Food, Families, and Parental Perfectionism: A Rejoinder to Clayton

This article considers the prerogatives that parents have to shape their children's identity by adopting a dietary regime that gives expression to the conception of the good embraced by parents. It examines Matthew Clayton's recent claim that respect for the independence of children requires that parents set aside religious, aesthetic, and gastronomic reasons to control the food that children eat and that parents wrong their children if they impose on them comprehensive views about what they should eat. Against Clayton, I argue that a modest form of parental perfectionism is consistent with respect for children's independence. On this view, parents may provisionally privilege a dietary regime in raising their children. Moreover, privileging a dietary regime does not involve the kind of comprehensive enrolment into a conception of the good that Clayton views as objectionable. A suitable form of privileging can contribute to autonomy development in children and manifests respect for them.