then that would be too big a hit at the core of family life.’

So should parents snuggling up for one last story before lights out be even a little concerned about the advantage they might be conferring?

‘I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,’ quips Swift.

In the end Swift agrees that all activities will cause some sort of imbalance—from joining faith communities to playing Saturday cricket—and it’s for this reason that a theory of familial goods needs to be established if the family is to be defended against cries of unfairness.

‘We should accept that lots of stuff that goes on in healthy families—and that our theory defends—will confer unfair advantage,’ he says.

It’s the usual bind in ethics and moral philosophy: very often values clash and you have to make a call. For Swift and Brighouse, the line sits shy of private schooling, inheritance and other predominantly economic ways of conferring advantage.

Their conclusions remind one of a more idyllic (or mythic) age for families: reading together, attending religious services, playing board games, and kicking a ball in the local park, not to mention enjoying roast dinner on Sunday. It conjures a family setting worthy of a classic Norman Rockwell painting. But not so fast: when you ask Swift what sort of families is he talking about, the ‘50s reverie comes crashing down into the 21^st century.

‘When we talk about parents’ rights, we’re talking about the person who is parenting the child. How you got to be parenting the child is another issue. One implication of our theory is that it’s not one’s biological relation that does much work in justifying your rights with respect to how the child is parented.’

For Swift and Brighouse, our society is curiously stuck in a time warp of proprietorial rights: if you biologically produce a child you own it.

‘We think that although in practice it makes sense to parent your biological offspring, that is not the same as saying that in virtue of having produced the child the biological parent has the right to parent.’

Then, does the child have a right to be parented by her biological parents? Swift has a ready answer.

‘It’s true that in the societies in which we live, biological origins do tend to form an important part of people’s identities, but that is largely a social and cultural construction. So you could imagine societies in which the parent-child relationship could go really well even without there being this biological link.’

From this realisation arises another twist: two is not the only number.

‘Nothing in our theory assumes two parents: there might be two, there might be three, and there might be four,’ says Swift.

It’s here that the traditional notions of what constitutes the family come apart. A necessary product of the Swift and Brighouse analytical defence is the calling into question of some rigid definitions.

‘Politicians love to talk about family values, but meanwhile the family is in flux and so we wanted to go back to philosophical basics to work out what are families for and what’s so great about them and then we can start to figure out whether it matters whether you have two parents or three or one, or whether they’re heterosexual etcetera.’

For traditionalists, though, Swift provides a small concession.

‘We do want to defend the family against complete fragmentation and dissolution,’ he says. ‘If you start to think about a child having 10 parents, then that’s looking like a committee rearing a child; there aren’t any parents there at all.’

Although it’s controversial, it seems that Swift and Brighouse are philosophically inching their way to a novel accommodation for a weathered institution ever more in need of a rationale for existing. The bathwater might be going out, but they’re keen to hold on to the baby.

Family values
- Listen
- Download
Sunday 3 May 2015
Listen to this episode of The Philosopher's Zone to hear more from philosopher Adam Swift.
More

This [series episode segment] has image,

The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.

View comments (73)

Comments (73)

Comments for this story are closed. No new comments can be added.

Nathan B :

03 May 2015 9:31:03am

I think it is unfair that some people are addicted to heroin but others aren't. To even the playing field we should make sure children are given their first mandatory shot of heroin when they graduate so that they don't have an unfair advantage over everyone else.

Honestly I sometimes think philosophers some times have to come up with absurd ideas like this one just for the sake of justifying their existence by coming up with something new.

Alert moderator
KJ Prior :

03 May 2015 12:09:08pm

'Parenting' is an art work in progress. Every element of a couple/extended family is influential. Society needs to support parents so they have a rich pallet of resources and experiences to use in this most important job. Parenting.

Alert moderator
wolfkeeng :

03 May 2015 12:13:44pm

The traditional family is not the nuclear family implied (by never really defined) in this article.

The nuclear family is a very modern construction. The traditional family is (and in many places remains) the extended family.

The extended family (ie a number of adult figures contributing to the raising of children) is what these philosophers appear to be advocating.

They appear to be saying only marginally more than the African proverb made famous by a US presidential candidate:
It takes a village [to raise a child].

I've no doubt I would have had a 'better' childhood raised in an extended family setting than in my dysfunctional nuclear family.

And since it was raised in the article, I would also advocate the abolition of the private school system. In part because of the experiences of my broader family.

Alert moderator
Evan :

04 May 2015 12:15:09pm

It seems a case ripe for the application of virtue ethics.

Alert moderator
Chris Harper :

04 May 2015 12:26:46pm

These guys are totalitarian thugs. Why is the ABC giving them any publicity at all?

Alert moderator
george :

04 May 2015 2:54:14pm

"Swift in particular has been conflicted for some time over the curious situation that arises when a parent wants to do the best for her child but in the process makes the playing field for others even more lopsided."

That is like saying that I should not cut my front lawn and generally keep the place tidy because it starkly increases the contrast with my bogan neighbours' tip next door. The playing field would definitely be lopsided so unfairly if we both had for sale signs.

Are these "philosophers" the graduates of our "level fielded unis" by any chance?

Alert moderator
Robert C :

04 May 2015 3:07:47pm

I think the simple flaw in their reasoning is their a priori assumption that overall equality of outcomes is a desirable societal goal in the first place. That is how you reach the grotesque conclusion that raising happy, healthy children is somehow unfair to children who were not raised so well. The answer should be to help those who need our help, not to handicap our children's futures.

If I didn't know better - that this is indeed the appalling state of modern philosophy - I'd suspect this Swift was pulling a literary hoax, as surely killing the babies of rich or loving parents would eliminate their unfair advantage, and increase the level of equality for the poor and neglected children?

Alert moderator
stevie84 :

04 May 2015 3:41:24pm

OH.MY.GOD. This article is epic. Bedtime stories are now bad for society? Wanting to love and give your kids a leg up is to be frowned upon? Epic.

Alert moderator
Neonborg :

04 May 2015 4:01:58pm

Insanity.

Alert moderator
David :

04 May 2015 4:02:20pm

Interesting philosophically, I suppose, but totally unrealistic, totally undesirable and a good exemplar of the mindset of Swift - that state sanctioned violence against certain individuals is acceptable because the political elite deem it so.

To all those parents out there who want the best for their children, who read to them, teach them, nurture them, shelter them, arrange private lessons, encourage and cajole them - good on you. You are doing the right thing. The family is the fundamental building block of society.

Alert moderator
Jason :

04 May 2015 4:03:04pm

You have got to be kidding! This is such absolute garbage.

Alert moderator
Jenny :

04 May 2015 4:07:13pm

Is this an April Fool's Day joke? Parents playing cricket with their kids gives an unfair advantage to them, so we should prevent parents from providing anything nice to their kids in the interest of fairness? Perhaps every child should line up on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a sound beating and be deprived of breakfast so that they are equal to kids whose parents don't give a toss about them? Or should we evaluate what the most wretched child in Australia is being subjected to and mandate that every child receives no more and no less? Are you people completely insane? We should be strengthening the family unit and encouraging it to provide every child the best start in life, not tearing it down with idiotic proposals such as this 'philosopher's'.

Alert moderator
kruddler :

04 May 2015 4:09:18pm

Lowest common denominator philosphy. Ugh...

Alert moderator
Zac :

04 May 2015 4:10:10pm

This is how it'll look when commies and Marxists take up philosophy. No wonder many authoritarians dwell in our universities. Shame on ABC for giving platforms for such looneys.

Alert moderator
Adam :

04 May 2015 4:11:34pm

At first I thought this was satire and was chuckling through it. Then ....to think that my little boy will be part of a "problem" because we invest in providing him with inclusive enjoyable and stable family rituals focused on his learning and development so that he may have a successful life ...well...one asks why the ABC would give this kind of stuff airtime as opposed to other topics.

Alert moderator
James :

04 May 2015 4:14:37pm

Good grief, now the ABC is giving voice to an opinion piece that seriously questions whether a happy loving family is fair or not and therefore, we should think of choosing an unhappy, dysfunctional one instead (what other option is there? No family at all I suppose).

For God's sake, just what are you doing with my money ABC?

This is loon stuff at its most bizarre.

Alert moderator
Greg :

04 May 2015 4:18:48pm

What next Eugenics is good?

Time to Defund the ABC you seriously have lost the plot!

Alert moderator
Natasha :

04 May 2015 5:07:33pm

This is a typical lefty philosophy - to achieve so called " social equality", you bring down the good ones to the level of the bad ones.

Lefties like to create victims so that they can have a cause to pursues.

What on earth that ABC could give such a silly topic a platform.

Alert moderator
Tim of Kilsyth :

04 May 2015 5:18:19pm

I cannot actually believe that my taxes paid for this load of Marxist rubbish.Pol Pot would be proud of stuff like this. So we just deprive all children of love and affection . Plus do not let any of them excel at learning by giving them opportunity for a better education. I don't want to be around to see the end play of that scenario.
This article has taken the ABC to a new level of irrelevance from any vestige of normal human thought and behavior. I did not think that was possible given past performances."Well done".
The only good thing about its publication on the RN website is that no one will see it.
ABC Board , where are you? Hello?

Alert moderator
Art Sartrus :

04 May 2015 5:22:21pm

I'm so pleased to discover that tax dollars are once again going towards people that hate me and my way of life, and there's no legal resource except to bend over and take it. All for my own good.

Alert moderator
Bruce :

04 May 2015 5:29:12pm

Are these people totally insane?

Alert moderator
Hard working Dad :

04 May 2015 5:30:25pm

This is the biggest piece of crap I have read in ages... "allowing parents" to read to their children - honestly who writes things like this.....it's nobodies business if I spend a massive amount of my hard earned money private schooling my kids and reading to them. Sick of these communist idiots that want to control everyone's opportunities that were brought about by hard work and dedication.

Alert moderator
Brett :

04 May 2015 5:33:09pm

These Leftoids really are pieces of shit, and the ABC is no better for airing this crap.

Alert moderator
BenK :

04 May 2015 5:33:22pm

What do Swift and Brighouse have in mind for the banning of private schooling? Is it that the State will dictate the activities of all children between the ages of 5 and 18 for 7 hours of every weekday?

I'm not saying this hyperbolically: is this not cartoonishly totalitarian? If I wanted to invent a comic-book fascist villain this is the sort of thing I might make them do.

Alert moderator
Meniscus :

04 May 2015 5:52:29pm

Yes, let's reduce everyone to the lowest possible denominator so that we can all be equally mediocre. This kind of social engineering is anti-evolutionary and totalitarian in the extreme. Why do my taxes pay for this junk opinion? Who would pay for this opinion on the open market?

Alert moderator
Mark of SA :

04 May 2015 6:12:42pm

Where does it stop? Surely being alive is an unfair advantage as well (compared to the dead or unconscious).

This sort of nonsense is what comes about when people have nothing really useful to do - and I think "philosophers" are high on that list.

Alert moderator
crs :

04 May 2015 6:13:36pm

"Not being shot in the face constitutes an advantage, therefore everyone should be shot in the face."

I'm pretty sure this is a modern parody, based on the Modest Proposal of another Swift. At least I really hope it is.

Alert moderator
Mike :

04 May 2015 6:16:59pm

Please tell me the author of this piece isn't paid by the ABC?

Alert moderator
Bernie :

04 May 2015 6:21:16pm

Joe Gelonesi summarises this article of rubbish as follows: "Although it’s controversial, it seems that Swift and Brighouse are philosophically inching their way to a novel accommodation for a weathered institution ever more in need of a rationale for existing ..."

Who the heck is Gelonesi to say that the family, as an institution, needs a rationale for existing?

Statements like this - which are as offensive as they are inaccurate - are very much the reason why there is a groundswell to sell the ABC off to the quickest bidder.

Is a puerile article like this the best we, the citizens of Australia, can get from the $1.2 billon we waste each year on Aunty ABC?

It's time Aunty was euthanized - a subject on which the ABC is invariably in favour.

Alert moderator
PsychoBabble :

04 May 2015 6:27:20pm

It is not the loving, caring, supportive family that confers an unfair advantage but rather a dysfunctional family that confers an unfair disadvantage. Stop the dysfunctional from breeding to raise the total level of advantage not lower. The so-called advantage simply means a better educated, more productive, less violet, etc. individual.

Alert moderator
yv :

04 May 2015 6:27:37pm

Is the author a complete idiot or still incomplete (disadvantaged by his parents) one?

Alert moderator
macytraine :

04 May 2015 6:41:38pm

What a lot of drivel. Seriously, I had to look at the date to make sure it wasn't April 1st. Can our research money please be put to better use? How about research into how we can help families lift their game to give deprived children a better chance?

Alert moderator
Fess :

04 May 2015 6:47:19pm

This is surely a joke - should have been published on 1 April. Otherwise these guys need to get a real job and do something useful. What the heck is the abc doing publishing this rubbish?

Alert moderator
Doug on the Bus :

04 May 2015 6:59:54pm

With the increasing number of so called "adult" parents who are seeking court orders about everything about a child's name and what school they should attend, what sport they should play and what religion they should be taught about, we have already reached the situation of a representative of the state (that is, a Judge) being in control of childrens' lives.

Add to this the number of children 'in care' or with care orders to try to have a child's basic welfare looked after and we may just think that the family has failed.

Alert moderator
Tom :

04 May 2015 7:11:18pm

The underlying logic. Punish good families because it's unfair on the "bad families" for "good families" to exist. Individual choices not put into the equation at all. Why does the ABC allow such nonsense to be published. The politics of envy used to justify the logic behind the stolen generation.

Alert moderator
Andrew :

04 May 2015 7:21:35pm

I demand that my tax dollars that have gone towards RN be refunded.

Alert moderator
Ron the sage :

04 May 2015 7:33:43pm

Why the commotion? It was a very interesting and engaging discussion on how to arrive at a secular defence of the family. Quite an intelligent line of thought by Adam Swift. Very well worth giving the time to listen all the way through.

Alert moderator
Lil :

04 May 2015 7:40:23pm

Re-read the article but still couldn't find 'Love' anywhere in it. Without this difficult concept thrown into the mix, syllogisms won't fix it.

Alert moderator
dan swift :

04 May 2015 8:12:02pm

"Sceptical Sam said:

04 May 2015 12:18:11pm

Adam Swift. Great.

Are you related to the other great philosopher Dr Jonathan Swift".

Jonathan Swift was being ironic when he made some outrageous suggestions.

But there is no hint of irony in Adam Swift's ideas.

"Chris Harper said:

These guys are totalitarian thugs. Why is the ABC giving them any publicity at all"?

Swift says that 5 parents is ok. But the government actually has laws that more than 5 people
unrelated people cannot live together. So the true totalitarians are inside the gates already.

Alert moderator
IB :

04 May 2015 9:03:56pm

I read this as a tongue-in-cheek kind of article. One benefit of these kind of considerations is a hierarchy of what actions advantage the child the most. I am delighted to see that the bedtime stories are near the top and private schooling towards the bottom. A delightful and humorous read!

Alert moderator
marcmarc :

04 May 2015 9:16:52pm

Give it 10-15 years,the left always gets what it wants eventually.

Alert moderator
Jorge P :

04 May 2015 9:33:52pm

The philosophers interviewed for this piece are advocating the 'conservative' side of this issue, yet the comments are full of people accusing them of being radical 'leftists'? Odd. It has long been argued by philosophers that the nuclear family has little rational justification behind it and is only propped up by fallacious arguments from tradition. The arguments in favour of abolishing the family are very strong, and these philosophers are the underdogs for instead arguing in favour of the family. They're arguing to keep the institution of the family and just make broader societal changes to try and minimize inequality instead. This is very much a conservative position on the issue, when compared to the other positions out there. It's not the -most- conservative, but it's sure right-of-centre when you look across the spectrum of ideas philosophers have on this topic.

Alert moderator
Richard (Melbourne) :

04 May 2015 10:07:25pm

"...biological origins do tend to form an important part of people’s identities, but that is largely a social and cultural construction. "

Biology is a social and cultural construction? These guys are beyond parody.

Your taxes at work.

Alert moderator
Philip Impey :

04 May 2015 10:09:12pm

There are some classic left-wing assumptions made here and their prejudices seem to shine through. Can this be considered to be truly dispassionate research? The hoary old idea that private schools are there for the advantage of the rich elite isn't reall backed up by fact. Refer to recent studies as to the comparison of results between private and public schools.
But an important point here is entirely missed about private schooling - many parents send their child fee send their children to Christian private schools to get a broader understanding of life issues than the narrow secular teaching of public schools. Religious education is practically non-existent and taught from and atheistic bias. Theories are taught as fact whereas faith is dismissed as fairy tale. My children were educated in a Christian school and, besides the state mandated curriculum, were also taught from a Christian world-view , which I believe has made them well-balanced members of society.
Is that a privelege or inequitable?

Alert moderator
Fair Value :

04 May 2015 11:17:15pm

Too right its an unfair advantage.

My parents worked their bums of to give this unfair advantage to me. And my wife and I are working our butts off too to give this unfair advantage to our kids.

And hopefully so on and so on to one generation and the next.

I wonder what Mark Scott would say about getting rid of private schools, given he is on the school council at Knox Grammar in Sydney?!

Alert moderator
AndrewL :

04 May 2015 11:18:19pm

One advantage of living in a free country is the discretion to read anything, even tosh like this. Has the ABC jumped the shark?

Alert moderator
Christof :

04 May 2015 11:28:24pm

Further confirmation of where people who study their entire lives finish up. Who on earth described this rubbish as philosophy? Who has paid this bloke all his life to get to this point? I know who pays the ABC! Us suckers!

And I'm getting a clear understanding of how civil wars start - normal, yes normal clear thinking people - a few still exist - are actually working hard and paying taxes for this rubbish. Who let that happen? Why would the ABC even consider printing this absolute rubbish. Surely it's April 1st and I'm an idiot.

Alert moderator

ABC Radio National

The Philosopher's Zone

Is having a loving family an unfair advantage?

Family values

Comments (73)

Nathan B :

Cath62 :

Evan :

Sceptical Sam :

Mat :

adam :

Carrie Morebrix :

Amos Keeto :

KJ Prior :

wolfkeeng :

Lance Boyle :

iain russell :

David :

Evan :

Chris Harper :

Crystal Clear :

rb :

george :

Robert C :

stevie84 :

Neonborg :

David :

Jason :

Jenny :

Satans :

kruddler :

Zac :

Adam :

James :

Frank :

Greg :

Natasha :

Tim of Kilsyth :

Art Sartrus :

Bruce :

Anna :

Hard working Dad :

Brett :

Jorge P :

BenK :

Meniscus :

Mark of SA :

crs :

Mike :

Bernie :

Jorge P :

PsychoBabble :

yv :

macytraine :

Fess :

Doug on the Bus :

Tom :

Andrew :

Ron the sage :

Chris Harper :

Ten :

Lil :

Ron the sge :

dan swift :

Christus Albertus :

Are you serious :

Chris Harper :

Michael H :

IB :

marcmarc :

Jorge P :

Richard (Melbourne) :

BLN :

Philip Impey :

BLN :

Fair Value :

AndrewL :

Christof :

Explore Radio National

General Information