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The right to be a parent is a right to a relationship with a child in which one has certain rights with respect to that child. But what are the rights that the right to parent is a right to exercise? Does respecting that right require that parents be permitted to pursue their children's material interests in ways that harm the interests of other children? If so, in which ways and to what extent? This chapter describes this relationship and the goods it contributes to adult lives in enough detail to support the claim that adults have a right to it, but without getting into the details of what precisely the relationship consists in.

This chapter considers familial relationships as obstacles to the realization of egalitarian ideals. It has been argued that the conflict between the family and equality is in fact much less stark than is commonly recognized. Parents and children can enjoy healthy familial relationships, and parents can exercise all the rights needed for those relationships to make their distinctive contribution to well-being, without our having to tolerate anything like the kinds of inequalities of opportunity to which familial interactions currently give rise. This argument, however, still has family values on one side of the line and distributive considerations on the other. The chapter suggests the former be incorporated into the latter, as it were, by treating familial relationship goods as distribuenda: that is, as among the goods that people should have opportunities, perhaps equal opportunities, for.

This chapter focuses on the need to protect children from excessive parental influence, while respecting the interest that both parents and children have in the right kind of parent–child relationship. It challenges widespread views about the extent of parents' rights to influence their children's emerging views of the world and what matters in it. Children are separate people, with their own lives to lead, and the right to make, and act on, their own judgments about how they are to live those lives. They are not the property of their parents. And because they are not property, and yet parents are accorded such power over them, it is wrong for parents to treat them as vehicles for their own self-expression, or as means to the realization of their own views on controversial questions about how to live. The desire to extend oneself into the future, and to influence the shape that future takes, can be satisfied in other ways, without a parent relying on that authority over her children that is justified on other grounds.

This chapter is organized around a conceptual model which contends that children's sleep is influenced by parental sleep-related cognitions and behaviors as well as the general context of the parent–child relationship. It begins by discussing parental sleep-related cognitions and behaviors in terms of the balance between parental sensitivity and the need to facilitate children's independent sleep competence. It then discusses the parent–child relationship as a context that may promote or undermine children's psychological comfort (e.g., level of anxiety at night), and thereby establish better or poorer conditions for children's sleep. It considers the reciprocal nature of the connection between parenting and children's sleep, emphasizing the effects of children's sleep on parents' sleep and their capacity to regulate emotions and behaviors that support positive parent–child interactions and relationships. Finally, directions for future research that would accelerate understanding of the interface between parenting and children's sleep are discussed.

This chapter shows that parent‐child relationships were fluid in response to life‐course events, notably age and youth, marriage and family, adversity and crisis, and death and memory. The aging process, especially its transition points from childhood to youth, youth to maturity, and maturity to old age was important. As parents aged, they became dependant which could transform parenting. The making of marriage gave parents different roles in their offsprings' lives and also created parent‐child‐in‐law relationships. Illness and indisposition were major factors in temporarily and permanently shaping experiences of parenting. It was death that most harshly reconfigured parent‐child relationships. For younger children it introduced step‐parents into family life, often a source of tension. Parenting continued to evolve and have meaning when a child or parent died. These emotional relationships continued long after their decease.

This chapter sets out the ways in which the family might be thought to pose problems for the liberal framework, and defends the adoption of that framework from the objection that it simply cannot do justice to—or, perhaps, fails adequately to care about—the ethically significant phenomena attending parent–child relationships. On the one hand, liberalism takes individuals to be the fundamental objects of moral concern, and the rights it claims people have are primarily rights of individuals over their own lives: the core liberal idea is that it is important for individuals to exercise their own judgment about how they are to live. On the other hand, parental rights are rights over others, they are rights over others who have no realistic exit option, and they are rights over others whose capacity to make their own judgments about how they are to live their lives is no less important than that of the adults raising them.

This chapter looks at how relationships with parents change in emerging adulthood. The discussion starts looking at the many facets of emerging adults' relationships with their parents, followed by the changes that take place when emerging adults move out of their parents' households, as well as the experiences of emerging adults who move back in again and those who remain at home. The shift that often takes place in emerging adulthood from a parent-child relationship to a new relationship as friends and near-equals is discussed, along with the enduring repercussions of parents' divorces and remarriages — how emerging adults recall these events and how they believe they have been shaped by them.

The family is justified because it produces certain goods that would otherwise not be available, or, in some cases, would be much more difficult to produce. These goods—familial relationship goods—are enjoyed by children and by the adults who are their parents. This chapter focuses on the goods it produces for children, arguing that their interests are such as to support the claim that children have a right to be raised by parents—in families. First, it defines what we mean by children and childhood. It then explains what interests are, and describes the interests that children may have. Next, it makes the argument that children have a right to a parent, which involves three claims: children have rights; children are appropriate objects of paternalistic care; and for a child's vital interests to be met, she must be cared for, consistently, by only a small number of people. The chapter goes on to discuss how a biological connection between parent and child relates to our account of children's right to a parent, and concludes by looking, briefly, at the implied duty to parent.

This chapter explores discussions of parent–child relationships in the field of feminism and ethics, with a focus on the works of Sara Ruddick, Nel Noddings, and Virginia Held. It also compares their notions to the ideas of the Confucian philosophers. Care ethicists argue that the experience of mothering and the relationships between mothers and children serve as a unique resource for understanding capacities and development in human beings, especially concerning a capacity to care for others. Additionally, caring clearly takes precedence in the work of care ethicists, and their views on parent–child relationships are critically tied to their conceptions of caring. In contrast, Confucian views of parent–child relationships and moral cultivation do not center on women's experiences or give a single idea or role precedence. However, Confucian philosophers did not regard the topic as unimportant as they regarded it as critically important in the earliest Confucian ethical and political philosophy.

This chapter describes how Confucian views on infancy, childhood, parent–child relationships, and moral cultivation coheres with evidence concerning children development. The evidence examined in this chapter lends support to a number of early Confucian claims about the critical role that families play in a person's life, and especially the role that parents play in the lives and moral development of their children. Such evidence highlights the unique and irreplaceable importance of parent–child relationships during the earliest stages of infancy and childhood, and shows us the unparalleled consequences of sensitive, responsive parental care during these early weeks, months, and years of children's lives. As the Confucians argued, even during the prenatal period, a mother's behavior can have a tremendous impact on the future development of her child. This research supports the Confucian view that children's responses to parental caregiving serve as the foundation for the development of their character.

The justification of the parent-child relationship that lies at the core of the family raises two main challenges for liberal egalitarianism: the challenge of authority and the challenge of partiality. These point, respectively, to the burdens of justifying to children their parents’ having rights over them, and to third parties parents’ favoring of their children in ways that negatively affects others. This paper examines some recent attempts at justifying the family and meeting these two challenges by appealing to the non-instrumental value of the parent-child relationship. It argues that these accounts do not capture some important convictions about the moral status of the parent-child relationship and thereby do not fully meet the two stated challenges. The paper also offers an alternative basis for justifying the parent-child relationship on which parents, by virtue of being morally responsible for their children’s existence, have an obligation to enter a relationship with them.

This chapter sets out the various kinds of conflict between the value of equality and the value of those parent–child relationships that constitute the family. It offers two reasons not to pursue fair equality of opportunity all the way. On the one hand, we must be prepared for children of similar talent and ability raised by different parents to enjoy somewhat unfairly unequal prospects of achieving the rewards attached to different jobs, since the alternative would cost too much in terms of familial relationship goods. On the other hand, some unfairness in the distribution of those prospects could be beneficial for those who have unfairly less. In both cases, then, there are conflicts between fair equality of opportunity and other values.

This concluding chapter points out some of the limitations of the arguments discussed in the preceding chapters. It concludes with three take-home messages. The first is that children come first. This is true despite our claims that the adult interest is in acting as a child's fiduciary, and that the weighty adult interest in a parent–child relationship is an interest in the kind of relationship that serves children's interests, can substantially reduce the practical significance of that aspect. Second, respect for the family is much less of an obstacle to egalitarian goals than is often claimed. Third, the present account of the family's value gives no fundamental significance to biological connection between parent and child.

This chapter considers issues emerging from a thematic analysis of recent sociological and social policy research about the social constructions of parental rights and responsibilities, and parents' experiences, concerns, and practices across a range of social, personal, and family contexts and in relation to a range of ‘parenting topics’. Many parents, in line with policy and legal imperatives, seek caring, loving, and authoritative parent-child relationships; construct good parenthood as involving the fulfillment of obligations and responsibilities towards children; view good parenting as meeting children's needs; and construct particular practices as ‘desirable parenting practices’. However, what constitutes caring and authoritative parent-child relationships, children's needs, parental responsibilities, and desirable parenting practices is contested, context-dependent, and dynamic.

This chapter discusses recruitment to the Pandit household via birth and adoption. It covers the physical, supernatural, and cultural factors in childbirth; attitude toward sons and daughters; rituals and ceremonies connected with childbirth rules of adoption; consequences of adoption; the parent–child relationship; genetic and moral aspects; the nexus of religious rites; ritual initiation of boys; economic rights and obligations; and grandparents, parents and children in domestic life.

Parents with higher levels of depression and distress are more likely to be harsher in their parenting behavior. This leads to problems in children's emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and physical development. In this chapter, the connection between parenting behavior and the parent-child relationship is examined. It considers some parent behaviors and practices that influence children's social-emotional and cognitive outcomes, such as authoritative parenting, discipline practices, child abuse, and physical abuse. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the psychophysiology of depression and parenting behavior.

After separation or divorce, children may resist or reject contact with a parent for many reasons. The term “alienation” is used to refer to a situation “where the child's rejection or resistance of a parent is disproportionate to the child's actual experiences with that parent and the parental separation.” In other words, the child's reaction is inconsistent with the child's own actual observable experience and involves to some extent alienating strategies and behaviors on the part of the favored parent (or perhaps other family members or siblings). This introductory chapter discusses the prevalence of alienation, the prevalence of alienation in community samples, and increase in the number of alienation cases.