The Right to Parent and Duties Concerning Future Generations

Why does the present generation have an environmental obligation concerning distant future generations? And does this obligation restrict the scope of legitimate procreation such as to avoid an overcrowded world? I address these questions by drawing on the claim that adults have a fundamental interest in rearing children that they can adequately parent, an interest which under normal conditions generates a right to parent. This right—as recently defended by several contemporary philosophers—could be interpreted either as a negative right, protecting potential adequate parents from interference with attempts to engage in parenting, or as a positive right, entitling potential adequate parents to active support such as assisted reproduction. Even if there is no entitlement to assisted reproduction, the right—I will argue—generates requirements on others that they preserve sufficient environmental resources to ensure adequate life prospects for the resulting children; therefore, it cannot be purely negative.1 While it is not beyond dispute, this right may be the best justification of the universal practice of allowing an individual to parent a child even when better prospective parents for that particular child are available and willing to replace the existing parent. P1: Each child has a right, against all, to adequate life prospects. P2: For each child who has the potential, as an adult, to be an adequate parent, adequate life prospects require enough resources to justly raise children. C1: Thus, each child who has the potential to be an adequate parent has a right, against all, to enough resources to justly raise children. P3: The right to enough resources to justly raise children includes the right to enough resources to provide one's children with enough resources to justly raise children. C2: Thus, each child who has the potential, as an adult, to be an adequate parent has a right, against all, to enough resources to provide their children with enough resources to justly raise children. C3: Thus, each child who has the potential, as an adult, to be an adequate parent has a right, against all, to enough resources to provide an indefinite number of successors with enough resources to justly raise children. A weak interpretation of the first premise, which I discuss in the third section, does not affect the conclusion: Thus, children's right to adequate life prospects may, in the first instance, be against those who raise them, and against others only in cases when the former are unable or unwilling to discharge their duty. The first premise is weak also because it states that children ought to have adequate life prospects. This is less demanding than the frequently endorsed principle of equality (assuming that it is possible to ensure adequate life prospects for all individuals in the current generation). A principle demanding equality would generate a simpler argument, but the argument also works on the more modest assumption of sufficiency. Commitment to equality as a principle of inter-generational justice would also place higher restriction on each generation's permissible consumption. 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