Is It Morally Permissible for Parents to Attempt to Convince Their Children of Their Comprehensive Views?

Abstract

This paper claims that it is morally permissible for parents to attempt to convince their children of the correctness of their comprehensive views, provided that certain conditions be met. This position is a middle ground between contrasting views on this issue. On the one hand, common-sense conceptions of parenting consider it morally permissible for parents to impart their beliefs to their children. On the other hand, influential liberal accounts of parents’ rights like Matthew Clayton’s or Adam Swift’s deny this or allow it only with a caveat that I call the exclusion condition. The exclusion condition states that parents must exclude certain reasons from consideration when they decide whether to attempt to influence their children’s comprehensive views—namely, they are not morally permitted to consider the fact that they believe their own views to be correct. In response, I argue that the exclusion view is mistaken and that attempting to convince one’s children of one’s comprehensive views, because one believes them to be correct, can be compatible with respecting children’s independence. This is the case if certain process and background conditions are met. However, many of the practices of influencing children’s values that are considered permissible on the common-sense view are still morally impermissible on the account developed in this article.