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Show O'Neill, Onora, and Ruddick, William, eds. Having Children: Philosophical and Legal Reflections on Parenthood. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Pp. 362. $6.50 (paper). The editors note that very little philosophical attention has been given to questions concerning children and families. Having Children is indeed the first organized collection of philosophical and legal essays devoted to the situation of children in families, but since its publication several philosophical works on the rights and legal status of children have appeared. (The most notable is The Child and the State by Laurence Houlgate [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980], who contributes an excellent paper on children and paternalism to the present volume.) The essays in Having Children cover a wide range of topics, including the right to procreate, child rearing and family interests, child neglect and abuse, state intervention into the family structure, and the obligations of children to parents. The selections provide a balanced discussion of these and related issues. There are, however, few proposals for radical reform, in contrast with the theories of child advocacy now popular among certain educators and psychologists; Kenneth Henley's discussion of the authority to educate contains the only radical challenge to current patterns of thinking about children. But the papers are almost uniformly provocative, thoughtful, and carefully argued. Having Children deserves the attention of social and political philosophers and is necessary reading for anyone interested in philosophical issues concerning children: P. J. |
