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Historically, philosophers have had relatively little to say about the family. This is somewhat surprising, given the pervasive presence and influence of the family upon both individuals and social life. Most philosophers who have addressed issues related to the parent-child relationship-Kant and Aristotle, for example-have done so in a fairly terse manner. At the end of the twentieth century, this changed. Contemporary philosophers have begun to explore, in a substantial way, a range of issues connected with the rights and obligations of parents. For example, if there are parental rights, what is their foundation? Most contemporary philosophers reject the notion that children are there parents' property and thus reject the notions that parents have rights to their children and over their children. Some philosophers argue for a biological basis of parental rights, while others focus on the best interests of children or a social contract as the grounds of such rights. Still others reject outright the notion that parents have rights, as parents. Some do so because of skepticism about the structure of the putative rights of parents, while others reject the idea of parental rights in view of the nature and extent of the rights of children.

The claim that parents have obligations, as parents, is less controversial. Nevertheless, there is disagreement about the basis of such obligations. Apart from biological, best interests, and social contract views, there is also the causal view of parental obligations, which includes the claim that those who bring a child into existence are thereby obligated to care for that child. Philosophers are concerned not merely with these theoretical questions related to parental rights and obligations; they also focus their attention on practical questions in this realm of human life. There are many distinct positions to consider with respect to medical decision making, the autonomy of children, child discipline, the licensing of parents, and the propriety of different forms of moral, political, and religious upbringing of children. While both the theoretical and practical aspects of the rights and obligations of parents are receiving increased attention, there remains much room for substantial work to be done on this important topic.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Philosophical Accounts of Parental Rights and Obligations

3. Skepticism about Parental Rights and Obligations

1. Children's Liberation

2. The Myth of Parental Rights

4. Applied Parental Ethics

1. Parental Licensing

2. The Child's Right to an Open Future

3. Medical Decision Making

4. Disciplining Children

5. The Religious Upbringing of Children

6. Parental Love

5. References and Further Reading

1. Introduction

What is a parent? The answer one gives to this question will likely include, either implicitly or explicitly, particular assumptions about the grounds of parental rights and obligations. Parenthood and biological parenthood are often seen as synonymous. But of course, adoptive parents are also parents by virtue of assuming the parental role. This commonsense fact opens the door for a consideration not only of the possible connections between biology and parenthood, but other issues as well, such as the role of consent in acquiring parental rights and obligations, which then leads to a host of other questions that are not only theoretically important, but existentially significant as well. What does it mean for a parent to possess rights, as a parent? Why think that such rights exist? What obligations do parents have to their children? What is the role of the state, if any, concerning the parent-child relationship? These questions are central for our understanding of the moral, social, personal, and political dimensions of the parent-child relationship.

2. Philosophical Accounts of Parental Rights and Obligations

When considering the rights of parents, both positive and negative rights are involved. A negative right is a right of non-interference, such as the right to make medical decisions on behalf of one's child without intervention from the state. A positive right in this context is a right to have the relevant interests one has as a parent in some way promoted by the state. For example, some argue that parents have a right to maternity and paternity leave, funded in part or whole by the state. Regarding parental obligations, the focus in what follows will be on moral obligations, rather than legal ones, with a few exceptions. A parent might have a moral obligation to her child to provide her with experiences such as musical education or opportunities to participate in sports that enrich her life, without being legally bound to do so. In this section, the various accounts of the grounds of the moral rights and obligations of parents will be discussed.

a. Proprietarianism

An advocate of proprietarianism holds that children are the property of their parents, and that this serves to ground parental rights (and perhaps obligations). Proprietarianists argue, given that parents in some sense produce their children, that children are the property of their parents in some sense of the term.. Aristotle held this type of view, insofar as he takes children and slaves to be property of the father ( Nicomachean Ethics, 1134b). At least one contemporary philosopher, Jan Narveson, has argued that children are the property of their parents, and that this grounds parental rights. This does not relieve parents of having obligations regarding their children even though children do not yet possess rights (Narveson 1988). For Narveson, how parents treat their children is limited by how that treatment impacts other rights-holders. Nevertheless, parents have the right to direct the lives of their children, because they exerted themselves as producers, bringing children into existence. A different sort of proprietarianism centers on the idea that parents own themselves, including their genetic material, and since children are a product of that material it follows that parents have rights over their genetic offspring. Critics of proprietarianism primarily reject it on the grounds that it is immoral to conceive of children as property. Children are human beings, and as such, cannot rightly be owned by other human beings. It follows from this that children are not the property of their parents. Most contemporary philosophers reject proprietarianism.

Historically, proprietarianism is often connected with absolutism, which is the idea that parental authority over children is in an important sense, limitless. Absolutists held that fathers have the right to decide whether or not their child lives or dies. This view is no longer advocated in the contemporary philosophical literature, of course, but in the past was thought by some that this extreme level of parental authority was morally justified. Some advocates of this view thought that because a child is the creation of the parent, that absolutism follows. Other reasons offered in support of this view include the notion that both divine and natural law grant such authority to parents; this level of authority fosters moral development in the young by preventing them from exemplifying vice; and the idea that the family is a model of the commonwealth, such that as children obey their father, they will also learn to obey the commonwealth (Bodin 1576/1967). According to Bodin The natural affection that fathers have towards their children will prevent them from abusing their authority,. Critics of absolutism reject it for reasons similar to those offered against proprietarianism. They claim that is clearly immoral to grant parents the power to end the lives of their children. While some absolutists seek to ground this power in the fact that the parent created the child in question, critics argue that the possession and exercise of this power over one's children simply does not follow from the fact that one created those children.

b. Biology

Is a biological relationship between a parent and child necessary or sufficient for parenthood? That is, does biology in some sense ground the rights and obligations of parents? Two types of biological accounts of parenthood have emerged which are more detailed than those which emphasize the general value of biology in the parent-child relationship. Advocates of the first type emphasize the genetic connection between parent and child, while advocates of the second take gestation to be crucial. The advocates of the genetic account believe that the genetic connection between parent and child grounds parenthood. The fact that a particular child is derived from the genetic material of an individual or is "tied by blood" to that individual is what yields parental rights and obligations. A person has rights and obligations with respect to a particular child insofar as that person and the child share the requisite DNA. Historically speaking, perceived blood ties have been decisive in the transfer of wealth, property, and power from one generation to the next.

Critics of genetic accounts claim that several of the arguments advanced for these accounts are flawed in important ways. For instance, those who hold that the genetic connection is necessary for parental rights and obligations must deal with counterexamples to the claim, such as adoptive parenthood and step-parenthood. In addition, if two adults who are identical twins have the same level of genetic connection to a child it does not follow that both are that child's mother or father, though at least some genetic accounts would seem committed to such a view.

Gestational accounts of parental rights and obligations, in their strongest from, include the claim that gestation is necessary for parental rights. On this view, men only acquire parental rights and obligations via marriage, the gestational mother consenting to co-parenthood with the male, or by the mother allowing him to adopt her child. Some gestational accounts-including those which only include the claim that gestation is sufficient for parental rights or gives the mother a prima facie claim to such rights-focus on the risk, effort, and discomfort that gestational mothers undergo as that which grounds their claims to parenthood. Others center on the intimacy that obtains and the attachment which occurs during gestation between the mother and child as the basis for a claim to parenthood. A final type of gestationalism is consequentialist, insofar as advocates of this view hold that when there is a conflict concerning custody between gestational and genetic mothers, a social and legal policy favoring gestational mother will have more favorable consequences for mothers and their children. It is argued that an emphasis on gestation, and preference for gestational mothers in such cases, would increase women's social standing by emphasizing their freedom to make such choices concerning health on behalf of themselves and their children. This in turn will have the likely result of benefitting the health and welfare of such mothers and their children. Positive inducements are preferable to punitive sanctions, given the positive consequences of the former. This view also implies that the claims to parenthood of gestational mothers carry more weight than those of fathers, at least when disputes over custody arise.

Critics of gestationalism reply that it is objectionably counterintuitive, insofar as it is inconsistent with the belief that mothers and fathers have equal rights and obligations regarding their children. Many of the goods available to individuals via parenthood, including intimacy, meaning, and satisfaction that can be obtained or acquired in the parent-child relationship, are equally available to both mothers and fathers. This equality of parental interests, then, is thought to justify the conclusion that the presumptive claims to parenthood on the parts of mothers and fathers are equal in weight.

There is a more general issue concerning the relationship between biology and parenthood, which has to do with the value of biological connections in the parent-child relationship. A particularly strong view concerning the relationship between biology and parenthood is that biology is essential to the value of parenthood for human beings (Page 1984). On this view, there is a necessary connection between biology and parental rights. The entire process of creating, bearing, and rearing a child is thought to be a single process which is valuable to parents insofar as they seek to create a person who in some sense reflects a part of themselves. The aim is to create someone else in the image of the parent. This is why being a parent has value for us; it is why we desire it. In reply, it has been argued that while biology may have value for many people with respect to the parent-child relationship, a biological connection is neither necessary nor sufficient for parental rights and obligations. Rather, the more valuable aspects of the parent-child relationship are personal, social, and moral. It has been argued that biological ties between parents and children are morally significant in other ways (Velleman 2005). Some believe that children have families in the most important sense of the term if they will be raised by parents who want them, love them, and desire what is best for them, regardless of whether a biological connection exists. The lack of such a connection does little harm to children in such families. Against this, Velleman argues that knowledge of one's biological relatives, especially one's parents, is crucial because the self-knowledge one gains from knowing them is central for forging a meaningful human life. Lack of such knowledge, then, is harmful to children. In reply, it has been argued that knowledge of one's biological progenitors is unnecessary for self-knowledge and for having and leading a good life (Haslanger 2009).

c. Best Interests of the Child

According to this account of parenthood, children ought to be raised by a parent or parents who will best serve their interests. On this account, parental rights are grounded in the ability of parents to provide the best possible context for childrearing. While the best interests criterion of parenthood is useful in cases of conflicting claims to custody in the context of divorce or in situations where child abuse and neglect are present, several criticisms have emerged with respect to its application as the fundamental grounding of parental rights and obligations. One criticism of this view is that it fails to sufficiently take into account the interests of parents, which leads to potential counterexamples. For instance, consider a case in which it is in the best interests of a child to be raised by an aunt or uncle, rather than the child's biological or custodial parents, when the current parents are fit and fulfilling their obligations to the child in question. Removing the child from the custody of those parents solely on the basis of the comparative superiority of others seems problematic to many. Moreover, this account may entail that the state should remove newborns from the custody of their parents, if they are poor, and transfer parental rights to someone who has greater financial stability, all else being equal. For critics of the best interests account, this is deeply counterintuitive and is sufficient for rejecting this account of parenthood.

Perhaps the account can be modified to deal with such criticisms. The modified account need not entail that a child should be removed from the custody of its natural parents and given to better caretakers, who then possess parental rights with respect to that child, even if these caretakers possess the same nationality, ethnicity, and social origins. This is because it is in the best interests of the child to maintain her developing self-identity and provide her with a stable environment. Still, a primary objection to all best-interests accounts is that they fail to take into account, in an adequate manner, the relevant interests of a child's current parents. The point is not that parental interests trump the interests of the child, but rather that best interests of the child accounts fail to weigh those interests in a proper manner.

d. Constructionism

Some philosophers argue that the rights and obligations of parenthood are not grounded in biology or a natural relationship between parents and their offspring. Rather, they hold that the rights and obligations of parents are social constructs. One form of this view includes the claim that parenthood is a type of social contract. Advocates of such a view argue that the rights and responsibilities of parenthood arise from a social agreement between the prospective parent and the moral community (such as the state) that appoints the prospective parent to be the actual parent. In some cases, social contract accounts emphasize causation (see section e. below) as a way in which individuals may implicitly consent to taking on the rights and responsibilities of parenthood. Contractual and causal accounts can come apart, however, and be treated separately. It has also been argued that social conventions have priority over biological ties when determining who will raise a child, and that in social contexts where biological parents generally have the duty to raise their offspring, individual responsibility for children is produced by the choice to undertake the duties of raising a child, which can occur by deciding to procreate or deciding not to avoid parental obligations via abortion or adoption.

Others who take parenthood to be a social construct emphasize the individual choice to undertake the rights and responsibilities of parenthood with respect to a particular child. This way of incurring special obligations is familiar. For instance, an employer takes on special obligations to another when that person becomes her employee. Spouses take on special obligations to one another and acquire certain rights with respect to each other via marriage. In these and many other instances, one acquires particular rights and obligations by choice, or voluntary consent. Similarly, then, when an individual voluntarily undertakes the parental role, that individual acquires parental rights and obligations. This can happen via intentional procreation, adoption, and step-parenthood.

Critics of constructionism argue that advocates of this view fail to appreciate certain facts of human nature related to the interests of children. Many constructionists, according to their critics, tend to weigh the interests of adults more heavily than those of the relevant children. They maintain that children have deep and abiding interests in being raised by their biological progenitors, or at least having significant relationships with them. Intentionally creating children who will lack such connections seems problematic, and some critics are especially concerned about intentionally creating children who will lack either a custodial mother or father. Other versions of constructionism are not vulnerable to this critique, insofar as they include the claim that children's interests and in some cases rights are at least equally important relative to the rights and interests of adults.

Related to the use of reproductive technology, the creation of a child by gamete donors is thought by some to be immoral or at least morally problematic because such donors often fail to take their obligations to their genetic offspring seriously enough when they transfer them to the child's custodial parents. Given that parental obligations include more than just minimal care, but also seeking to care for children in deeper ways which foster their flourishing, the claim is that in such cases donors do not take their obligations as seriously as is warranted. Constructionists reply that as long as the custodial parents nurture and provide sufficient care for children, the biological connections as well as the presence of both a mother and father are at least relatively, if not entirely, insignificant. In order to resolve these issues, both philosophical argumentation and empirical data are important.

e. Causation

Most, if not all, contemporary philosophers who defend a causal account of parenthood focus on parental obligations rather than rights. Simply stated, the claim is that individuals have special obligations to those offspring which they cause to come into existence. Defenders of the causal account argue that genetic and gestational parents incur moral obligations to their offspring in virtue of their causal role concerning the existence of the children in question. In many cases, of course, the causal parents of a child would incur obligations because they voluntarily consent to take on such when they choose to have a child. Defenders of the causal account often focus on cases in which procreation is not intentional, in order to isolate the causal role as being sufficient for the generation of parental obligations.

Advocates of the causal account set aside cases such as rape, where coercion is present. They maintain that in other important cases one can incur obligations to offspring, even if one does not intend to procreate or consent to take on such obligations. The general idea is that when a person voluntarily engages in a behavior which can produce reasonably foreseeable consequences, and the agent is a proximate and primary cause of those consequences, then it follows that the agent has obligations with respect to those consequences. In the case of procreation, the child needs care. To fail to provide it is to allow harmful consequences to obtain. Since the agent is causally responsible for the existence of a child in need of care, then the agent is morally responsible to provide it. This is similar to other situations in which an agent is causally responsible for harm or potential harm and is thereby thought to also bear moral responsibility relative to that harm. For instance, if a person damages his neighbor's property via some action, then that person thereby incurs the moral responsibility to compensate his neighbor for that damage. By parity of reasoning, defenders of the causal account of parental obligations argue that causal responsibility for the existence of a child-when coercion is not present-entails moral responsibility with respect to preventing the child's experiencing various kinds of suffering and harm.

The heart of the disagreement between proponents of the causal account and their critics is whether or not the voluntary acceptance of the special obligations of parenthood is necessary for incurring those obligations. Critics of the causal account argue that it is difficult to isolate parents as those who bear causal responsibility for a child's existence, given the causal roles others play (such as medical practitioners). Given the variety of individuals that are causally connected to the existence of a particular child, the connections between causal responsibility and moral responsibility in this particular realm of life are unclear. A defense of the causal account against this objection includes the claim that the interests of children are in play here and deeply connected with the causal parents and not medical practitioners. This may be a hybrid account however, coupling causation with an interests-based account of parental obligation, which is the focus of the next section.

f. Fundamental Interests of Parents and Children

This view of parenthood focuses on fundamental interests-those which are crucial for human flourishing-as the grounds for the rights and obligations of parents. The general picture is a familiar one in which such interests generate correlative rights and obligations. In the parent-child relationship, there are several such interests in play, including psychological well-being, the forging and maintenance of intimate relationships, and the freedom to pursue that which brings satisfaction and meaning to life. The interests of children connected with their custodial parents are numerous and significant. If a child receives caring, intimate, and focused attention from a parent, this can help her to become an autonomous agent capable of pursuing and enjoying intimate relationships and psychological and emotional health. It can also contribute to her having the ability to create and pursue valuable ends in life. The lack of such attention and care often has very detrimental effects on the development and life prospects of a child. These interests are thought to generate the obligations of parenthood.

How is it that these interests are thought to generate parental rights? Parents can experience meaning and satisfaction in life via the various actions related to parenting, as they offer care, guidance, and knowledge to their children. By playing a role in satisfying the fundamental interests of their children, parents have many of their own interests satisfied, including the ones mentioned above: psychological well-being, the forging and maintenance of intimate relationships, and experiencing satisfaction with and meaning in life. It is important for interests-based accounts of parental rights to note that a condition for the satisfaction of the relevant interests often requires that the parent-child relationship be relatively free from intrusion. If the state exercises excessive control in this realm of human life, the parent becomes a mediator of the will of the state and many of the goods of parenthood then are lost. The parent is not making as significant of a personal contribution to the well-being of her child as she might otherwise be able to do, and so is not able to achieve some of the goods that more autonomous parenting makes possible, including intimacy in the parent-child relationship. There are certainly cases in which intrusion is warranted, such as instances of abuse and neglect, but in these types of cases there is no longer a genuine intimacy present to be threatened, given that abuse blocks relational intimacy. Finally, defenders of this view of parenthood conclude that if children need parental guidance and individualized attention based on an intimate knowledge of their preferences and dispositions, then the state has an interest in refraining from interfering in that relationship until overriding conditions obtain. Parents have rights, as parents, to this conditional freedom from intrusion.

3. Skepticism about Parental Rights and Obligations

a. Children's Liberation

Advocates of children's liberation hold that parents should have no rights over children because such paternal control is an unjustified inequality; it is both unnecessary and immoral. Those who support children's liberation argue that children should possess the same legal and moral status as adults. This entails that children should be granted the same rights and freedoms that adults possess, such as self-determination, voting, and sexual autonomy, as well as the freedom to select guardians other than their parents. While advocates of liberationism disagree on the particular rights that children should be granted, they agree that the status quo regarding paternalism with respect to children is unjust. Clearly such a view is a challenge to the legal and moral status of parents. One argument in favor of this view focuses on the consistency problem. If rights are grounded in the possession of certain capacities, then it follows that when an individual has the relevant capacities-such as autonomy-then that individual should possess the rights in question. Consistency may require either denying certain rights to particular adults who do not possess the relevant capacities in order to preserve paternalistic control of children, or granting full human rights to particular children who possess the relevant capacities. Alternatively, it has been suggested that children should be granted all of the rights possessed by adults, even if they do not yet possess the relevant capacities (Cohen 1980). Rather than being left to themselves to exercise those rights, children could borrow the capacities they lack from others who are obligated to help them secure their rights and who possess the relevant capacities. Once children actualize these capacities, they may then act as agents on their own behalf. The upshot is that a difference in capacities does not justify denying rights to children.

Critics of children's liberation argue that paternalistic treatment of children enables them to develop their capacities and become autonomous adults with the attendant moral and legal status. They also worry that in a society in which children are liberated in this way, many will forego education and other goods which are conducive to and sometimes necessary for their long-term welfare. It has also been suggested that limiting children's right of self-determination fosters their development and protects them from exploitative employment. Granting equal rights to children might also prevent parents from providing the moral training children need, and cause adolescents to be even less likely to consider seriously the guidance offered by their parents. In addition, critics point out that autonomy is not the only relevant issue with respect to granting equal rights to children. The capacity for moral behavior is also important, and should be taken into account given the facts of moral development related to childhood. Finally, if a child possesses the relevant actualized capacities, then perhaps theoretical consistency requires that she be granted the same moral and legal status accorded to adults. However, the critic of children's liberation may hold that this is simply a case where theory and practice cannot coincide due to the practical barriers in attempting to bring the two together. Perhaps the best way in which to bring theory and practice together is to emphasize the moral obligations of parents to respect the developed and developing autonomy and moral capacities of their children.

b. The Myth of Parental Rights

It has been argued that parents do not possess even a qualified or conditional moral right to impact the lives of their children in significant ways (Montague 2000). The reason that Montague rejects the notion of parental rights is that such rights lack two essential components of moral rights. First, moral rights are oriented towards their possessors. Second, moral rights have a discretionary character. Since the putative rights of parents have neither of these features, such rights should be rejected. If there were parental rights, their function would be to protect either the interests that parents have or the choices they make regarding the parent-child relationship. The problem for the proponent of parental rights is that no other right shares a particular feature of such rights, namely, that the relevant set of interests or autonomy is only worth protecting because of the value of protecting the interests or autonomy of others. Moreover, Montague argues that parental rights to care for children are in tension with parental obligations to do so. The notion of parental rights is in tension with the fact that parents are obligated to protect their children's interests and assist them in the process of developing into autonomous individuals. Practically speaking, an emphasis on parental rights focuses on what is good for parents, while a focus on parental obligations emphasizes the well-being of children. He concludes that we have strong reasons for rejecting the notion that parents have a right to impact, in a significant way, the lives of their children. So, the view is that parental rights are incompatible with parental obligations. Parents have discretion regarding how to fulfill their obligations, but they do not have such discretion regarding whether to do so. If there were parental rights, parents would have discretion regarding whether to protect and promote the interests of their children, and this is unacceptable. In reply, one critic of Montague's argument) has pointed out that while it is true that parents do not have discretion regarding what counts as fulfilling their obligations towards their children, they nevertheless have discretion regarding how to do so, and perhaps this is sufficient for thinking that there are some parental rights (Austin 2007).

4. Applied Parental Ethics

While the vast majority of philosophers agree that children have at least some rights-such as the right to life, for example-the extent of those rights and how they relate to the rights and obligations of parents is an issue that generates much controversy. The existence and extent of parental rights, the rights of children, and the relevant interests of the state all come together when one considers issues in applied parental ethics. The theoretical conception of rights one holds as well as one's view of the comparative strength of those rights will often inform what one takes to be the personal, social, and public policy implications with respect to these issues.

a. Parental Licensing

Hugh LaFollette's defense of the claim that the state should license parents is perhaps the most influential and widely discussed version of the philosophical argument in favor of parental licensing (LaFollette 1980). LaFollette argues that (i) if an activity is potentially harmful to others; (ii) requires a certain level of competence; and (iii) this competence can be demonstrated via a reliable test, then the activity in question should be regulated by the state. These criteria justify current licensing programs. For instance, we require that physicians obtain medical licenses from the state to ensure their competency due to the potential harm caused by medical malpractice. In order to drive an automobile, a level of skill must be demonstrated because of the potential harm to others that can be done by incompetent drivers. These criteria also apply to parenting. It is clear that parents can harm their children through abuse, neglect, and lack of love, which often results in physical and psychological trauma. Children who suffer such harms may become adults who are neither well-adjusted nor happy, which can lead to cyclical patterns of abuse and other negative social consequences. Parenting also requires a certain competency that many people lack due to temperament, ignorance, lack of energy, and psychological instability. LaFollette believes that we can create a moderately reliable psychological test that will identify those individuals who will likely abuse or neglect their children. At the time of his paper, such tests were just beginning to be formulated. Since then, however, accurate parenting tests have been developed which could serve as useful tools for identifying individuals who are likely to be extremely bad parents (McFall 2009). Given that parenting is potentially harmful and requires competence that can be demonstrated via a reliable test, by parity of reasoning the state should also require licenses for parents. Moreover, given that we screen adoptive parents and require that they demonstrate a level of competence before they are allowed to adopt a child in order to reduce the chances of abuse or neglect, there is no compelling reason not to require the same of biological parents. The aim of parental licensing is not to pick out parents who will be very good, but rather to screen those who will likely be very bad by abusing or neglecting their children. The intent is to prevent serious harm to children, as well as the harms others suffer because of the social impact of child abuse. LaFollette concludes that since a state program for licensing parents is desirable, justifiable, and feasible, it follows that we should implement such a program.

Critics argue that there are both theoretical and practical problems with such proposals. Some worry about cases where a woman is pregnant before acquiring a license and fails to obtain one before giving birth. The picture of the state removing a newborn infant in such cases and transferring custody to suitable adoptive parents is problematic because no abuse or neglect has yet occurred. A variety of alternatives, including less invasive licensing as well as non-licensing alternatives, have been proposed. LaFollette himself puts forth the possibility that instead of prohibiting unlicensed parents from raising children, the state could offer tax incentives for licensed parents and other types of interventions, such as scrutiny by protective services of unlicensed parents, on the condition that such measures would provide adequate protection for children. Others have proposed different requirements for a parental license, with both fewer and greater restrictions than those proposed by LaFollette. These include minimum and maximum age requirements, mandatory parenting education, signing a contract in which a parent agrees to care for and not maltreat his or her child (so that if a child is maltreated, removal of the child would be based on a breach of contract rather than criminal liability), financial requirements, and cognitive requirements. Others argue for alternatives to licensing, such as mandatory birth control, extended (and perhaps paid) maternity and paternity leave, and universal daycare provided by the government.

Finally, some argue that legally mandated family monitoring and counseling is preferable to a program of licensing parents because it better accounts for the interests people have in becoming and being parents and the welfare of children. It is also claimed to be preferable to licensing because it avoids the possible injustices that may occur given the fallibility of any test aimed at predicting human behavior. If people who are or will soon be parents can develop as parents, it is better to give them the opportunity to do so under close supervision, monitoring, and counseling, allowing them to be with their children when they are young and a significant amount of bonding occurs. This practice would protect the interests of children, society, and parents. For those parents whose incompetence is severe or who fail to deal with their incompetence in a satisfactory manner, the monitoring/counseling proposal rightly prevents them from raising children, according to advocates of this approach.

b. The Child's Right to an Open Future

A significant concept shaping much of the debate concerning the ethics of childrearing is that of the child's right to an open future (Feinberg 1980). According to this argument, children have a right to have their options kept open until they become autonomous and are able to decide among those options for themselves, according to their own preferences. Parents violate the child's right to an open future when they ensure that certain options will be closed to the child when she becomes an autonomous adult. For example, a parent who is overly directive concerning the religious views of her child, or who somehow limits the career choices of her child is violating this right. When parents violate this right, they are violating the autonomy rights of the adult that the child will become. According to Feinberg, parents are obligated to offer their children as much education as is feasible, as this will enable them to choose from a maximally broad range of potential life options upon reaching adulthood. When parents do engage in more directive parenting, they should do so in the preferred directions of the child, or at least not counter to those preferences. In this way, parents respect the preferences and autonomy of their children, allowing them to exercise their rights in making significant choices in life that are in line with their own natural preferences.

One direct criticism of Feinberg's view includes the observation that steering one's child toward particular options in the context of parenthood is unavoidable (Mills 2003). According to Mills, there are three options relative to the future which parents may choose from as they determine how directive they ought to be. First, as Feinberg claims, parents may provide their children with a maximally open future. Second, parents may direct their children toward a future which the parents value and endorse. Third, parents may opt for a compromise between these two options. Whether or not one considers some particular set of options to be open is connected to one's perspective. Given this, one's judgment concerning whether or not a particular child has an open future is also connected to that perspective. For instance, someone outside of the Amish community would likely contend that children in that community do not have an open future; by virtue of being Amish, careers in medicine, science, and technology are closed to such children. Yet from an Amish perspective, children have a variety of options including farming, blacksmithing, woodworking, etc. Rather than speaking of an option as open or closed, Mills argues that we should think of options as encouraged, discouraged, fostered, or inhibited. Practically speaking, in order to encourage a child toward or away from some option in life, other options must be closed down. Finally, Mills criticizes Feinberg's view on the grounds that it places more value on the future life of the child, rather than the present.

c. Medical Decision Making

Many are concerned about state intervention in medical decision making as it is performed by parents on behalf of their children. Most would agree that the interests of all relevant parties, including children, parents, and the state, must be taken into account when making medical decisions on behalf of children. The worry is that state intrusion into this arena is an improper invasion of family privacy. And yet among those who generally agree that such decisions should be left to parents, the claim is not that parents have absolute authority to make such decisions on behalf of their children. Given the weight of the interests and rights at issue, exceptions to parental autonomy are usually made at least in cases where the life of the child is at stake, on the grounds that the right to life trumps the right to privacy, when those rights come into conflict. While some parents may have religious reasons for foregoing certain kinds of medical treatment with respect to their children, it is controversial to say the least that parental rights to the exercise of religion are strong enough to trump a child's right to life. According to some, the state, in its role of parens patriae, can legitimately intervene on behalf of children in many such cases. The courts have done so in cases where the illness or injury in question is life-threatening and yet a child's parents refuse treatment. In less serious cases, the state has been more reluctant to intervene. However, the state's interest in healthy children is apparently leading to a greater willingness to intervene in less drastic cases as well (Foreman and Ladd 1996).

A different set of issues arises with respect to medical decision making as it applies to procreative decisions, both those that are now available and those that for now are mere future possibilities. With respect to the former, it is now possible for parents to engage in attempted gender selection. An increasing number of couples are using reproductive technologies to select the sex of their children. One technique for making such a selection involves using the process of in vitro fertilization and then testing the embryos at three days of age for the desired sex. Those that are the preferred sex are then implanted in the womb and carried to term. Another technology which can be employed by couples who are seeking to select the sex of their children is sperm sorting. Female-producing sperm and male-producing sperm are separated, and then the woman is artificially inseminated with the sperm of the desired sex. This is easier and less expensive, though not as reliable, as the in vitro procedure.

Parents might have a variety of reasons for seeking to determine the gender of their offspring, related to the gender of their current children, family structure, or other preferences which relate to this. One criticism of this practice is that it transforms children into manufactured products, which we design rather than receive. That is, children become the result, at least in part, of a consumer choice which is thought by some to be problematic in this context. In addition, this practice is thought by some to place too much weight on the desires of parents related to the traits of their (future) children. Ideally, at least, parental love for children is to be unconditional, but in cases where parents choose the gender of their offspring it may be that their love is already contingent upon the child having a certain trait or traits. Finally, given the scarcity of resources in health care, some argue that we should employ those resources in other less frivolous areas of medical care. Similar worries are raised with respect to the future use of human cloning technology. The technology would likely be costly to develop and deploy. And if such a technology comes into existence, parents may be able to select beforehand a wide variety of traits, which could also undermine morally and psychologically significant aspects of the parent-child relationship, in the view of some critics.

d. Disciplining Children

There are a variety of ways in which parents discipline or punish their children. These include corporal forms of punishment, and other forms such as time-outs, loss of privileges, fines, and verbal corrections. Of these, corporal forms of punishment are the most controversial.

Critics of corporal punishment offer many reasons for thinking that it is both immoral and a misguided practice. The use of violence and aggression is taken by many to be wrong in the context of the parent-child relationship, which they believe should be characterized by intimacy and love with no place for the infliction of physical pain. It is thought that children may learn that violence, or inflicting pain, is a permissible way to attempt to control others. Some argue that reasoning with the child and other forms of verbal and moral persuasion are more effective, as are alternative forms of discipline and punishment such as verbal reprimands or time outs. Others believe that the negative effects on children of corporal punishment are often compounded or confused by other forms of maltreatment that are also present, such as parental expressions of disgust towards the child. This makes determining the effects of the punishment itself difficult. Still others think there is a place for corporal punishment, but only as a last resort.

One philosophical assessment of corporal punishment includes a limited defense of it, which is open to revision or abandonment if future findings in psychology and child development warrant this (Benatar 1998). When such punishment is harsh or frequent, it is argued that this amounts to child abuse. However, when corporal punishment is understood as the infliction of physical pain without injury, then it may be permissible.

Several arguments in favor of banning such forms of punishment have been offered, but potential problems have been raised for them by Benatar. Some critics of corporal punishment argue that it leads to abuse. But it is argued by Benatar that the relevant evidence in support of this claim is not conclusive. And while some parents who engage in corporal punishment do abuse their children, it does not follow that corporal punishment is never permissible. If this were the case, then by parity of reasoning the abuse of alcohol or automobiles by some would justify banning their use in moderate and appropriate ways by all. The abusive use of corporal punishment is wrong, but this does not mean that non-abusive forms of such punishment are wrong. Others argue that corporal punishment degrades children, but there is no proof that it actually lowers their self-regard, or at least that it does so in an unacceptable manner. Others are concerned that corporal punishment produces psychological damage, such as anxiety, depression, or lowered self-esteem. There is evidence that excessive forms of such punishment have such effects, but not when it is mild and infrequent. Other critics argue that corporal punishment teaches the wrong lesson, namely, that our problems can be solved with the use of physical violence and that it fosters violent behavior in children who receive it. Yet the evidence does not show that the use of corporal punishment has this effect when it is mild and infrequent. Finally, critics argue that corporal punishment should not be used because it is ineffective in changing the behavior of children, though defenders of the practice dispute this claim as well (Cope 2010).

Whatever one concludes about the proper forms of punishment, corporal and non-corporal, one proposed function of whatever forms of punishment end up being morally permissible in the family is the promotion of trust in filial relationships (Hoekema 1999). Trust is important in the family, because it is essential for the flourishing of the parent-child relationship. Children must trust their parents, given facts about childhood development. And ideally, as their development warrants it, parents should trust their children. The justification of punishment, in this way of thinking, has to do with children failing to live up to the trust placed in them by their parents. As such, proper forms of punishment both reflect and reinforce that trust. If children destroy or damage property, fining them for doing so can restore trust, release them from the guilt resulting from their betrayal of trust, and then reestablish that trust which is conducive to their continued development and the quality of the parent-child relationship. A form of punishment that fails to foster trust, or that fosters fear, would be morally problematic.

e. The Religious Upbringing of Children

While it is commonplace for parents to seek to impart their own religious, moral, and political beliefs and practices to their children, some philosophers are critical of this and raise objections to this form of parental influence.

Some hold that parents should remain neutral with respect to the religion of their children, and not seek to influence the religious beliefs and practices of their offspring (Irvine 2001). One reason offered in support of this claim is that when parents rear their children within their preferred religious framework, insisting that they adopt their faith, such parents are being hypocritical. This is because, at some point in the past, the ancestors of those parents rejected the religion of their own parents. For example, if parents today insist their child adopt some Protestant form of Christianity, they are being hypocritical because at some point in the past their ancestors rejected Roman Catholicism, perhaps to the dismay of their parents, and this is said to constitute a form of hypocrisy. One reply to this has been that hypocrisy is not present, if the parents (and their ancestors) convert because they genuinely believe that the religion in question is true. If this is the justification, then no hypocrisy obtains (Austin 2009).

There are other problems with parents insisting that their children adopt their religious faith, however, having to do with autonomy. Parents may limit their children's access to certain kinds of knowledge, such as knowledge concerning sexuality, because of their religious faith. In the name of religion, some parents also restrict access to certain forms of education which limits the autonomy of children by preventing them from coming to know about various conceptions of the good life. This may also limit their options and opportunities as adults, which limits the future autonomy of such children.

One important view concerning parenting and religious faith includes the claim that justice restricts the freedom of parents with respect to inculcating belief in a comprehensive doctrine, that is, in a broad view of the good life for human beings (Clayton 2006). This not only includes religious frameworks, but secular ones as well. The primary reason for this is that the autonomy of children must be safeguarded, as they have an interest in being raised in an environment which allows them to choose from a variety of options with respect to the good life, both religious and non-religious. The view here is that children may only be reared within a comprehensive doctrine, such as Christianity, Islam, or humanism, if they are able to and in fact do give autonomous consent, or have the intellectual capacities required to conceive of the good and of the good life. If neither of these requirements obtain, then it is wrong for parents to seek to impart their beliefs to their children. Once their children can conceive of the good and the good life, or are able to give consent to believe and practice the religion or other comprehensive doctrine, then parents may seek to do so. On this view, parents may still seek to encourage the development of particular virtues, such as generosity, in their children, as this does not threaten autonomy and helps children to develop a sense of justice. Parents are obligated to help them develop such a sense, and so this type of moral instruction and encouragement is not only permissible, but in fact obligatory for them. In reply, it has been argued that there are ways for parents to bring their children up within a particular religion or other comprehensive doctrine that protect their autonomy and help children gain a deep understanding of the nature and value of such a doctrine. Perhaps a middle ground between indoctrination and the foregoing restrictive approach is possible.

f. Parental Love

It is fitting to close with what is arguably the most important parental obligation, the obligation to love one's children. Some philosophers-Kant, for example-believe that there is not and indeed cannot be an obligation to love another person, because love is an emotion and emotions are not under our control. Since we cannot be obligated to do something which we cannot will ourselves to do, there is no duty to love. However, some contemporary philosophers have challenged this conclusion and argued that parents do have a moral obligation to love their children (Austin 2007, Boylan 2011, Liao 2006). One reason for this is that parents have the obligation to attempt to develop the capacities in their children that are needed for a flourishing life. There is ample empirical evidence that a lack of love can harm a child's psychological, cognitive, social, and physical development. Given this, parents are obligated to seek to foster the development of the capacities for engaging in close and loving personal relationships in their children. A primary way that parents can do this is by loving their children and seeking to form such a relationship with them. There are ways in which parents can successfully bring about the emotions associated with loving children. For example, a parent can give himself reasons for having loving emotions for his children. A parent can bring about circumstances and situations in which it is likely that she will feel such emotions. In these and many other ways, the dispositions to feel parental love can be strengthened. To say that all emotions, including the emotions associated with parental love, cannot be commanded by morality because they cannot be controlled by us is too strong a claim. Finally, there are also reasons for thinking that it is not merely the responsibility of parents to love their children, but that all owe a certain kind of love to children (Boylan 2011). If this is true, then much more needs to be done to not only encourage parents to love their children in ways that will help them to flourish, but to change social structures so that they are more effective at satisfying this central interest of children.

5. References and Further Reading

Archard, David, and Colin Mcleod, eds. The Moral and Political Status of Children. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Archard, David. Children: Rights and Childhood, 2nd edition. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Extensive discussion of the rights of children and their implications for parenthood and the state's role in family life.

Brennan, Samantha, and Robert Noggle, eds. Taking Responsibility for Children. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007.

Feldman, Susan. "Multiple Biological Mothers: The Case for Gestation." Journal of Social Philosophy 23 (1992): 98-104.
Consequentialist argument for a social policy favoring gestational mothers when conflicts over custody arise.

Haslanger, Sally. "Family, Ancestry and Self: What is the Moral Significance of Biological Ties?" Adoption & Culture 2.
A criticism of David Velleman's argument that knowing our biological parents is crucial for forging a meaningful life.

Turner, Susan. Something to Cry About: An Argument Against Corporal Punishment of Children in Canada. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2002.

Vopat, Mark. "Justice, Religion and the Education of Children." Public Affairs Quarterly 23 (2009): 223-226.

Vopat, Mark. "Parent Licensing and the Protection of Children." Taking Responsibility for Children. Samantha Brennan and Robert Noggle, eds. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007, pp. 73-96.

Willems, Jan C.M., ed. Developmental and Autonomy Rights of Children. Antwerp: Intersentia, 2007.

Author Information

Michael W. Austin
Email: mike.austin@eku.edu
Eastern Kentucky University
U. S. A.

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Historically, philosophers have had relatively little to say about the family. This is somewhat surprising, given the pervasive presence and influence of the family upon both individuals and social life. Most philosophers who have addressed issues related to the parent-child relationship-Kant and Aristotle, for example-have done so in a fairly terse manner.

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1. Foundations

A parent is someone with weighty rights and responsibilities regarding a given child. Parents usually have decision-making rights over most areas of their child's life and rights to exclude others from making such decisions. So long as parents fulfill requirements to nourish, educate, and provide healthcare for their children, they may make many decisions over how and what their child eats, dresses, plays, studies, and with whom he or she interacts. Section 5 surveys controversies regarding the content of these rights and responsibilities.

"Parenthood" has distinct senses: biological, social, legal, and moral. These categories present problems at the margins. While the idea of a biological parent seems self-evident, modern reproductive technology complicates it, as a child can have genetic parents (gamete providers, who supply the sperm or egg) and a third, gestational, parent. Each of these is a biological parent, by virtue of making a biological contribution to producing the child. The recent technology of mitochondrial replacement therapy, in which the nucleus of a fertilized egg is transferred to a second egg for medical reasons, introduces further complications, as additional genetic material-mitochondrial DNA-is supplied by the donor egg cell.

Biological parents are commonly distinguished from social parents, who rear the child and are socially perceived as responsible for it. Adoptive parents, or parents who rear children created with donated gametes and gestated by a third party, are social, but not biological, parents. (Biological parents need not be social parents, as biological parents give up children for adoption, donate gametes, or work as gestational parents.) The category of social parent presents borderline cases when a given community does not socially recognize those rearing a child as parents. This might occur with a mother's unmarried partner, two friends rearing children together, other relatives like grandparents rearing the child, or when a community participates in child-rearing. Legal and moral criteria for the acquisition of parental rights and responsibilities should clearly designate whom society should recognize as having them.

Legal parenthood consists in possessing legal parental rights and responsibilities. Historically, in the US, a pregnant woman's husband has been presumed to be her child's legal father: marriage, not biology, underpins the legal relation. This has faced legal challenges from genetic fathers (Rosenman 1995; see Hubin 2003 on fatherhood). Law in different jurisdictions is also increasingly recognizing legal parental rights on the basis of same-sex marriage. The rise of ART has prompted many questions regarding assignment of legal parenthood when there are contending claims-as between a couple who commissioned a contract pregnancy and the contracting gestational parent. They have also stretched the understanding of parenthood, as when the Ontario Court of Appeal recognized three legal parents ( A.A. v. B.B., 2007 ONCA 2)-a lesbian couple and sperm donor. The wider use of ART and gamete donation, along with broader recognition of same-sex marriage and changing social attitudes towards polyamory, have led some philosophers to argue for rethinking the family to include more than two social and legal parents, on grounds including child welfare, social justice, and environmental impact (see, e.g., Cutas 2011, Shrage 2018, Gheaus 2019, Grill 2020).

Legal, social, and biological parenthood can be conceptually distinguished; however, parenthood is arguably fundamentally a moral relationship, and its moral grounds and obligations should be considered in resolving the borderline cases. Moral parenthood is possession of moral parental rights and responsibilities. These may differ in content from legal rights and responsibilities-we might think parents morally ought to do more than they are legally required to do, for example. The moral grounds for assigning parental rights can also differ from their legal assignment. Of course, legal assignment of parenthood may trigger moral obligations, due to a general moral obligation to obey the law or because the legal parent is best-placed to rear the child. But moral theories of parenthood give independent grounds for parental rights, on the basis of which particular legal arrangements may be criticized.

The interrelation of legal, moral, social, and biological parenthood depends on the particular moral theory of how one becomes a parent. For example, on a genetic account, biology determines moral parental status, whereas on an intentional account, biology will be less morally salient. Section 4 reviews these theories.

2. Procreative Autonomy

20 th-century international human rights documents explicitly codify the right "to marry and found a family" (United Nations 1948, Article 16), and thus some writers argue that liberal constitutions implicitly enshrine a right to procreate (Hill 1991). A right to procreate could be construed negatively or positively. As a negative right, it would be a right against coercive interference in decisions regarding procreation. As a positive right, it would be an entitlement to assistance in procreation.

This entry does not consider abortion. Although positions on procreative autonomy are not independent of positions on abortion, the extensive philosophical debate about abortion must be dealt with independently. The issue of contraception can be touched on briefly here. While some religious views oppose contraception, this position is not widely defended in philosophical ethics. However, philosophical debate has recently emerged over "conscientious objections" by pharmacists. In some jurisdictions, pharmacists opposing abortion have a legal right to refuse to dispense emergency contraception, on the (medically controversial) basis that it acts as an abortifacient. This right has been defended on the grounds that pharmacists' freedom of conscience outweighs the inconvenience to women (if they can obtain the drug elsewhere). Others have argued that such refusals constitute serious harms to women, not mere inconveniences, and that similar objections would not be permitted in non-procreative cases, such as a vegetarian pharmacist who refused to dispense materials tested on animals (LaFollette and LaFollette 2007; Fenton and Lomasky 2005; McLeod 2010; Kelleher 2010; McLeod 2020).

2.1 Defenses of a right to procreate

A negative moral right to procreate-also discussed under the label of "reproductive liberty" or "procreative liberty"-may be grounded in autonomy rights to control one's body and make certain important decisions for oneself (Dworkin 1993). Violations could involve direct physical coercion such as rape or forced abortion or sterilization, or coercive interference with decisions regarding sexual activity or contraception. Involuntary physical interventions such as forced contraception, sterilization, or abortion were practiced in twentieth-century eugenic movements. Their wrongness is now generally acknowledged, but critics see continuity between such racist policies and contemporary moderately coercive policies such as making contraceptive implants the condition of medical aid for impoverished women, particularly for women of color (see Roberts 1997).

A right to procreate may also be grounded in the strong interest people have in creating a child, giving birth, and parenting (Robertson 1994). Because this justification does not concern a right to use one's body, but to realize the important interest in creating and rearing a child, it can be taken to imply a positive (as well as a negative) right to procreate. Such a positive right could also entail a claim to sufficient environmental resources to raise children justly (Gheaus 2016a; Roberts 2015) or to funding for ART (Robertson 1994). Given that a distinct right to parent could be met through adoption, some suggest that financial barriers to ART where children are available for adoption would be justified (De Wispelaere and Weinstock 2014). Others have criticized the way that focusing on a right to procreate perpetuates the "biogenetic bias" that favors genetic ties over social ones (Boucai 2016) or challenged the idea that the value of establishing a parenting relationship can ground a right to create someone with the special vulnerabilities of children to their parents (Hannan and Leland 2018).

Liberal theory has tended to support some sort of right to procreative autonomy. At its strongest, the "repro-libertarian" approach opposes regulations on reproductive decisions and ART unless they can be shown to threaten harm to others. Repro-libertarianism is grounded in the values of individual equality and autonomy (Feinberg 1986; Dworkin 1993). The basic thought is that interfering in procreation involves illiberal interference with the person and her choices. Further, some authors hold that ART ought to be universally available provided it does not harm others, because any restrictions would constitute unequal treatment of those who cannot conceive through sexual intercourse (whether due to infertility or because they do not form a "traditional" family) (Harris 1998).

Repro-libertarians have been concerned to show that assumptions about the inherent wrongness or harmfulness of ART are not justified. In particular, they have argued that conservative opposition to cloning, genetic selection, surrogacy, and harvesting fetal ovarian tissue is based in undefended traditionalism (Harris 1998; cf. Glover 1998; Buchanan et al. 2000, chap. 2).

2.2 Conservative perspectives on procreative autonomy

Communitarian conservative approaches to procreative liberty tend to regard procreation as part of a dense web of practices that gain their meaning and value from being part of a comprehensive way of life. Efforts to increase procreative autonomy-particularly through biotechnology-risk meddling with such ways of life (Sandel 2007). Thus, communitarian conservatives view ART with suspicion. The 20 th-century record of Nazi "eugenics" programs, forced abortion as a population-control mechanism, and widespread nonconsensual sterilization in many countries, including the United States, is adduced as support for pessimism about technological, policy-driven, or self-indulgent interventions in procreation (Meilaender 1987).

Communitarian conservatives typically oppose the use of ART. They also criticize talk of rights in discussion of procreation and parent-child relations. As Murray writes: "Procreative liberty's problems began when it appropriated the abstract principle-the right to choose-and ripped it out of the rich context that provided its moral heft" (Murray 2002, 42).

Communitarian conservatives need not deny that persons have a strong interest in autonomy regarding procreative decisions. The point is that this interest is both generated and delimited by a particular communal context. They believe there is no right to reproductive autonomy, because reproductive choices gain their meaning and value from this context.

Some philosophers argue for limiting the moral right to procreate to married or long-term male-female couples on harm-based grounds (Almond 2006). Some claim that same-sex and single parenting harm children. While the empirical debate cannot be addressed here, there seems to be a lack of evidence that same-sex parenting harms children. For example, an American Sociological Association review finds a "clear consensus in the social science literature" that children of same-sex parents are no worse off than children of different-sex parents (see Manning et al., 2014). In any case, since evidence suggests that high-conflict families or divorce can harm children, such arguments risk inconsistency if not applied to male-female couples at risk of divorce or sub-par parenting.

2.3 Feminist perspectives on procreative autonomy

Feminist perspectives on procreative autonomy are diverse, but they share a commitment to opposing patriarchy and promoting people's (particularly women's) abilities to determine the shape of their own lives, where this includes sexual and reproductive autonomy. While some feminists also take communitarian, repro-libertarian, or more nuanced liberal perspectives, other feminists criticize those approaches. One general theme of feminist criticism is that mainstream procreative ethics often employs abstractions which obscure the impact of policies on women's bodies, as well as the real-world context of socio-economic pressures (e.g., Overall 2012). Much feminist work, then, begins with women's embodied experience in pregnancy, as caregivers, and as subject to distinct, gendered, social and economic pressures (e.g., Mullin 2005; Satz 2010; Gheaus 2016b).

The feminist concern to enable women to control their own lives and bodies suggests sympathy with the repro-libertarians' focus on autonomy and equality. But many feminists are skeptical of the reproductive biotechnology establishment, which remains preponderantly white, upper-middle class, male, and corporate. Hence feminists have charged that repro-libertarianism would exacerbate existing power inequalities (Corea 1985; Sherwin 1987, 1992; Rothman 1989; Dodds and Jones 1989a; Baron 2019). While this establishment represents itself as empowering women, many feminists charge that it succeeds only in disempowering them: it conscripts poorer women into service for people who are usually wealthier; it creates new expectations that may subtly coerce women to pursue fertility treatments or other medical interventions; and it inevitably reflects the cultural, economic, sexist, and racist biases of the society at large (Brazier 1998; Roberts 1997).

Some feminists have also raised the concern that any putative right to procreate threatens to give men power over women. In addition to empowering the mostly male scientific establishment, a right to procreate could empower a man to prevent his erstwhile partner from aborting her pregnancy (Overall 1993). Thus the importance of a right not to procreate has led many feminists to place the various strands of procreative autonomy within a nexus of interests.

Critiques of the concept of procreative autonomy as misleading or empty rhetoric reflect a larger feminist project critical of autonomy construed as individual choice: within an inegalitarian social and economic system, some feminists argue, pressures on choice will ensure that supposedly free choices disadvantage women (e.g. Dodds and Jones, 1989a). This is particularly problematic when the medical establishment presents burdensome technologies as the expected norm. Choices are shaped by the salient alternatives, so that the widespread adoption of new medical technologies will affect women's choices (as the normalization of testing for Downs' syndrome shapes women's choice to undergo such testing). The point is not that adopting new technology is always problematic, but that the repro-libertarian framework for evaluating it is naïve and misleading (Sherwin 1992; see also 3.5 below, State Policies). These concerns extend to the way in which reproductive policy and technologies shape, and are shaped by, race as well as gender (Roberts 1997; Russell 2018).

A further feminist concern is that the rhetoric surrounding reproductive biotechnology commodifies women's bodies, devalues women's role in reproduction, and treats women as mere means rather than ends in themselves. For instance, some reproductive services entail so-called "womb rental," "egg harvesting," or "surrogate motherhood" (Rothman 1989; Ber 2000; Anderson 1990; Baron 2019). Feminists such as Corea argue that the reproductive biotechnology establishment relies on a distorted and stereotyped picture of the nature, desires, and needs of women, as well as the success rate of the technologies it purveys, and that these technologies result in physical harms to women (Corea 1985; Brazier 1998).

By conceptualizing women and their fetuses or newborns as having conflicting interests, rather than as in symbiotic harmony (as they usually are), the medical establishment promotes an adversarial view which lends itself to overriding pregnant women's treatment decisions. Such interventions, such as court-ordered C-sections, are especially problematic when similar interventions would not be imposed on parents to save a born child's life (such as a court-ordered blood transfusion); this inconsistency suggests a bias against pregnant women's decision-making capacity. Understandings of pregnancy and motherhood, feminists argue, need to be enriched by considering women's experience of pregnancy and moving away from an antagonistic medical model, as well as appreciating how that model has been socially constructed (Purdy 1990; Kukla 2005; Mullin 2005).

Feminist care ethics, which early on took the mother-child relationship as the model of caring (e.g., Held 1987), has provided a rich conceptual resource for feminist procreative ethics. The influence of care ethics can be seen, for example, in arguments which foreground the value of intimate mother-fetus relationships in examining the moral basis of parenthood and the legitimacy of contract pregnancy (e.g., Gheaus 2016b). In light of the challenge to traditional understandings of parenthood posed by new ARTs, Mary Lyndon Shanley has argued for caregiving as the ground of moral parenthood (Shanley 2018).

Finally, much feminist scholarship has focused on the unequal division of labor between parents within the household and its effect on girls' life chances, and hence on the state's role in addressing this gendered division of parenting labor and defining the legal institution of the family (Okin 1989, Card 1996, Schouten 2019; see also 3.5 below). Feminist perspectives appear throughout the discussion below. (See also the entry on feminist perspectives on the family.)

2.4 Anti-natalism

A further set of objections to the unburdened exercise of procreative autonomy is anti-natalist. Anti-natalism is opposition to procreation. In its local form anti-natalism applies only to particular people in certain instances. In the case where a child would predictably experience a life so miserable as to be not worth living, it may be argued that procreation would be wrongful. Whether there are such lives-and if so, what characterizes them-is controversial, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that a life can be so irremediably miserable that it is of no benefit to the individual who endures it. Arguably, the lives of those born with Tay-Sachs disease fit this description, and many argue that it is immoral to knowingly bring such children into the world. Some authors go much further than this, arguing that procreating is wrong unless the parent has reason to think he or she can provide the child with a good chance of a normal life. The general claim is that certain types of individuals have an interest in not being brought into existence on account of the quality of life they would have were they created (McMahon 1998; Roberts 1998). ARTs allowing post-menopausal women to give birth have prompted objections to post-menopausal motherhood on grounds of child welfare; but such arguments seem to employ double standards (see Cutas 2007). Cassidy holds that prospective parents who believe they will not be sufficiently competent should not procreate (Cassidy 2006). Relatedly, Benatar argues that autonomy rights cannot permit risking severe harm to children; those who risk transmitting HIV, for instance, cannot assert a right to reproduce (Benatar 2010). Local anti-natalism is also supported by the judgment that wrongful birth, birth which wrongfully imposes undue risk and harm on a resulting child, is possible (Shiffrin 1999).

Global anti-natalism opposes procreation in general. One global anti-natalist position holds that in all cases procreation is a harm to those brought into being. Benatar argues that while existence brings pains as well as pleasures, non-existence is a lack of pains and pleasures. While pain is bad, absence of pain and pleasure is not bad, so it is always worse to be than not to be (Benatar 1997, 2006; see also discussion of Shiffrin 1999, below; for responses, see Overall 2012, Benatar and Wasserman 2015). Other global anti-natalist positions focus on harms or costs to others. An environmentalist anti-natalism argues that procreation is wrong for the same reasons overconsumption is (Young 2001, MacIver 2015). An opportunity-cost anti-natalism argues that the money spent on rearing a child would be better spent on ameliorating the lives of those already existing (Rachels 2014). And a misanthropic anti-natalism argues that humans cause so much harm - to other humans, non-human animals, and the environment - that there is a duty not to procreate (Benatar 2015). Others have argued that the availability of children needing homes creates strong moral reasons to adopt rather than to procreate (Friedrich 2013, Rulli 2014). There are also intermediate positions. For example, Sarah Conly argues that the interests that ground a right to procreate can be satisfied with only one child and so it may be permissible to restrict the number of children an individual creates when costs to third parties from overpopulation are substantial (Conly 2005, 2016; see also Statman 2005).

Note that anti-natalists do not always defend legal restrictions, because interfering with procreation may involve intolerably illiberal coercion of the person. Even those who do think that there are circumstances in which interference with procreation can be justified accept that there are important countervailing values. For example, Benatar notes that the moral costs of forced abortion or sterilization are "immense," but thinks that the moral costs of moderate coercion or directive counseling should be weighed against the moral costs of harm to future children (Benatar 2010; see also the discussion of parental licensing in Section 5.2 below).

One response to anti-natalist views is to provide a justification for the decision to procreate. Some authors, agreeing that procreation requires a justification and that many common reasons for procreating carry no moral weight, locate a possible justification in the unique nature of the parent-child relationship, the desire for pregnancy, or the desire to pass on valuable family traits (Overall 2012, Rulli 2016, Brake 2015, Ferracioli 2018; on whether one can make a rational decision to have a child, see Paul 2015 and Krishnamurthy 2015).

3. The Morality of Procreation

For the most part, secular debates about the morality of procreation focus on whether and when procreation is impermissible, rather than whether it might be obligatory (though see Smilansky 1995 and Gheaus 2015 on whether there could be a duty to procreate). The debates concerning the impermissibility of procreation raise deep issues in metaphysics and value theory (Belshaw 2003; Holtug 2001; Kavka 1982; Rachels 1998). We restrict our discussion to moral issues rather than legal ones, and assume throughout that reproduction is fully voluntary and informed-that is, neither coerced nor accidental.

3.1 The Non-Identity Problem and Impersonal Considerations

It might be hoped that we could give a full account of permissible procreation by appealing only to the interests of the individuals affected by procreative decisions. Unfortunately, there is reason to think that this may not be possible. Consider the following sort of case, introduced into the literature by Parfit (1984), and known as the non-identity problem (Hanser 1990; Harman 2004; Woodward 1986; entry on the nonidentity problem):

Marie is taking a drug that she knows will cause a birth defect-say, a withered arm-in any child that she conceives (call this child "Amy"). In 3 months this drug will have passed from her body, and she will be able to conceive a child free from this defect (call this child "Sophie"). Intuitively, Marie does something wrong in deciding to have Amy rather than Sophie.

Non-identity cases of this kind are called "same-number" cases because they involve comparing situations that contain the same number of individuals. Other versions of the non-identity problem involve different-number (or non-comparative) choices:

Sri has a genetic condition that she knows will cause any child she conceives to be born with a serious cognitive disability. Despite knowing this fact, Sri deliberately conceives and gives birth to a seriously cognitively disabled child, Aarav.

Assume, plausibly, that Amy and Aarav have lives that are worth living. Does Marie do something wrong in conceiving and giving birth to Amy? Does Sri do something wrong conceiving and giving birth to Aarav? Many are inclined to think that they do, but it is unclear how we can capture this wrongness by appeal only to the interests of the individuals involved. This is because wronging someone seems to presuppose that things could have gone otherwise for that individual, but things could not have gone otherwise for either Amy or Aarav. Sri's putative wrong consists in creating Aarav, and doing otherwise would have entailed creating no one. Her action has no victim and therefore sets back no one's interests. Amy isn't made worse off by Marie's actions, for had Marie waited another three months before conceiving she would have given birth to a different child (Sophie) instead of Amy. It is therefore difficult to see how Marie might have harmed or wronged Amy.

It is also prima facie implausible that the interests of other parties explain why these actions would be wrong: they are wanted and their births don't harm their community.
The non-identity problem is not solely a problem for the morality of procreation. Anyone who affects the welfare of future people in identity-affecting ways may face it. Readers interested in general approaches to the non-identity problem should consult the relevant entry. Here we discuss just those aspects bearing on the ethics of becoming parents (see also Hanser 1990; Vehmas 2002).

Feinberg (1992) compares situations like the Marie and Sri cases with cases in which someone is harmed in the course of being saved from a greater harm (e.g., his leg is broken while his life is being saved). In both cases an evil or harm is justified in virtue of the fact that it is a necessary condition of a greater good-in the one case saving a person's life, in the other case bringing a life into existence. Shiffrin (1999), however, holds that harming someone to save them from a greater harm is morally distinct from harming them to impose a "pure benefit" on them. Shiffrin claims that we have serious qualms about harming someone without their consent to secure a pure benefit for them, even when we can be sure that they would regard the pure benefit as far outweighing the harm (see also Steinbock and McClamrock 1994). She concludes that procreation is routinely more morally problematic than is generally recognized.

Shiffrin's attempt to drive a wedge into Feinberg's analogy raises questions of its own. First, one might challenge the assumption that life is a pure benefit. Even if we assume that Amy's life would be worth living, creating her would be a benefit only on a rather peculiar conception of what a "benefit" entails. Amy is not better off than she otherwise would have been, for there is no way that she otherwise would have been. Furthermore, the argument may prove too much. If one is never justified in harming someone (without their consent) to impose a pure benefit on them, and if existence always involves some form of harm, then it must always be wrong to bring someone into existence. A global form of anti-natalism (see Section 2.4) thereby seems to be the price of this solution to the non-identity problem.

A number of authors, including Parfit, argue that we need to appeal to impersonal considerations to solve the non-identity problem. Several of these solutions appeal to the role morality of parents. According to Freeman, "The principle of parental responsibility requires that individuals should desist from having children unless certain minimum conditions can be satisfied. Responsible parents want their children to have good and fulfilling lives" (1997, 180). Freeman goes on to claim that the principle of parental responsibility entails that the very young and very old should not become parents. Similarly, Purdy claims that one shouldn't reproduce unless one can ensure that one's children will have a decent life, with clean water, nutritious food, shelter, education, and medical care counting as basic prerequisites (Purdy 1995). Purdy's position seems to imply that many-even most-of the world's children have been wrongly brought into existence. More recently, Wasserman has argued that whether it is permissible to bring a child into existence with certain characteristics (such as impairments), depends on the reasons the prospective parents have for creating such a child. These should be reasons that concern the good of the child, which can still support creating a child whose life will predictably go worse than that of another child who could be created instead (Wasserman 2005). Others have taken similar reasoning to show that prospective parents can be morally criticized for their attitudes to future children, such that the desire to have a child with a harmful condition is wrongful (Kahane 2009).

Not all of those who have written on the non-identity problem accept that Marie does wrong in deciding to have Amy rather than Sophie, or that Sri does wrong in reproducing. Indeed, some find the suggestion that it is wrong to (knowingly) bring disabled children into the world abhorrent due to the implications of such views for individuals with disabilities. Asch holds that a woman has a right to an abortion, but also that it would be wrong to have an abortion to prevent the birth of a disabled child. Abortion on such grounds is immoral, she argues, because it communicates that "disability is so terrible it warrants not being alive" (Asch 1999, 387). The argument could easily be extended to decisions about whether to conceive a certain type of child. Does prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion, or preimplantation genetic diagnosis, communicate that disability is so terrible it warrants not being alive? On its face this claim is contestable; the associated decisions are highly specific to each case. And even if such acts did communicate something, it is unclear that it would be a thesis about relative qualities of life (see also Buchanan et al. 2000, chap. 7). For more discussion of the ethics of creating people with disabilities see encyclopedia article on disability: health, well-being, and personal relationships.

3.2 Assisted Reproductive Technologies

Suppose that competent adults have the liberty to procreate. Are there limits on the means that they may take in order to do so? In this and the following section we focus on three methods of ART that have generated controversy: gamete donation, in vitro fertilization (IVF), and commercial surrogacy. (Here we focus on technologies already widely used; for a discussion of reproductive human cloning, see the entry on cloning.)

Most discussion has centered on whether it is permissible for prospective parents to avail themselves of these novel technologies for procreation. There has also been some debate over whether people have a claim to access these technologies through public health care systems or private health insurance. Most rich countries with universal health care provide some treatment for infertility. For example, the United Kingdom's National Health Service funds a limited number of cycles of IVF for couples who meet eligibility criteria. Given limited resources, providing ART takes away from money that could be spent on other health care interventions (Roberts 1997). In this context it is particularly important whether infertility is properly considered a disease or disability in need of treatment (Neumann 1997; McLeod 2017). Another broad social concern raised by all these technologies is their role in the reproduction of race; when such technologies are used to produce racially similar children, they may perpetuate the idea of race as natural, as opposed to a social construction (Russell 2018).

Gamete donation involves the provision of gametes by a man or woman who is not intended to be the resulting child's social parent. Insemination by another man is not a new technology per se, but the modern phenomena of sperm banking and anonymous providers have led some to question the morality of artificial insemination by donor (AID). Some objections clearly have a religious basis; we therefore do not discuss them here. But some conservatives about procreative liberty have also developed secular objections to gamete donation. The most interesting of these focuses on the practice of paying gamete providers. For example, Thomas Murray criticizes "insemination by vendor" on the grounds that it inserts the values of the marketplace into family life and thereby threatens to undermine it (Murray 1996, 34). The process of harvesting ova also involves serious risks to the woman providing them, which are discussed in the description of the IVF process below.

A different set of concerns centers on the moral responsibilities of gamete providers. Since in most jurisdictions gamete providers must waive all parental claims over their genetic offspring, it has been widely assumed that they do not have moral parental responsibilities. Several philosophers have, however, argued that gamete donation is morally dubious, precisely because providers take their parental responsibilities too lightly (Benatar 1999; Nelson 1991; Moschella 2014). The argument can be challenged in at least two ways. First, we might challenge the claim that gamete providers typically treat their parental responsibilities too lightly by transferring or alienating them (Bayne 2003, Page 1985), especially in the case when gamete donation occurs in a context in which assisted reproduction is regulated and would-be gamete recipients are screened. Second, one could argue that in the broad nexus of persons responsible for creating a child through assisted reproduction, the contribution of gamete providers is not especially morally significant (Fuscaldo 2006). (See the entry on gamete donation and sale.) However, recent critics have argued that gamete donors morally cannot transfer or alienate their parental responsibilities because these involve maintaining particular relationships which cannot be transferred (Weinberg 2016; see also Brandt 2017).

A distinct debate concerns the permissibility of procreating using anonymous gamete donors. Velleman argues that this practice is wrong because it frustrates children's interest in knowing their genetic forebears (Velleman 2005). In response, Haslanger argues that not only does this view make certain forms of adoption morally suspect, it presupposes implausible connections between genetics, identity, and human flourishing (Haslanger 2009). Policy debates over anonymous gamete donation have expanded to the question of whether donor-conceived individuals-as adults-have the right to know who their genetic parents are (Melo‐Martín 2014; Groll 2020). Anonymous donation is now illegal in a number of jurisdictions.

IVF involves fertilizing ova outside the womb and transferring resulting embryos into the uterus. The woman whose ova are used is given a hormone treatment that induces producing multiple ova, which are harvested by a needle inserted through the vaginal wall. Fertilization may involve incubating the ovum in sperm or injecting a single sperm into the ovum in intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Several embryos are transferred into the uterus after three to five days. Since the birth of the first "test-tube baby" in 1978, IVF has become a fairly common procedure for addressing certain forms of infertility.

Objections to IVF have focused on negative consequences for the women or their offspring and on wider societal implications. Stimulation of the ovaries may lead to ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, a potentially serious condition. Like any surgical procedure there are risks involved in retrieval of ova. Transferring multiple embryos increases risk of multiple pregnancy, which can be risky for both mother and fetuses. Fetuses born as a result of IVF may be at an increased risk of birth defects, lower birth weights, and premature birth (Bower and Hansen 2005; Reefhuis et al. 2009). The absolute risk of these problems remains relatively low, however, and so they do not seem to justify a blanket prohibition on IVF.
Similar objections to those raised against gamete donation have also been raised against IVF, including that it commodifies children and female reproduction. Feminists have developed a more subtle critique. Sherwin (1987) argues that the powerful desires that many people, especially women, have for their own biological children are the product of problematic social arrangements and cultural values. While reproductive technologies like IVF may help some (privileged) women get what they want, they also further entrench the oppressive societal values that create these powerful desires in the first place.

IVF typically results in creating more embryos than are used in the fertility treatment. The remaining embryos may be given to other women for implantation, donated for research, destroyed, or cryogenically stored. There are likely over a million cryogenically stored embryos in the United States alone (Christianson et al. 2020). Depending on one's view of the moral importance of human embryos this may be considered an especially worrying consequence of IVF. People who believe that such embryos have the same moral status as humans will judge that destroying them is wrong and creating them without a plan for implantation is comparably bad. The use of surplus embryos as a source of totipotent stem cells for medical research has generated objections from religious groups and conservatives opposed to abortion. Consistency would seem to require that anyone who objects to using these embryos in research ought also to object to their creation in the first place, since it almost inevitably results in surplus embryos that will eventually be destroyed.

3.3 "Surrogacy" and Contractually Assisted Reproduction

Perhaps the most controversial form of assisted reproduction is so-called "surrogate" motherhood or contract pregnancy. Such arrangements can take many forms, but the most widely discussed involves two parties, a contracting couple and a "surrogate" or gestational mother. The gestational mother carries a child derived from the gametes of one or both members of the contracting couple and agrees to give the child over to the couple after birth. Surrogacy is now regulated in most countries. Commercial surrogacy is widely, although not universally, illegal, driving an increase in international surrogacy. Many more jurisdictions permit so-called "altruistic" surrogacy, which does not involve paying the surrogate mother over and above compensating her for direct costs.

Many of the disputes surrounding contract pregnancy focus on the question of who should be given parental rights and responsibilities if the arrangement breaks down. (In some cases, neither party to the arrangement wants to keep the baby; in other cases both parties want to keep it.) Indeed, much of the impetus for recent accounts of the grounds of parenthood has derived from attempts to adjudicate such disputes (Shanley 2018, and see section 4).

Repro-libertarians insist that a right to procreative autonomy entails protecting most methods of "collaborative reproduction," so long as they are safe and consensual (Robertson 1994, chap. 6). For them, the right to procreate is a special case of the right to make binding contracts (see Straehle, 2019). But it is not settled whether such contracts ought to be legal and, if so, enforceable.

One central point of contention is whether gestational surrogacy involves commodification-for example, by entailing that the gestational mother is selling her baby-or whether it is no different in kind from other forms of paid childcare (Anderson 1990; Radin 1996; Glover et al. 1989; Shanley 1993; but see also Arneson 1992). It is also disputed whether a parental right acquired through gestation can be contractually transferred: on a gestationalist view which grounds the right to parent in the intimate relationship between gestator and fetus, the justification of the right entails that it is not subject to transfer (Gheaus 2016b, and see 4.2).

A distinct concern has to do with whether anyone who undertakes a contractual obligation to surrender custody of future children can do so autonomously. Some writers argue that such decisions cannot be autonomous, and hence that surrogacy contracts should not only be unenforceable but also illegal (Dodds and Jones 1989b; see Purdy 1989 and Oakley 1992 for a response).

Contract pregnancy is also criticized on grounds of harm to women. One such harm is that, in practice, it treats women as, and reinforces the perception of them as, mere fetal "containers" (Purdy 1990, Satz 2010, Baron 2019). The fact that it gives medical staff and intending parents extensive control over women's sexuality and their bodies is particularly troubling in the context of gender inequality (Satz 2010). But others reject bans on surrogacy contracts as paternalistic, unduly limiting women's freedom. Nevertheless, even those who defend contract pregnancy urge that safeguards, such as mandated post-natal waiting periods during which the gestational mother is permitted to change her mind or age-based restrictions on who may enter into such contracts, should be in place to protect the interests of the child and of the gestator (Steinbock 1988; Straehle 2016; see also Botterell and McLeod 2016).

More recently, the discussion has moved to ethical analyses of international surrogacy arrangements. These have typically involved commissioning parents from high-income countries and surrogate mothers from poorer populations in less wealthy countries, including India and Thailand. The vast power differentials between the parties, expanded roles for surrogacy agencies brokering the arrangements, and loose regulatory regimes have made for heightened concern about exploitation and other potential wrongs (Panitch 2013, and see discussion in Purdy 1989, Wilkinson 2016).

3.4 Enhancement

Some couples who undergo IVF also opt for preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) whereby the genomes of their embryos are analyzed and particular embryos then selected for implantation. This is more common among couples at risk for transmitting a genetic disease or who are trying to create a child compatible with an existing ill child so that she can be used as a source of donated stem cells. However, it can be used for selecting for or against other traits, such as sex, or disability-for example, some deaf parents want to raise children who inherit their deafness. Such uses of PGD are controversial (on sex selection see Heyd 2003; Robertson 2003; Purdy 2007; ESHRE Task Force 2013; on selecting deafness see Karpin 2007; Fahmy 2011; Schroeder 2018).

Current technology is mostly limited to selecting among existing embryos. However, the recent development of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing techniques has finally made it possible to genetically alter gametes and embryos in vivo. This has made questions about the permissibility of genetic enhancement pressing.

Several critics of genetic enhancement argue that permitting enhancement is liable to undermine important human values. Sandel argues that the control that enhancement technology would allow parents is liable to undermine their humility in the face of the gift of their children, impose responsibilities that we are not prepared to deal with, and threaten social solidarity (Sandel 2007). Habermas argues that parents who genetically enhance their children will, through the control they exert, prevent their children from entering relationships of moral equality and undermine their ability to be autonomous (Habermas 2003). Both have been criticized for exaggerating the likely effects of permitting enhancement technologies (Fenton 2006; Lev 2011).

A second argument against permitting parents to genetically enhance their offspring is that it is liable to exacerbate unfairness. Enhancements will probably be available only to richer parents. As a result, their offspring, who are already advantaged over their peers, would be even better able to compete against them (Etieyibo 2012).This is commonly raised as a particular objection to genetic (or other biomedical) enhancements, but it is not clear why there is something distinctive about genetic enhancement that renders it more troubling than other ways in which parents attempt to enhance their children, such as private schooling.

The fairness objection also assumes that the advantages of genetic enhancement are competitive advantages, so that an enhancement would make the recipient better able to compete with others for goods such as careers and social status. This assumption underlies concerns both that the availability of enhancements would exacerbate existing inequalities and that if universally available they would be collectively self-defeating (as, for example, if everyone were to add 6 inches to their height) (Glannon 2001). However, this assumption might be false; for example, literacy is a non-genetic enhancement which is beneficial both to the literate person and others (Buchanan 2008).

While most discussions of the ethics of genetic enhancement have focused on whether the practice is ever permissible, some ethicists argue that it is not only permissible for parents to enhance their children, but a positive duty. Savulescu (2001) argues for what he calls the Principle of Procreative Beneficence: couples should use pre-genetic diagnosis and selective abortion to choose the child, of the children they could have, who will have the best life. This naturally extends to using genetic enhancement. Savulescu's justification for the principle of Procreative Beneficence is that it seems irrational not to select the best child when no other reasons are relevant to one's choice. But this seems like a very weak principle: it seems likely that at least some other reason will frequently apply. For example, prospective parents might just prefer to leave their child's genetic makeup up to chance. If this is not an irrational preference, then it plausibly gives some reason for them not to select any particular embryo to implant. Savulescu's view is extended in further papers which claim that the principle of Procreative Beneficence has greater moral weight than simply being a tiebreaker when no other reasons apply (Savulescu and Kahane 2009, 281; for criticism see Parker 2010, Carter and Gordon 2013, Bennett 2014). These and related issues are discussed at length in the entries on enhancement and eugenics.

Finally, controversy is not limited to genetic interventions: there are live debates about whether parents may choose (male) circumcision, clitoridectomy, marrow donation, sex assignment of inter-sexed children, and other surgical interventions (see, e.g., Benatar and Benatar 2003 on circumcision; Parens 2006, on surgically shaping children).

3.5 State Policies

Many bioethicists move beyond a focus on individual rights to consider broader effects of reproductive policy. As discussed in 2.2, these include communitarian conservatives who are concerned with the effects of reproductive policy, particularly regarding ARTs, on social attitudes towards the value of life and the meaning of family (Sandel 2007). They also include liberals who share values of autonomy and equality with repro-libertarians, and as a result treat market exchanges and consensual services as "innocent until proven guilty." But rather than focusing just on the effects of particular procreative choices, these liberals also attend to the impact of institutionalizing practices such as genetic selection or IVF within a society that aims to maintain liberal background institutions (Glover et al. 1989; Buchanan et al. 2000; Brock 2005). Institutionalization foregrounds concerns that liberals focused on individual choices downplay, such as the effects of large numbers, the incentives that policies create, and opportunity costs. Thus for policy liberals it will be impossible to determine the scope of procreative rights without considering institutional structure and social context, given reasonable assumptions about human motivations.

For instance, when many people make similar reproductive choices, the resulting "baby boom" may reshape the social, economic, political, and environmental landscape. Such concerns apply to the use of ARTs, such as for sex selection: sex ratios might become grossly skewed in countries with a strong preference for male children (Xue 2010). Such societal consequences are also predicted by disability theorists who argue that normalizing genetic testing and embryo selection or abortion to prevent certain impairments could lead to increased stigma against and decreased resources for people with such impairments (see also the entry on disability). Such concerns might provide grounds for restricting ARTs or incentivizing their use.

Much recent debate has focused on the effects of the legal institution of the family on procreative choices and child welfare. Arguments for incentivizing procreation within marriage assume that children reared within marriages will benefit as contrasted with those reared outside marriages (Galston 1991, chap. 10; but see Young 1995). Others have argued that legally separating marriage and parenting will allow the state to support both children and their caregivers more directly (Shrage 2018) or that recognizing more than two parents will benefit children as well as serving broader social goals such as resource conservation (Gheaus 2019, Grill 2020). Such revisionist arguments extend to legal institutionalization of non-parental care for children: for example, Gheaus has argued for the institutional provision of non-parental care on child welfare grounds (Gheaus 2011, 2018b), and Brake for the legal recognition of paid childcare workers as family (Brake 2018). Liberal feminists have argued for state family policy-such as parental leave and incentives for egalitarian co-parenting-to promote gender equality (e.g., Schouten 2019). Adoption policy has also been the focus of recent discussion, with debates over open adoption and attention to the difficulties of LGBT adoption (Haslanger and Witt 2006; Baylis and McLeod 2014, Part IV). Family policy also has effects on racial equality, as Dorothy Roberts points out in her criticism of state policies on terminating parental rights which disporpotionately affect black families (Roberts 2006).

Liberal accounts of procreative autonomy may face problems in a context of social inequality and over-population. Some affirm procreative autonomy, but regard it as compatible with apparently coercive population policies such as limitations on the number of children particular persons may have. This may be because they regard procreative autonomy as a merely prima facie right, less weighty than other rights, such as the right to a minimally decent quality of life (Bayles 1979). Or they may conceive of procreative autonomy more narrowly than is commonly done (O'Neill 1979; Hill 1991). O'Neill, for example, construes procreative autonomy as requiring an intention to rear the resulting child so that it has a life at least normal for its society. Without such intentions, parents are not exercising a right to procreate, and thus policies to curtail their behavior do not constitute coercive infringements of procreative autonomy. Recent work in this area has examined the extent to which the state is justified in restricting procreation in light of its environmental costs (e.g., Conly 2016). In sum, on such views, procreative autonomy is one among many important forms of autonomy, which may conflict among themselves, and with the state's legitimate (or compulsory) ends such as the provision of public goods and compliance with national constitutions. Talk of rights, from such a standpoint, is appropriate only within a nexus of liberties, claims, powers, and ends. From such a perspective, the implications of a right to procreative autonomy are much less straightforward than from the individually focused repro-libertarian perspective.

One further problem for liberals is posed by divergent societal views on the nature of the good for children. Respecting such divergent views seems to be required by equal respect, but this is in tension with the need to define standards for child welfare and parental authority. For example, balancing child welfare and parent autonomy may be difficult in culturally diverse societies, in which state standards of child welfare may be criticized as discriminatory against child-rearing practices of cultural minorities (e.g., Dwyer 2018; for discussion of child welfare and state neutrality, see Fowler 2010 and 2014).

3.6 A Right Not to Procreate?

While we have set aside the question of abortion, we will briefly address two other cases in which avoiding procreation and parenthood has been taken as protected by procreative autonomy. First is the case of legal paternity assignment for the purposes of child support, particularly in the case of "involuntary fathers." Second is the case of the disposition of frozen embryos created from the gametes of two people who now disagree on their use. We can usefully distinguish rights not to become a gestational parent, not to become a legal parent, and not to become a genetic parent (Cohen 2007, 1140). The cases we are concerned with in this section relate to the two latter (alleged) rights: not to become a legal or a genetic parent.

While avoiding unwanted paternity has become a topic for the "men's rights" movement, arguments for a "father's right to choose" can begin from feminist defenses of procreative autonomy. What is at issue here is not whether an unwilling father has the right to compel a pregnant woman to have an abortion - this would be an intolerable invasion of her procreative autonomy - but whether he should be assigned the legal status, and legal support obligations, of fatherhood. If women have the right to avoid the status and burdens of motherhood, by parity of reasoning - the argument goes - men should have the right to avoid the status and burdens of fatherhood. Of course, the physical burdens of pregnancy provide a clear disanalogy between the cases (for related legal arguments against arguing from abortion cases to genetic parenthood cases, see Cohen 2007). But dismissing the comparison too quickly risks inattention to the costs of "forced fatherhood" on worse-off men (and their disproportionate enforcement on men of color in the US) (Brake 2005). Some would argue that even if men have the right to avoid involuntary fatherhood (especially in cases such as a "purloined sperm" case, in which they can deny moral responsibility), the claims of children outweigh a right not to become a parent (Overall 2012).

Cases of dispute over frozen embroyos, such as Evans v. the United Kingdom, foreground issues of privacy and control over one's genetic material - especially, whether there is a right not to become a genetic parent (again, here we set aside the question of the moral status of the embryo). In the Evans case, a couple produced embryos through IVF, intending to procreate together, but separated before the embryos could be implanted. Subsequently, the man involved asked that the embryos be destroyed; the law required that both parties consent for the procedure to continue. The woman brought a legal challenge, hoping to proceed with implantation.

Considerations of procreative autonomy, control of one's genetic material, could be brought to bear on either side here. Is there a right not to become a genetic parent, and if so, does it override any other rights or moral considerations pertinent to such disagreements? A right not to become a genetic parent could be grounded in privacy or property right in one's genetic material (including informational). But once the embryo is intentionally created with the consent of the gamete donor, it may be argued that any prior property claims are ceded; the genetic contribution cannot be retrieved from this "miscible joint property" (Chan and Quigley 2007; see also Cohen 2007). On one feminist perspective, the woman who has undergone IVF ought to control the embryos, because of the additional burdens of the procedure and any future treatments on her (Overall 1995).

The resolution to these questions depends, at least in part, on the underlying moral grounds of parenthood. For example, if one acquires parental moral obligations by causing a child to exist, that will have very different implications than if one only acquires such obligations through a voluntary undertaking. The next section will examine such accounts of the moral grounds of parenthood.

4. Becoming Parents

In virtue of what does one become a moral parent, i.e., a primary bearer of parental rights and/or parental responsibilities with respect to a particular child? We can distinguish four general answers: genetic, labor-based, intentional (or voluntarist), and causal accounts. On monistic versions, only one of these properties generates parental relationships. On pluralistic accounts, more than one of these relations can ground parenthood.

Some contemporary discussions assume that moral parental rights and responsibilities or obligations are inseparable (Bayne and Kolers 2003). But Archard has argued that this "parental package" view is untenable (Archard and Benatar 2010, 22-25; Archard 2010; see also Austin 2007, chap. 3). To take Archard's example, an estranged, abusive parent may have moral and legal support obligations but no parental rights; obligations to ensure a child is provided for do not entail parental rights. It is more plausible, as Archard notes, that parental rights and responsibilities-which, as contrasted with obligations, concern the hands-on, day-to-day rearing of the child-come together. Even these, in some circumstances, might come apart-as when an estranged parent retains some decision-making rights but holds no responsibilities. Moreover, the grounds for parental rights and parental responsibilities may be distinct, even if parents typically have both. For example, Millum argues for a labor-based account of parental rights but a voluntarist account of parental responsibilities (Millum 2017).

4.1 Genetic accounts

Genetic theories ground parenthood in the relation of direct genetic derivation. Geneticism thus places parenthood in the nexus of other familial relations, such as being a sibling, cousin, and so on, which appear to have a genetic basis and which appear (at least to some) to come along with certain moral rights and responsibilities.

Hall (1999) defends geneticism by appeal to the Lockean notion of self-ownership. Since genetic parents own the genetic material from which the child is constituted, they have a prima facie parental claim to the child. There are a number of problems with this line of argument (Kolers & Bayne 2001) and it is an argument that Locke himself rejected (Franklin-Hall 2012). First, it subsumes parental relations under property relations, by attempting to derive a claim about parenthood from premises involving claims about ownership. The plausibility of this derivation is based on emphasizing parental rights associated with exclusivity and authority, and downplaying parental responsibilities. Those responsibilities-to both child and community-pull sharply against a property-based analysis of parenthood. Second, taking self-ownership seriously entails that children own themselves, and this surely defeats any proprietary claim that their parents might have in them (Archard 1990). Third, genetic parents do not provide the material from which the child is constituted in utero; that derives from the gestational mother, not the genetic parents (Silver 2001). Of course, the child's genetic make-up structures that matter, but to argue for the priority of the genetic over the gestational contribution is to argue for the priority of form over matter, and it is not obvious that this can be done.

Other arguments for geneticism derive from considering paternity, in that direct genetic derivation appears to provide the most plausible account of the basis of fatherhood. Several recent legal cases have overturned adoptions on the grounds that the estranged father, unidentified at the time of birth, has returned to claim the child (Rosenman 1995, Shanley 1995). Supporters of these decisions endorse the view that unalienated genetic claims to children can override months or even years of rearing by the adoptive parents, as well as the earlier failure of the father to claim the child. Similarly, in "surrogacy" cases, many writers have argued-or simply assumed-that a genetic father may have his own child by contracting with a surrogate mother. This seems to presuppose a genetic account of paternity; and it is a small step from a genetic account of paternity to a genetic account of parenthood. One need appeal only to the principle of "parity," according to which the sort of relationship that makes one person a parent suffices to make anyone else a parent (Bayne & Kolers 2003; Austin 2004).

4.2 Labor-based accounts

An alternative account views parents' work, rather than their genetic relationships, as essential to the parental relation. According to these labor-based accounts, people who play or have played a parental role in a child's life have thereby become the parents. In this spirit, a number of authors have argued that the primary ground of parenthood is the gestational relation (Rothman 1989; Feldman 1992). In reproductive contexts in which a child's gestational mother differs from its genetic mother-as in egg (or embryo) donation and gestational surrogacy-it is therefore the gestational mother who has the primary claim to parental rights and responsibilities. This line of argument can be expanded to include people besides the gestational mother who have taken a parental role in rearing a child (Millum 2010; 2017).

Three main considerations are presented in favor of labor-based accounts. One focuses on the interests of the child. Where a child has been looked after by a person or people for some time, it is thought to be very damaging for her to be taken away from them (Archard 2004). In the case of gestation, since the gestational mother is guaranteed to be identifiable at birth, it may be thought in the best interests of the child that she be regarded as the mother (Annas 1984). Moreover, the child and gestator are already involved in an intimate relationship at birth, which it is arguably prima facie wrong to sever (Gheaus 2018a). However, while recognizing the gestational mother or caregivers as parents will sometimes serve the best interests of the child, it is implausible that this will always be the case. This argument might, at best, ground laws presuming that the gestational mother and rearing parents have a claim to be the legal parents. Since there will likely be cases in which being reared by someone else would be better for the child, it will be difficult to justify the assignment of parenthood on the grounds of labor in every case.

A second line of argument appeals to what parents deserve for the work they do. Gestational mothers typically invest a substantial amount of effort into the child. In Narayan's words, a gestational mother typically undergoes "considerable discomfort, effort, and risk in the course of pregnancy and childbirth" (Narayan 1999, 81; also Gheaus 2012). While this account appears to give a special role to gestational mothers, it can include parenting partners who help bear the costs or contribute to establishing a relationship (for example, by viewing an ultrasound image together). Similarly, the people who care for a child invest a great deal of work. It might therefore be thought that they deserve to be the parents (Millum 2010; 2017).

Labor-based accounts have the advantage over genetic accounts that they can explain why the individuals they pick out as the parents ought to have parental rights. They also incorporate adoptive and other non-biological parental relationships into a single account of parenthood, whereas genetic accounts seem forced to view non-biological parenthood as a distinct type of normative relationship. Objections to gestationalist accounts of parenthood may start from the problem of paternity: if gestation is necessary for parenthood, how can men become fathers (Bayne & Kolers 2003)? Broader labor-based accounts that count the work of other caregivers can explain fatherhood, but they still seem to give the gestational mother veto power over other potential parents. As Barbara Katz Rothman puts it: "if men want to have children, they will either have to develop the technology that enables them to become pregnant ... or have children through their relationships with women" (Rothman 1989, 257). Some will find this implausible.

4.3 Intentional and voluntarist accounts

A third approach to parenthood, popular with legal theorists, appeals to intentions as the ground of parenthood (Hill 1991; Parker 1982; Shultz 1990; Stumpf 1986). Intentionalists motivate their position by appeal to cases like the following. The Khans wish to have a child "of their own." They screen egg and sperm providers and find providers who satisfy their requirements. They then select a gestational mother, who carries the fetus to term and then hands the infant over to the Khans. Intentionalists argue that because they "carefully and intentionally orchestrated the procreational act, bringing together all the necessary components with the intention of creating a unique individual whom they intend to raise as their own" (Hill 1991, 359), the Khans should be regarded as the child's sole parents.

Another argument for intentionalism appeals to the "case of the misplaced sperm":

Bruce is about to undergo some risky medical treatment, and has placed some of his sperm in a sperm-bank in case he needs it at a later date. Through a bureaucratic mishap, Bruce's sperm is swapped with that of a sperm-donor and is used by Bessie to produce a child. Does Bruce acquire parental rights and responsibilities over Bessie's child?

Intuitions vary here, but there is at least some pull towards denying that Bruce's genetic relation to Bessie's child gives him any parental claim over it. The reason Bruce lacks a parental relation to Bessie's child seems to be that he didn't intentionally bring the child into existence.

Intentionalism construes parenthood as relying on facts about agency rather than biology; for the intentionalist, parenthood is fundamentally a moral relationship rather than a biological one (see Fuscaldo 2006, for discussion). Some philosophical defenses of intentionalism appeal to a voluntaristic account of responsibilities in general (Van Zyl 2002). If special obligations to particular others are generally acquired voluntarily, then it is plausible that parental obligations are also voluntarily incurred (O'Neill 1979; Brake 2005, 2010; for criticism see Prusak 2011a, b). Furthermore, parental obligations are role obligations. While it is a matter of debate whether any role obligations can be acquired involuntarily, it is at least plausible that roles assumed as adults (as opposed to roles one is born into) require voluntary acceptance. Finally, parental role obligations are conventional: their scope and content varies by jurisdiction and society. This suggests an unfairness if such extensive obligations are incurred involuntarily (Brake 2010). On the other hand, once it is recognized that parental obligations are conventional, the content of parental obligations and the voluntary actions required to acquire them can be explained with reference to social conventions of parenthood (Millum 2008; 2017). Another defense of intentionalism appeals to parental autonomy, as opposed to the way in which obligations are incurred: Richards argues for a variant of the intentional view according to which parental rights derive from "a right to continue [projects] we have underway" (Richards 2010, 23).

One objection to intentionalism concerns the content of the intentions that are supposed to ground parenthood. Consider a case in which a couple conceives by accident and then form intentions to give up the baby for adoption rather than rear it. This intention endures until 15 minutes after birth, at which point they change their minds and decide to rear the child. It is highly implausible that for the first 15 minutes of the child's life they are no more its parents than anyone else.

Perhaps the most widespread objection to the voluntarist account is that it seems to absolve unintending procreators from parental obligation. However, many share the view that procreators, intending or not, who voluntarily engaged in sex have a moral responsibility to a resulting child due to their role in causing it to exist (Austin 2007; Fuscaldo 2006; Millum 2008).

Whatever the prospects of a voluntarist account of parenthood, a voluntarist account of familial relations in general is implausible. The duties that siblings have to each other, or that children have to their parents, are not easily understood as voluntary undertakings. This is a problem for voluntarist accounts of parenthood to the extent that duties between parents and children should fit within a wider framework of familial duties (Rachels 1989; Mills 2003; see Mullin 2010, for discussion; and the entry on special obligations).

4.4 Causal accounts

Finally, parenthood may be grounded in causation (Nelson 1991; Bigelow et al. 1988; Blustein 1997; Archard 2010). A causal account differs from intentionalism in that one can cause something without intending to do so. Indeed, one can cause a certain state of affairs even when one is unaware that one's actions could do so. One needn't have grasped the connection between sexual intercourse and pregnancy in order to be the cause of a child's existence.

One of the attractions of causalism is its promise to account for the plausibility of genetic, labor-based, and intentional accounts of parenthood. Genetic, gestational, and caregiving relationships contribute to the child's existence or development, and, in the cases that some intentionalists appeal to, the commissioning couple are a cause of the child's existence. Causalism offers to explain its competitors.

But causal accounts face problems: first, what is meant by "causation" in this context? 'But-for' causation is too weak to ground parenthood, because its scope is so wide: for example, procreation might not have occurred 'but-for' the urgings of would-be grandparents or the actions of the match-making friend who introduced the parents. This is the "too many parents" problem (Hanna 2019). But it is unclear what notion of causation the causal theorist should adopt instead of 'but-for' causation (Blustein 1997). Second, what implications does the causal account have? Even with a satisfactory account of causation it may be unclear whom the account ascribes parenthood to in any particular case-or if it is clear enough, there is a risk of an ad hoc account of causation tailor-made for this purpose. Concern with the arbitrariness of the causal chain by means of which a child may be created leads writers such as Fuscaldo (2006) to emphasize that what is wanted is not a theory of causation but of agency (see also Austin 2004, 2007). This leads causal theorists back in the direction of intentionalism.

A related problem is that causal accounts often leave it unclear how causal responsibility generates moral responsibility. Sometimes it appears that the thought is that procreators, by causing a child to exist, have placed it in a needy position and so owe it, as compensation, "procreative costs." But these costs are arguably not equivalent to the weighty responsibilities of parenthood (Brake 2010). The question is whether, as a result of causal responsibility for their existence, parents merely owe children repair of their needy condition, by fostering survival to adulthood, or whether such "procreative costs" include a richer set of parental responsibilities, such as a duty to love and to make the child "content with his condition" (Prusak 2011b, 67).

One final alternative, as noted above, is a 'pluralist' account which allows that more than one of these relations (such as causation or intention) may be sufficient, but not necessary, for parenthood (Bayne and Kolers 2003). Pluralist accounts have not yet been developed in depth.

Having outlined the main theories of the grounds of parenthood, we turn now to questions concerning the morality of being a parent.

5. Being Parents

5.1 Parental Rights

Parents have moral and legal rights regarding their children. They have the liberty to make decisions on behalf of their children regarding matters such as diet, schooling, association with others, and-more controversially-religious observance, and the right to exclude others from such decision-making. Such rights decrease in strength and scope as children gain decision-making capacity, yet until the child reaches moral or legal competence, issues of substituted judgment and surrogate decision-making remain (Ross 2002).

Parental rights' content, extent, and relation to parental obligations is determined by the underlying theory of why parents possess such rights. On the child-centered or fiduciary model, parental rights piggyback on parental responsibilities to children, which are morally fundamental. One such theory is Blustein's "priority thesis." According to the priority thesis, parents acquire rights in order to carry out their responsibilities; thus responsibilities are morally prior to rights (Blustein 1982, 104-114). As Archard writes, "A parent can choose for his child, and exclude others from the making of these choices, only in the service of and thus constrained by a duty to care for the child. It is in the first instance because a dependent child must have decisions made for it that a designated parent is entitled to make those decisions." (Archard 2010, 108; see also Brennan and Noggle 1997; Austin 2007).

Other theories of parental rights focus on parents' interests. Historically, parenthood has often been regarded as a possessory (or proprietary) relationship. Some genetic accounts of parenthood imply the proprietarian view that parents own their children (see 4.1; Hall 1999; Narveson 2002). However, property rights seem inappropriate here for several reasons: children cannot be sold and they cannot be used however the parent wishes. While it might be responded that parental property rights are limited, prohibiting sale and certain uses, this does not address the more fundamental objection that persons cannot be property.

Other theories provide more plausible support for parent-centered, as opposed to child-centered, accounts of parental rights in terms of parents' interests. Brighouse and Swift argue for parental rights on the basis of the irreplaceable good offered by parenting. Because parenting is a project with goods which cannot be obtained through other activities, such as the responsibility of caring for a child and the receipt of children's spontaneous trust, affection, and intimacy, the interest in parenting should be protected. On this account, parental rights, not parental obligations, are fundamental, because the parents' interests are the basis for the right (Brighouse and Swift 2006, 2014; see also Shoeman 1980). One line of objection is to ask whether the interest in parenting is likely to be undermined by state intervention in parental decision-making. Here we can usefully distinguish at least three different kinds of parental interests which could ground parental rights to control aspects of their children's lives: interests in being a fiduciary, interests in intimacy, and interests in "nurturing, counseling, and education." Intimacy and being a fiduciary, which Brighouse and Swift appeal to, arguably need not be undermined by intervention - whereas an interest in authentically nurturing children into adults might (Altman 2018).

The parental-interest account of parents' rights addresses problems raised within political philosophy for the family. Brighouse and Swift generate their account partly in response to the challenge of redistribution of children: if the state should promote child welfare, why should children not be redistributed at birth to the best prospective parents, to maximize children's welfare? But as Gheaus points out, while Brighouse and Swift provide an account of fundamental parental rights, they do not explain why biological parents have rights to rear their biological children, rather than such children being redistributed to better prospective parents, who could thereby undertake their own parenting projects (Gheaus 2012). One response to this concern is to separate the question of how someone obtains parental rights (the topic of the previous section) from the question of whose interests-parent, child, or both-those rights ultimately protect (Millum 2017). Brighouse and Swift also aim to address the family's notorious effect on equal opportunity - different parenting practices, such as reading bedtime stories, can greatly affect children's life chances. On their account, certain inequality-producing institutions such as private schools and inheritances are not protected under parents' rights - but practices essential to parents' interest in intimacy, such as bedtime stories, are. (For a reply, see Engster 2019.) Finally, a dual-interest view, grounding rights in interests of both parents and children, is also possible (Macleod 2015).

One question concerning parental rights is their strength. Parental rights entitle parents to exclude others, including the state, from child-rearing decisions. For critics, the absolute exclusivity typical of contemporary western nuclear families gives parents too much power over the vulnerable children in their care (Card 1996, Gheaus 2011; see also Gheaus 2018b).

An important set of questions about the content of parental rights concerns their scope. While it is widely agreed that parents have rights to make many day-to-day decisions on behalf of their children, a number of purported rights have been questioned.

One controversial right is the right to infuse children with parents' religious beliefs. On the one hand, handing down such beliefs to children is, to many, a key aspect of the parental project (Brighouse and Swift 2006, 2014; Galston 2011). On the other hand, Clayton argues that raising one's child in a religion violates a requirement of liberal neutrality, which applies to parents just as it applies to states (Clayton 2006; also Coleman 2003). From a feminist perspective, Okin argued that religious infusion could affect girls' developing self-respect and equal opportunity (Okin 1994; cf. Chambers 2017, Chapter 6; Schouten 2017). Even if such arguments theoretically justify state intervention, their proponents must explain how, in practice, the state could intervene in the intimate parent-child relationship without psychologically harming children.

Another set of questions concerns parental authority over medical interventions. Critics have argued that circumcision of male children violates their bodily integrity; but children's rights to bodily integrity must be weighed against other morally weighty interests, including the child's own interest in community membership (Benatar and Benatar 2003, Mazor 2019). Likewise, there is controversy over whether parents should have the right to prevent transgender adolescents from receiving puberty-blocking treatment; here, harm to transgender children must be weighed (Priest 2019). In such conflicts, there are tensions between parental control rights and children's rights, but also between different understandings of what the child's best interests require (particularly when the child lacks decision-making capacity). (See entry on children's rights.)

A related debate concerns the authority of parents to control their child's education. Most discussion of this issue has focused on religion-based objections to the duration or content of public schooling. This was the context in which Feinberg originally discussed the child's "right to an open future," which he regards as a constraint on parental discretion regarding their child's schooling (1980, see below for further discussion). A key challenge is how to justify these objections. One strategy is to cite the parents' right to freedom of religion, but then some argument must be given for why the apparent interests of a child in being educated should be sacrificed to their religious freedom. A separate question regarding parental rights and education is whether parents are ethically permitted to confer advantages on their children through private schooling, particularly when doing so is expected to reduce the quality of education available to other children (Swift 2003).

Other questions concerning parental rights concern exclusivity and the number of possible parents. As step-parenting, procreation involving multiple biological, gestational, and social parents, and other diverse family forms become more prevalent, why should the number of parents be limited to two? As noted in Section 1 above, a Canadian court recognized a child as having three parents. Relatives in addition to the parents are frequently involved in raising children, even in cultures in which the nuclear family is considered the norm. In the United States, nearly 3 million grandparents have primary responsibility for children living in their homes and it has been argued that grandparental rights should be legally recognized (Henderson 2005). Further, some philosophers have argued for legal recognition or support for non-parental care, as in, for example, African-American practices of "othermothering" or "revolutionary parenting." This would permit more adults to contribute to children's development, thereby arguably benefiting children (Card 1996; Gheaus 2011 and 2019; hooks 1984; Collins 1991; Mullin 2005; see also 3.5 above).

So far, we have considered parental rights as parents' moral and legal claims to make, and exclude others from, decisions regarding their child. But some philosophers have argued for other rights held by parents-namely, positive rights to social support for child-rearing. These proposals are discussed in 5.2, as they aim at helping parents discharge their responsibilities.

5.2 Parental Responsibilities

Parenthood inhabits the intersection of two distinct relationships: a custodial relationship between parent and child, and a trustee relationship between the parents and the larger society or other collective. Both may generate responsibilities.

The custodial relationship involves a set of duties aimed at, and justified by, the welfare of the child. As custodian, the parent is under a limited obligation to work for and organize his or her life around the welfare and development of the child, for the child's sake. Analysis of the content of parental responsibilities has therefore mostly focused on the rights of the child. Feinberg's right to an "open future" can be read as a limit on parental discretion (see 5.1). It can also be interpreted as giving children positive claims to certain goods, such as an education that leaves them with a wide range of valuable life plans to choose from. Whether there is such a positive right and in what it consists are matters of dispute (Liao 2015; Mills 2003; Lotz 2006 and 2014; Millum 2014; essays in Archard and Macleod 2002; entry on children's rights). Another question is whether parental responsibilities end when the child reaches adulthood, or whether they are lifelong (Weinberg 2018).

Societies, families, and cultural groups also have interests in the welfare of children. For instance, the state has an interest in the reproduction of its workforce and its citizens; hence parental decisions that threaten the child's chances of becoming a fully participating citizen may come under special state scrutiny. Distinct groups, such as the state and cultural groups, may make conflicting claims on the parents as trustees. For instance, in order to promote culturally prescribed norms, parents might seek to remove their child from school, or have their daughter undergo clitoridectomy; yet the state may claim that such a decision violates the parents' trustee relationship on grounds that the state has a compelling interest in securing the full citizenship capacities and rights of its citizens (Galston 1995; Okin 1989; Chambers 2017, Chapter 6). Moreover, discharging parental responsibilities must be balanced with discharging obligations of distributive and global justice (Archard and Macleod 2002, Part III; Macleod 2010).

Indeed, some philosophers argue that parental responsibilities include duties towards social or environmental justice. For example, parents arguably have a duty of egalitarian justice to guide their children away from "expensive consumption habits" (Zwarthoed 2017). They may, as parents, have duties to address climate change, on behalf of their children's, or children's children's, interests (Cripps 2017; see also Gheaus 2016a, 2019). This may also apply to special duties of adoptive parents, especially in inter-racial adoptions (Haslanger and Witt 2006, see also Baylis and McLeod 2014).

All parents fail to meet their responsibilities at some point. We would not expect someone to raise a child without making mistakes along the way. However, at some point, excusable parental failings shade into neglect and abuse. Exactly what counts as child abuse is a matter for debate. However, if abuse marks a threshold above which it is permissible for others-particularly the state-to intervene, then a clear definition is needed (Archard 2004, chap. 14).

By the time neglect or abuse has reached the point that the state intervenes, irreparable damage has often been caused, and the actions that can be taken to improve a child's situation are likely to be limited. Some philosophers argue that prospective parents should be screened ahead of time for their ability to parent and those who are deemed unlikely to be able to fulfill their parental responsibilities should not be granted parental licenses. The argument in favor of licensing parents may appeal primarily to the harms to children that occur if unfit people are allowed to parent (LaFollette 1980, 2010) or to the wider impact on society from rearing children who are unlikely to become good citizens (McFall 2009). Either way proposals for parental licensing schemes must show that it is possible prospectively to identify individuals who are likely to be neglectful or abusive parents with sufficient accuracy, show that the schemes do not violate the rights of prospective parents (on this see Liao 2015), and explain how they are to be enforced. The latter is perhaps the hardest challenge: without resorting to compulsory sterilization how can people be prevented from having children without licenses? (McFall 2009, 122) Of course, there could be penalties for unlicensed parents, or their children could be subject to confiscation, but such policies risk inadvertently penalizing the children they were intended to assist. Moreover, enforcement would disproportionately burden women. As gestators, women might be subjected to de facto forced abortions; women are also more likely to be primary caregivers, and thus subjected to greater interference and monitoring (Engster 2010). A further question is whether onerous licensing policies for adoptive parents can be justified in the absence of more general parental licensing schemes (McLeod and Botterell 2014).

Finally, children need a great deal of care if they are to grow up into autonomous, healthy adults and good citizens. Parents clearly have the responsibility to provide some of this care, and the state has the obligation to step in when parents are failing to do as they should. However, there is an open question about what the state should provide in cases that do not involve abuse or neglect. As Alstott has argued, parenting imposes opportunity costs on parents, for example, in earning potential. Moreover, child-care labor remains gender-structured, with women performing by far the greater share. On these grounds Alstott argues for caregiver accounts to ensure equal opportunity, for example, allocating educational funds to parents (Alstott 2004). One pertinent question is whether parenting should be considered a private good, like an expensive taste which it would be unjust for society to subsidize (Taylor 2009). Some have responded that it is a matter of justice due to its effects on equal opportunity for women and full participation of women as equal citizens (Okin 1989; Kittay 1999; Schouten 2019). Others have argued for collective social responsibility for children on grounds such as children's welfare and their status as a public good, providing positive externalities by reproducing society and producing workers who will support the current generation in old age (George 1987; Archard 2004; Engster 2010; Olsaretti 2013; Millum 2017).

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A parent is someone with weighty rights and responsibilities regarding a given child. Parents usually have decision-making rights over most areas of their child's life and rights to exclude others from making such decisions.

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What is Agency by Necessity?

Agency by necessity is a term used to describe a relationship in which one party makes essential decisions for the other party in the event of an emergency. Such a relationship is recognized by the legal system.

How Does Agency by Necessity Work?

Review of the Principal-Agent Relationship

In order to understand agency by necessity better, we should briefly review the foundational concepts behind the principal-agent relationship. A principal-agent relationship is one in which a party (the agent) acts and makes decisions on behalf of another party (the principal).

The Principal-Agent Problem

Agency by Necessity Example

In extraordinary circumstances, agency by necessity also enables agents to act in the best interests of the principal, especially when time constraints or pressing demands necessitate an immediate response.

Possible Legal Issues Arising from Agency by Necessity

The agency by necessity relationship can sometimes face challenges from a legal standpoint, especially when the decisions made by the agent concerns large amounts of money. Common examples include cases regarding the distribution and disposition of the assets of wealthy individuals to their descendants. The distribution of inheritances or funds from trusts often causes a great deal of frustration to the families involved.

When an individual acting as an agent by necessity is involved, other family members often take issue with the decisions made by the agent and voice their frustrations. Often, the family arguments are made in the public eye and may cause irrevocable harm to the families - fracturing relationships to the core. The actions of the agent by necessity are often questioned and will likely be subject to lawsuits, particularly when the monetary amounts involved are substantial.

Many of the issues above come into play when a wealthy individual becomes incapacitated, hindering their abilities to make financial, and perhaps more importantly, estate planning decisions. The designated agent by necessity is responsible for making many of the decisions concerning the principal's estate and assets.

Decisions include the distribution and bequest of assets to the principal's heirs, writing wills, settling estate taxes, settling off debts, and managing the principal's financial obligations.

Related Readings

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Agency by necessity is a term used to describe a relationship in which one party makes essential decisions for the other party in the event of an emergency. Such a relationship is recognized by the legal system. In order to understand agency by necessity better, we should briefly review the foundational concepts behind the principal-agent relationship.

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Donna Haraway
"A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century"
AN IRONIC DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WOMEN IN THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT

This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification. Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously. I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blasphemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. At the centre of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg.

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction. The international women's movements have constructed 'women's experience', as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective object. This experience is a fiction and fact of the most crucial, political kind. Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression, and so of possibility. The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women's experience in the late twentieth century. This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion.

Contemporary science fiction is full of cyborgs - creatures simultaneously animal and machine, who populate worlds ambiguously natural and crafted.

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Modern medicine is also full of cyborgs, of couplings between organism and machine, each conceived as coded devices, in an intimacy and with a power that was not generated in the history of sexuality. Cyborg 'sex' restores some of the lovely replicative baroque of ferns and invertebrates (such nice organic prophylactics against heterosexism). Cyborg replication is uncoupled from organic reproduction. Modern production seems like a dream of cyborg colonization work, a dream that makes the nightmare of Taylorism seem idyllic. And modern war is a cyborg orgy, coded by C3I, command-control-communication-intelligence, an $84 billion item in 1984'sUS defence budget. I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings. Michael Foucault's biopolitics is a flaccid premonition of cyborg politics, a very open field.

By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. Ths cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation. In the traditions of 'Western' science and politics--the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other - the relation between organism and machine has been a border war. The stakes in the border war have been the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination. This chapter is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction. It is also an effort to contribute to socialist-feminist culture and theory in a postmodernist, non-naturalist mode and in the utopian tradition of imagining a world without gender, which is perhaps a world without genesis, but maybe also a world without end. The cyborg incarnation is outside salvation history. Nor does it mark time on an oedipal calendar, attempting to heal the terrible cleavages of gender in an oral symbiotic utopia or post-oedipal apocalypse. As Zoe Sofoulis argues in her unpublished manuscript on Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, and nuclear culture, Lacklein, the most terrible and perhaps the most promising monsters in cyborg worlds are embodied in non-oedipal narratives with a different logic of repression, which we need to understand for our urvival.

The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity. In a sense, the cyborg has no origin story in the Western sense - a 'final' irony since the cyborg is also the awful apocalyptic telos of the

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'West's' escalating dominations of abstract individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency, a man in space. An origin story in the 'Western', humanist sense depends on the myth of original unity, fullness, bliss and terror, represented by the phallic mother from whom all humans must separate, the task of individual development and of history, the twin potent myths inscribed most powerfully for us in psychoanalysis and Marxism. Hilary Klein has argued that both Marxism and psychoanalysis, in their concepts of labour and of individuation and gender formation, depend on the plot of original unity out of which difference must be produced and enlisted in a drama of escalating domination of woman/nature. The cyborg skips the step of original unity, of identification with nature in the Western sense. This is its illegitimate promise that might lead to subversion of its teleology as star wars.

The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence. No longer structured by the polarity of public and private, the cyborg defines a technological polls based partly on a revolution of social relations in the oikos, the household. Nature and culture are reworked; the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation by the other. The rela-tionships for forming wholes from parts, including those of polarity and hierarchical domination, are at issue in the cyborg world. Unlike the hopes of Frankenstein's monster, the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through a restoration of the garden; that is, through the fabrication of a heterosexual mate, through its completion in a finished whole, a city and cosmos. The eyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust. Perhaps that is why I want to see if eyborgs can subvert the apocalypse of returning to nuclear dust in the manic compulsion to name the Enemy. Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not re-member the cosmos. They are wary of holism, but needy for connection- they seem to have a natural feel for united front politics, but without the vanguard party. The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential.

I will return to the science fiction of cyborgs at the end of this chapter, but now I want to signal three crucial boundary breakdowns that make the following political-fictional (political-scientific) analysis possible. By the late twentieth century in United States scientific culture, the boundary between human and animal is thoroughly breached. The last beachheads of uniqueness have been polluted if not turned into amusement parks--language tool

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use, social behaviour, mental events, nothing really convincingly settles the separation of human and animal. And many people no longer feel the need for such a separation; indeed, many branches of feminist culture affirm the pleasure of connection of human and other living creatures. Movements for animal rights are not irrational denials of human uniqueness; they are a clear-sighted recognition of connection across the discredited breach of nature and culture. Biology and evolutionary theory over the last two centuries have simultaneously produced modern organisms as objects of knowledge and reduced the line between humans and animals to a faint trace re-etched in ideological struggle or professional disputes between life and social science. Within this framework, teaching modern Christian creationism should be fought as a form of child abuse.

Biological-determinist ideology is only one position opened up in scientific culture for arguing the meanings of human animality. There is much room for radical political people to contest the meanings of the breached boundary.2 The cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal is transgressed. Far from signalling a walling off of people from other living beings, cyborgs signal distrurbingly and pleasurably tight coupling. Bestiality has a new status in this cycle of marriage exchange.

The second leaky distinction is between animal-human (organism) and machine. Pre-cybernetic machines could be haunted; there was always the spectre of the ghost in the machine. This dualism structured the dialogue between materialism and idealism that was settled by a dialectical progeny, called spirit or history, according to taste. But basically machines were not self-moving, self-designing, autonomous. They could not achieve man's dream, only mock it. They were not man, an author to himself, but only a caricature of that masculinist reproductive dream. To think they were otherwise was paranoid. Now we are not so sure. Late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and art)ficial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.

Technological determination is only one ideological space opened up by the reconceptions of machine and organism as coded texts through which we engage in the play of writing and reading the world.3 'Textualization' of everything in poststructuralist, postmodernist theory has been damned by Marxists and socialist feminists for its utopian disregard for the lived relations of domination that ground the 'play' of arbitrary reading.4 It is certainly true that postmodernist strategies, like my cyborg myth, subvert myriad organic wholes (for example, the poem, the primitive culture, the biological organism). In short, the certainty of what counts as nature -- a

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source of insight and promise of innocence -- is undermined, probably fatally. The transcendent authorization of interpretation is lost, and with it the ontology grounding 'Western' epistemology. But the alternative is not cynicism or faithlessness, that is, some version of abstract existence, like the accounts of technological determinism destroying 'man' by the 'machine' or 'meaningful political action' by the 'text'. Who cyborgs will be is a radical question; the answers are a matter of survival. Both chimpanzees and artefacts have politics, so why shouldn't we (de Waal, 1982; Winner, 1980)?

The third distinction is a subset of the second: the boundary between physical and non-physical is very imprecise for us. Pop physics books on the consequences of quantum theory and the indeterminacy principle are a kind of popular scientific equivalent to Harlequin romances* as a marker of radical change in American white heterosexuality: they get it wrong, but they are on the right subject. Modern machines are quintessentially microelectronic devices: they are everywhere and they are invisible. Modern machinery is an irreverent upstart god, mocking the Father's ubiquity and spirituality. The silicon chip is a surface for writing; it is etched in molecular scales disturbed only by atomic noise, the ultimate interference for nuclear scores. Writing, power, and technology are old partners in Western stories of the origin of civilization, but miniaturization has changed our experience of mechanism. Miniaturization has turned out to be about power; small is not so much beautiful as pre-eminently dangerous, as in cruise missiles. Contrast the TV sets of the 1950s or the news cameras of the 1970s with the TV wrist bands or hand-sized video cameras now advertised. Our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum, and these machines are eminently portable, mobile -- a matter of immense human pain in Detroit and Singapore. People are nowhere near so fluid, being both material and opaque. Cyborgs are ether, quintessence.

The ubiquity and invisibility of cyborgs is precisely why these sunshine-belt machines are so deadly. They are as hard to see politically as materially. They are about consciousness - or its simulation.5 They are floating signIfiers moving in pickup trucks across Europe, blocked more effectively by the witch-weavings of the displaced and so unnatural Greenham women, who read the cyborg webs of power so very well, than by the militant labour of older masculinist politics, whose natural constituency needs defence jobs. Ultimately the 'hardest' science is about the realm of greatest boundary confusion, the realm of pure number, pure spirit, C3I, cryptography, and the preservation of potent secrets. The new machines are so clean and light. Their engineers are sun-worshippers mediating a new scientific revolution

*The US equivalent of Mills & Boon.

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associated with the night dream of post-industrial society. The diseases evoked by these clean machines are 'no more' than the minuscule coding changes of an antigen in the immune system, 'no more' than the experience of stress. The nimble fingers of 'Oriental' women, the old fascination of little Anglo-Saxon Victorian girls with doll's houses, women's enforced attention to the small take on quite new dimensions in this world. There might be a cyborg Alice taking account of these new dimensions. Ironically, it might be the unnatural cyborg women making chips in Asia and spiral dancing in Santa Rita jail* whose constructed unities will guide effective oppositional strategies.

So my cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work. One of my premises is that most American socialists and feminists see deepened dualisms of mind and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism in the social practices, symbolic formula-tions, and physical artefacts associated with 'high technology' and scientific culture. From One-DimensionalMan (Marcuse, 1964) to The Death of Nature (Merchant, 1980), the analytic resources developed by progressives have insisted on the necessary domination of technics and recalled us to an imagined organic body to integrate our resistance. Another of my premises is that the need for unity of people trying to resist world-wide intensification of domination has never been more acute. But a slightly perverse shift of perspective might better enable us to contest for meanings, as well as for other forms of power and pleasure in technologically mediated societies.

From one perspective, a cyborg world is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstraction embodied in a Star Wars apocalypse waged in the name of defence, about the final appropriation of women's bodies in a masculinist orgy of war (Sofia, 1984). From another perspective, a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints. The political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point. Single vision produces worse illusions than double vision or many-headed monsters. Cyborg unities are monstrous and illegitimate; in our present political circumstances, we could hardly hope for more potent myths for resistance and recoupling. I like to imagine LAG, the Livermore Action Group, as a kind of cyborg society, dedicated to realistically converting the laboratories that most fiercely embody and spew out the tools

* A practice at once both spiritual and political that linked guards and arrested anti-nuclear demonstrators in the Alameda County jail in California in the early 1985.

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Of technological apocalypse, and committed to building a political form that acutally manages to hold together witches, engineers, elders, perverts, Christians, mothers, and Leninists long enough to disarm the state. Fission Impossible is the name of the affinity group in my town.(Affinity: related not by blood but by choice, the appeal of one chemical nuclear group for another, avidiy.)6

FRACTURED IDENTITIES

It has become difficult to name one's feminism by a single adjective -- or even to insist in every circumstance upon the noun. Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic. With the hard-won recognition of their social and historical constitution, gender, race, and class cannot provide the basis for belief in 'essential' unity. There is nothing about teeing 'female' that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as 'being' female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices. Gender, race, or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historica experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. And who counts as 'us' in my own rhetoric? Which identities are available to ground such a potent political myth called 'us', and what could motivate enlistment in this collectivity? Painful fragmentation among feminists (not to mention among women) along every possible fault line has made the concept of woman elusive, an excuse for the matrix of women's dominations of each other. For me - and for many who share a similar historical location in white, professional middle-class, female, radical, North American, mid-adult bodies - the sources of a crisis in political identity are legion. The recent history for much of the US left and US feminism has been a response to this kind of crisis by endless splitting and searches for a new essential unity. But there has also been a growing recognition of another response through coalition - affinity, not identity.7

Chela Sandoval (n.d., 1984), from a consideration of specific historical moments in the formation of the new political voice called women of colour, has theorized a hopeful model of political identity called 'oppositional consciousness', born of the skills for reading webs of power by those refused stable membership in the social categories of race, sex, or class. 'Women of color', a name contested at its origins by those whom it would incorporate, as well as a historical consciousness marking systematic breakdown of all the signs of Man in 'Western' traditions, constructs a kind of postmodernist identity out of otherness, difference, and specificity. This postmodernist identity is fully political, whatever might be said abut other possible postmodernisms. Sandoval's oppositional consciousness is about contradic-

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tory locations and heterochronic calendars, not about relativisms and pluralisms.

Sandoval emphasizes the lack of any essential criterion for identifying who is a woman of colour. She notes that the definition of the group has been by conscious appropriation of negation. For example, a Chicana or US black woman has not been able to speak as a woman or as a black person or as a Chicano. Thus, she was at the bottom of a cascade of negative identities, left out of even the privileged oppressed authorial categories called 'women and blacks', who claimed to make the important revolutions. The category 'woman' negated all non-white women; 'black' negated all non-black people, as well as all black women. But there was also no 'she', no singularity, but a sea of differences among US women who have affirmed their historical identity as US women of colour. This identity marks out a self-consciously constructed space that cannot affirm the capacity to act on the basis of natural identification, but only on the basis of conscious coalition, of affinity, of political kinship.8 Unlike the 'woman' of some streams of the white women's movement in the United States, there is no naturalization of the matrix, or at least this is what Sandoval argues is uniquely available through the power of oppositional consciousness.

Sandoval's argument has to be seen as one potent formulation for feminists out of the world-wide development of anti-colonialist discourse; that is to say, discourse dissolving the 'West' and its highest product - the one who is not animal, barbarian, or woman; man, that is, the author of a cosmos called history. As orientalism is deconstructed politically and semiotically, the identities of the occident destabilize, including those of feminists.9 Sandoval argues that 'women of colour' have a chance to build an effective unity that does not replicate the imperializing, totalizing revolutionary subjects of previous Marxisms and feminisms which had not faced the consequences of the disorderly polyphony emerging from decolonization.

Katie King has emphasized the limits of identification and the political/ poetic mechanics of identification built into reading 'the poem', that generative core of cultural feminism. King criticizes the persistent tendency among contemporary feminists from different 'moments' or 'conversations' in feminist practice to taxonomize the women's movement to make one's own political tendencies appear to be the telos of the whole. These taxonomies tend to remake feminist history so that it appears to be an ideological struggle among coherent types persisting over time, especially those typical units called radical, liberal, and socialist-feminism. Literally, all other feminisms are either incorporated or marginalized, usually by building an explicit ontology and epistemology.10 Taxonomies of feminism produce epistemologies to police deviation from official women's experience. And of course, 'women's culture', like women of colour, is consciously created by

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mechanisms inducing affinity. The rituals of poetry, music, and certain forms of academic practice have been pre-eminent. The politics of race and culture in the US women's movements are intimately interwoven. The common achievement of King and Sandoval is learning how to craft a poetic/political unity without relying on a logic of appropriation, incorpora-tion, and taxonomic identification.

The theoretical and practical struggle against unity-through-domination or unity-through-incorporation ironically not only undermines the justifica-tions for patriarchy, colonialism, humanism, positivism, essentialism, scient-ism, and other unlamented -isms, but all claims for an organic or natural standpoint. I think that radical and socialist/Marxist-feminisms have also undermined their/our own epistemological strategies and that this is a crucially valuable step in imagining possible unities. It remains to be seen whether all 'epistemologies' as Western political people have known them fail us in the task to build effective affinities.

It is important to note that the effort to construct revolutionary stand-points, epistemologies as achievements of people committed to changing the world, has been part of the process showing the limits of identification. The acid tools of postmodernist theory and the constructive tools of ontological discourse about revolutionary subjects might be seen as ironic allies in dissolving Western selves in the interests of survival. We are excruciatingly conscious of what it means to have a historically constituted body. But with the loss of innocence in our origin, there is no expulsion from the Garden either. Our politics lose the indulgence of guilt with the naivete of innocence. But what would another political myth for socialist-feminism look like? What kind of politics could embrace partial, contradictory, permanently unclosed constructions of personal and collective selves and still be faithful, effective - and, ironically, socialist-feminist?

I do not know of any other time in history when there was greater need for political unity to confront effectively the dominations of 'race', 'gender', 'sexuality', and 'class'. I also do not know of any other time when the kind of unity we might help build could have been possible. None of 'us' have any longer the symbolic or material capability of dictating the shape of reality to any of'them'. Or at least 'we' cannot claim innocence from practicing such dominations. White women, including socialist feminists, discovered (that is, were forced kicking and screaming to notice) the non-innocence of the category 'woman'. That consciousness changes the geography of all previous categories; it denatures them as heat denatures a fragile protein. Cyborg feminists have to argue that 'we' do not want any more natural matrix of unity and that no construction is whole. Innocence, and the corollary insistence on victimhood as the only ground for insight, has done enough damage. But the constructed revolutionary subject must give late-twentieth-

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century people pause as well. In the fraying of identities and in the reflexive strategies for constructing them, the possibility opens up for weaving something other than a shroud for the day after the apocalypse that so prophetically ends salvation history.

Both Marxist/socialist-feminisms and radical feminisms have simul-taneously naturalized and denatured the category 'woman' and conscious-ness of the social lives of 'women'. Perhaps a schematic caricature can highlight both kinds of moves. Marxian socialism is rooted in an analysis of wage labour which reveals class structure. The consequence of the wage relationship is systematic alienation, as the worker is dissociated from his (sic) product. Abstraction and illusion rule in knowledge, domination rules in practice. Labour is the pre-eminently privileged category enabling the Marxist to overcome illusion and find that point of view which is necessary for changing the world. Labour is the humanizing activity that makes man; labour is an ontological category permitting the knowledge of a subject, and so the knowledge of subjugation and alienation.

In faithful filiation, socialist-feminism advanced by allying itself with the basic analytic strategies of Marxism. The main achievement of both Marxist feminists and socialist feminists was to expand the category of labour to accommodate what (some) women did, even when the wage relation was subordinated to a more comprehensive view of labour under capitalist patriarchy. In particular, women's labour in the household and women's activity as mothers generally (that is, reproduction in the socialist-feminist sense), entered theory on the authority of analogy to the Marxian concept of labour. The unity of women here rests on an epistemology based on the ontological structure of'labour'. Marxist/socialist-feminism does not 'natur-alize' unity; it is a possible achievement based on a possible standpoint rooted in social relations. The essentializing move is in the ontological structure of labour or of its analogue, women's activity.11 The inheritance of Marxian humanism, with its pre-eminently Western self, is the difficulty for me. The contribution from these formulations has been the emphasis on the daily responsibility of real women to build unities, rather than to naturalize them.

Catherine MacKinnon's (198Z, 1987) version of radical feminism is itself a caricature of the appropriating, incorporating, totalizing tendencies of Western theories of identity grounding action.12 It is factually and politically wrong to assimilate all of the diverse 'moments' or 'conversations' in recent women's politics named radical feminism to MacKinnon's version. But the teleological logic of her theory shows how an epistemology and ontology - including their negations - erase or police difference. Only one of the effects of MacKinnon's theory is the rewriting of the history of the polymorphous field called radical feminism. The major effect is the production of a theory

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of experience, of women's identity, that is a kind of apocalypse for all revolutionary standpoints. That is, the totalization built into this tale of radical feminism achieves its end - the unity of women - by enforcing the experience of and testimony to radical non-being. As for the Marxist/ socialist feminist, consciousness is an achievement, not a natural fact. And MacKinnon's theory eliminates some of the difficulties built into humanist revolutionary subjects, but at the cost of radical reductionism.

MacKinnon argues that feminism necessarily adopted a different analyt-ical strategy from Marxism, looking first not at the structure of class, but at the structure of sex/gender and its generative relationship, men's constitu-tion and appropriation of women sexually. Ironically, MacKinnon's 'ontology' constructs a non-subject, a non-being. Another's desire, not the self's labour, is the origin of 'woman'. She therefore develops a theory of consciousness that enforces what can count as 'women's' experience - anything that names sexual violation, indeed, sex itself as far as 'women' can be concerned. Feminist practice is the construction of this form of consciousness; that is, the self-knowledge of a self-who-is-not.

Perversely, sexual appropriation in this feminism still has the epistemolo-gical status of labour; that is to say, the point from which an analysis able to contribute to changing the world must flow. But sexual object)fication, not alienation, is the consequence of the structure of sex/gender. In the realm of knowledge, the result of sexual objectification is illusion and abstraction. However, a woman is not simply alienated from her product, but in a deep sense does not exist as a subject, or even potential subject, since she owes her existence as a woman to sexual appropriation. To be constituted by another's desire is not the same thing as to be alienated in the violent separation of the labourer from his product.

MacKinnon's radical theory of experience is totalizing in the extreme; it does not so much marginalize as obliterate the authority of any other women's political speech and action. It is a totalization producing what Western patriarchy itself never succeeded in doing - feminists' consciousness of the non-existence of women, except as products of men's desire. I think MacKinnon correctly argues that no Marxian version of identity can firmly ground women's unity. But in solving the problem of the contradictions of any Western revolutionary subject for feminist purposes, she develops an even more authoritarian doctrine of experience. If my complaint about socialist/Marxian standpoints is their unintended erasure of polyvocal, unassimilable, radical difference made visible in anti-colonial discourse and practice, MacKinnon's intentional erasure of all difference through the device of the 'essential' non-existence of women is not reassuring.

In my taxonomy, which like any other taxonomy is a re-inscription of history, radical feminism can accommodate all the activities of women named by socialist feminists as forms of labour only if the activity can somehow be sexualized. Reproduction had different tones of meanings for the two tendencies, one rooted in labour, one in sex, both calling the consequences of domination and ignorance of social and personal reality 'false consciousness'.

Beyond either the diff~culties or the contributions in the argument of any one author, neither Marxist nor radical feminist points of view have tended to embrace the status of a partial explanation; both were regularly constituted as totalities. Western explanation has demanded as much; how else could the 'Western' author incorporate its others? Each tried to annex other forms of domination by expanding its basic categories through analogy, simple listing, or addition. Embarrassed silence about race among white radical and socialist feminists was one major, devastating political consequence. History and polyvocality disappear into political taxonomies that try to establish genealogies. There was no structural room for race (or for much else) in theory claiming to reveal the construction of the category woman and social group women as a unified or totalizable whole. The structure of my caricature looks like this:

socialist feminism--structure of class // wage labour // alienation labour, by analogy reproduction, by extension sex, by addition race radical feminism - structure of gender // sexual appropriation // objectification

sex, by analogy labour, by extension reproduction, by addition race

In another context, the French theorist, Julia Kristeva, claimed women appeared as a historical group after the Second World War, along with groups like youth. Her dates are doubtful; but we are now accustomed to remembering that as objects of knowledge and as historical actors, 'race' did not always exist, 'class' has a historical genesis, and 'homosexuals' are quite junior. It is no accident that the symbolic system of the family of man - and so the essence of woman - breaks up at the same moment that networks of connection among people on the planet are unprecedentedly multiple, pregnant, and complex. 'Advanced capitalism' is inadequate to convey the structure of this historical moment. In the 'Western' sense, the end of man is at stake. It is no accident that woman disintegrates into women in our time. Perhaps socialist feminists were not substantially guilty of producing essentialist theory that suppressed women's particularity and contradictory interests. I think we have been, at least through unreflective participation in the logics, languages, and practices of white humanism and through searching for a single ground of domination to secure our revolutionary voice. Now we have less excuse. But in the consciousness of our failures, we

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risk lapsing into boundless difference and giving up on the confusing task of making partial, real connection. Some differences are playful; some are poles of world historical systems of domination. 'Epistemology' is about knowing the difference.

THE INFORMATICS OF DOMINATION

In this attempt at an epistemological and political position, I would like to sketch a picture of possible unity, a picture indebted to socialist and feminist principles of design. The frame for my sketch is set by the extent and importance of rearrangements in world-wide social relations tied to science and technology. I argue for a politics rooted in claims about fundamental changes in the nature of class, race, and gender in an emerging system of world order analogous in its novelty and scope to that created by industrial capitalism; we are living through a movement from an organic, industrial society to a polymorphous, information system--from all work to all play, a deadly game. Simultaneously material and ideological, the dichotomies may be expressed in the following chart of transitions from the comfortable old hierarchical dominations to the scary new networks I have called the informatics of domination:

Representation Simulation
Bourgeois novel, realism Science fiction, postmodernism
Organism Biotic Component
Depth, integrity Surface, boundary
Heat Noise
Biology as clinical practice Biology as inscription
Physiology Communications engineering
Small group Subsystem
Perfection Optimization
Eugenics Population Control
Decadence, Magic Mountain Obsolescence, Future Shock
Hygiene Stress Management
Microbiology, tuberculosis Immunology, AIDS
Organic division of labour Ergonomics/cybernetics of labour
Functional specialization Modular construction
Reproduction Replication
Organic sex role specialization Optimal genetic strategies
Bioogical determinism Evolutionary inertia, constraints
Community ecology Ecosystem
Racial chain of being Neo-imperialism, United Nations humanism
Scientific management in home/factory Global factory/Electronid cottage
Family/Market/Factory Women in the Integrated Circuit
Family wage Comparable worth
Public/Private Cyborg citizenship
Nature/Culture fields of difference
Co-operation Communicatins enhancemenet
Freud Lacan
Sex Genetic engineering
labour Robotics
Mind Artificial Intelligence
Second World War Star Wars
White Capitalist Patriarchy Informatics of Domination

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This list suggests several interesting things.13 First, the objects on the right-hand side cannot be coded as 'natural', a realization that subverts naturalistic coding for the left-hand side as well. We cannot go back ideologically or materially. It's not just that igod'is dead; so is the 'goddess'. Or both are revivified in the worlds charged with microelectronic and biotechnological politics. In relation to objects like biotic components, one must not think in terms of essential properties, but in terms of design, boundary constraints, rates of flows, systems logics, costs of lowering constraints. Sexual reproduction is one kind of reproductive strategy among many, with costs and benefits as a function of the system environment. Ideologies of sexual reproduction can no longer reasonably call on notions of sex and sex role as organic aspects in natural objects like organisms and families. Such reasoning will be unmasked as irrational, and ironically corporate executives reading Playboy and anti-porn radical feminists will make strange bedfellows in jointly unmasking the irrationalism.

Likewise for race, ideologies about human diversity have to be formulated in terms of frequencies of parameters, like blood groups or intelligence scores. It is 'irrational' to invoke concepts like primitive and civilized. For liberals and radicals, the search for integrated social systems gives way to a new practice called 'experimental ethnography' in which an organic object dissipates in attention to the play of writing. At the level of ideology, we see translations of racism and colonialism into languages of development and under-development, rates and constraints of modernization. Any objects or persons can be reasonably thought of in terms of disassembly and reassembly; no 'natural' architectures constrain system design. The financial districts in all the world's cities, as well as the export-processing and free-trade zones, proclaim this elementary fact of'late capitalism'. The entire universe of objects that can be known scientifically must be formulated as problems in

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communications engineering (for the managers) or theories of the text (for those who would resist). Both are cyborg semiologies.

One should expect control strategies to concentrate on boundary conditions and interfaces, on rates of flow across boundaries-- and not on the integrity of natural objects. 'Integrity' or 'sincerity' of the Western self gives way to decision procedures and expert systems. For example, control strategies applied to women's capacities to give birth to new human beings will be developed in the languages of population control and maximization of goal achievement for individual decision-makers. Control strategies will be formulated in terms of rates, costs of constraints, degrees of freedom. Human beings, like any other component or subsystem, must be localized in a system architecture whose basic modes of operation are probabilistic, statistical. No objects, spaces, or bodies are sacred in themselves; any component can be interfaced with any other if the proper standard, the proper code, can be constructed for processing signals in a common language. Exchange in this world transcends the universal translation effected by capitalist markets that Marx analysed so well. The privileged pathology affecting all kinds of components in this universe is stress - communications breakdown (Hogness, 1983). The cyborg is not subject to Foucault's biopolitics; the cyborg simulates politics, a much more potent field of operations.

This kind of analysis of scientific and cultural objects of knowledge which have appeared historically since the Second World War prepares us to notice some important inadequacies in feminist analysis which has proceeded as if the organic, hierarchical dualisms ordering discourse in 'the West' since Aristotle still ruled. They have been cannibalized, or as Zoe Sofia (Sofoulis) might put it, they have been 'techno-digested'. The dichotomies between mind and body, animal and human, organism and machine, public and private, nature and culture, men and women, primitive and civilized are all in question ideologically. The actual situation of women is their integration/ exploitation into a world system of production/reproduction and com-munication called the informatics of domination. The home, workplace, market, public arena, the body itself- all can be dispersed and interfaced in nearly infinite, polymorphous ways, with large consequences for women and others - consequences that themselves are very different for different people and which make potent oppositional international movements difficult to imagine and essential for survival. One important route for reconstructing socialist-feminist politics is through theory and practice addressed to the social relations of science and technology, including crucially the systems of myth and meanings structuring our imaginations. The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self. This is the self feminists must code.

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Communications technologies and biotechnologies are the crucial tools recrafting our bodies. These tools embody and enforce new social relations for women world-wide. Technologies and scientific discourses can be partially understood as formalizations, i.e., as frozen moments, of the fluid social interactions constituting them, but they should also be viewed as instruments for enforcing meanings. The boundary is permeable between tool and myth, instrument and concept, historical systems of social relations and historical anatomies of possible bodies, including objects of knowledge. Indeed, myth and tool mutually constitute each other.

Furthermore, communications sciences and modern biologies are constructed by a common move - the translation of the world into a problem of coding, a search for a common language in which all resistance to instrumental control disappears and all heterogeneity can be submitted to disassembly, reassembly, investment, and exchange.

In communications sciences, the translation of the world into a problem in coding can be illustrated by looking at cybernetic (feedback-controlled) systems theories applied to telephone technology, computer design, weapons deployment, or data base construction and maintenance. In each case, solution to the key questions rests on a theory of language and control; the key operation is determining the rates, directions, and probabilities of flow of a quantity called information. The world is subdivided by boundaries differentially permeable to information. Information is just that kind of quantifiable element (unit, basis of unity) which allows universal translation, and so unhindered instrumental power (called effective communication). The biggest threat to such power is interruption of communication. Any system breakdown is a function of stress. The fundamentals of this technology can be condensed into the metaphor C31, command-controlcommunication-intelligence, the military's symbol for its operations theory.

In modern biologies, the translation of the world into a problem in coding can be illustrated by molecular genetics, ecology, sociobiological evolutionary theory, and immunobiology. The organism has been translated into prob-lems of genetic coding and read-out. Biotechnology, a writing technology, informs research broadly.14 In a sense, organisms have ceased to exist as objects of knowledge, giving way to biotic components, i.e., special kinds of information-processing devices. The analogous moves in ecology could be examined by probing the history and utility of the concept of the ecosystem. Immunobiology and associated medical practices are rich exemplars of the privilege of coding and recognition systems as objects of knowledge, as constructions of bodily reality for us. Biology here is a kind of cryptography. Research is necessarily a kind of intelligence activity. Ironies abound. A stressed system goes awry; its communication processes break down; it fails to recognize the difference between self and other. Human babies with

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baboon hearts evoke national ethical perplexity-- for animal rights activists at least as much as for the guardians of human purity. In the US gay men and intravenous drug users are the 'privileged' victims of an awful immune system disease that marks (inscribes on the body) confusion of boundaries and moral pollution (Treichler, 1987).

But these excursions into communications sciences and biology have been at a rarefied level; there is a mundane, largely economic reality to support my claim that these sciences and technologies indicate fundamental transforma-tions in the structure of the world for us. Communications technologies depend on electronics. Modern states, multinational corporations, military power, welfare state apparatuses, satellite systems, political processes, fabrication of our imaginations, labour-control systems, medical construc-tions of our bodies, commercial pornography, the international division of labour, and religious evangelism depend intimately upon electronics. Micro-electronics is the technical basis of simulacra; that is, of copies without originals.

Microelectronics mediates the translations of labour into robotics and word processing, sex into genetic engineering and reproductive technologies, and mind into artificial intelligence and decision procedures. The new biotechnologies concern more than human reproducdon. Biology as a powerful engineering science for redesigning materials and processes has revolutionary implications for industry, perhaps most obvious today in areas of fermentadon, agriculture, and energy. Communicadons sciences and biology are construcdons of natural-technical objects of knowledge in which the difference between machine and organism is thoroughly blurred; mind, body, and tool are on very intimate terms. The 'multinational' material organization of the production and reproduction of daily life and the symbolic organization of the production and reproduction of culture and imagination seem equally implicated. The boundary-maintaining images of base and superstructure, public and private, or material and ideal never seemed more feeble.

I have used Rachel Grossman's (1980) image of women in the integrated circuit to name the situation of women in a world so intimately restructured through the social relations of science and technology.15 I used the odd circumlocution, 'the social relations of science and technology', to indicate that we are not dealing with a technological determinism, but with a historical system depending upon structured relations among people. But the phrase should also indicate that science and technology provide fresh sources of power, that we need fresh sources of analysis and political action (Latour, 1984). Some of the rearrangements of race, sex, and class rooted in high-tech-facilitated social relations can make socialist-feminism more relevant to effective progressive politics.

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THE 'HOMEWORK ECONOMY' OUTSIDE 'THE HOME'

The 'New Industrial Revolution' is producing a new world-wide working class, as well as new sexualities and ethnicities. The extreme mobility of capital and the emerging international division of labour are intertwined with the emergence of new collecdvities, and the weakening of familiar groupings. These developments are neither gender- nor race-neutral. White men in advanced industrial societies have become newly vulnerable to permanent job loss, and women are not disappearing from the job rolls at the same rates as men. It is not simply that women in Third World countries are the preferred labour force for the science-based multinationals in the export-processing sectors, particularly in electronics. The picture is more systematic and involves reproduction, sexuality, culture, consumphon, and producdon. In the prototypical Silicon Valley, many women's lives have been structured around employment in electronics-dependent jobs, and their intimate realities include serial heterosexual monogamy, negotiating childcare, distance from extended kin or most other forms of traditional community, a high likelihood of loneliness and extreme economic vulnerability as they age. The ethnic and racial diversity of women in Silicon Valley structures a microcosm of conflicting differences in culture, family, religion, education, and language.

Richard Gordon has called this new situation the 'homework economy'.16 Although he includes the phenomenon of literal homework emerging in connecdon with electronics assembly, Gordon intends 'homework economy' to name a restructuring of work that broadly has the characteristics formerly ascribed to female jobs, jobs literally done only by women. Work is being redefined as both literally female and feminized, whether performed by men or women. To be feminized means to be made extremely vulnerable; able to be disassembled, reassembled, exploited as a reserve labour force; seen less as workers than as servers; subjected to dme arrangements on and off the paid job that make a mockery of a limited work day; leading an existence that always borders on being obscene, out of place, and reducible to sex. Deskilling is an old strategy newly applicable to formerly privileged workers. However, the homework economy does not refer only to large-scale deskilling, nor does it deny that new areas of high skill are emerging, even for women and men previously excluded from skilled employment. Rather, the concept indicates that factory, home, and market are integrated on a new scale and that the places of women are crucial - and need to be analysed for differences among women and for meanings for relations between men and women in various situations.

The homework economy as a world capitalist organizational structure is made possible by (not caused by) the new technologies. The success of the attack on relatively privileged, mostly white, men's unionized jobs is deaf to

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the power of the new communications technologies to integrate and control labour despite extensive dispersion and decentralization. The consequences of the new technologies are felt by women both in the loss of the family (male) wage (if they ever had access to this white privilege) and in the character of their own jobs, which are becoming capital-intensive; for example, office work and nursing.

The new economic and technological arrangements are also related to the collapsing welfare state and the ensuing intensification of demands on women to sustain daily life for themselves as well as for men, children, and old people. The feminization of poverty-- generated by dismantling the welfare state, by the homework economy where stable jobs become the exception, and sustained by the expectation that women's wages will not be matched by a male income for the support of children-- has become an urgent focus. The causes of various women-headed households are a function of race, class, or sexuality; but their increasing generality is a ground for coalitions of women on many issues. That women regularly sustain daily life partly as a funcdon of their enforced status as mothers is hardly new; the kind of integration with the overall capitalist and progressively war-based economy is new. The particular pressure, for example, on US black women, who have achieved an escape from (barely) paid domeshc service and who now hold clerical and similar jobs in large numbers, has large implicadons for condnued enforced black poverty with employment. Teenage women in industrializing areas of the Third World increasingly find themselves the sole or major source of a cash wage for their families, while access to land is ever more problemadc. These developments must have major consequences in the psychodynamics and politics of gender and race.

Within the framework of three major stages of capitalism (commercial/ early industrial, monopoly, multinational) --tied to nationalism, imperialism, and multinationalism, and related to Jameson's three dominant aesthetic periods of realism, modernism, and postmodernism --I would argue that specific forms of families dialectically relate to forms of capital and to its political and cultural concomitants. Although lived problematically and unequally, ideal forms of these families might be schematized as (1) the patriarchal nuclear family, structured by the dichotomy between public and private and accompanied by the white bourgeois ideology of separate spheres and nineteenth-century Anglo-American bourgeois feminism; (2) the modern family mediated (or enforced) by the welfare state and institutions like the family wage, with a flowering of a-feminist heterosexual ideologies, including their radical versions represented in Greenwich Village around the First World War; and (3) the 'family' of the homework economy with its oxymoronic structure of women-headed households and its explosion of feminisms and the paradoxical intensification and erosion of gender itself.

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This is the context in which the projections for world-wide structural unemployment stemming from the new technologies are part of the picture of the homework economy. As robodcs and related technologies put men out of work in 'developed' countries and exacerbate failure to generate male jobs in Third World 'development', and as the automated of fice becomes the rule even in labour-surplus countries, the feminization of work intensifies. Black women in the United States have long known what it looks like to face the structural underemployment ('feminization') of black men, as well as their own highly vulnerable position in the wage economy. It is no longer a secret that sexuality, reproduction, family, and community life are interwoven with this economic structure in myriad ways which have also differentiated the situations of white and black women. Many more women and men will contend with similar situations, which will make cross-gender and race alliances on issues of basic life support (with or without jobs) necessary, not just mice.

The new technologies also have a profound effect on hunger and on food production for subsistence world-wide. Rae Lessor Blumberg (1983) estimates that women produce about 50 per cent of the world's subsistence food.17 Women are excluded generally from benefiting from the increased high-tech commodification of food and energy crops, their days are made more arduous because their responsibilides to provide food do not diminish, and their reproductive situations are made more complex. Green Revolution technologies interact with other high-tech industrial production to alter gender divisions of labour and differential gender migration patterns.

The new technologies seem deeply involved in the forms of'privatization' that Ros Petchesky (1981) has analysed, in which militarization, right-wing family ideologies and policies, and intensified definitions of corporate (and state) property as private synergistically interact.18 The new communications technologies are fundamental to the eradication of 'public life' for everyone. This facilitates the mushrooming of a permanent high-tech military establishment at the cultural and economic expense of most people, but especially of women. Technologies like video games and highly miniaturized televi-sions seem crucial to production of modern forms of 'private life'. The culture of video games is heavily orientated to individual compedtion and extraterrestrial warfare. High-tech, gendered imaginations are produced here, imaginations that can contemplate destruction of the planet and a sci-fi escape from its consequences. More than our imaginations is militarized; and the other realities of electronic and nuclear warfare are inescapable. These are the technologies that promise ultimate mobility and perfect exchange-- and incidentally enable tourism, that perfect practice of mobility and exchange, to emerge as one of the world's largest single industries.

The new technologies affect the social relations of both sexuality and of

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reproduction, and not always in the same ways. The close ties of sexuality and instrumentality, of views of the body as a kind of private satisfaction- and utility-maximizing machine, are described nicely in sociobiological origin stories that stress a genetic calculus and explain the inevitable dialectic of domination of male and female gender roles.19 These sociobiological stories depend on a high-tech view of the body as a biotic component or cybernetic communications system. Among the many transformations of reproductive situations is the medical one, where women's bodies have boundaries newly permeable to both 'visualization' and 'intervention'. Of course, who controls the interpretation of bodily boundaries in medical hermeneubcs is a major feminist issue. The speculum served as an icon of women's claiming their bodies in the 1970S; that handcraft tool is inadequate to express our needed body politics in the negotiation of reality in the practices of cyborg reproduction. Self-help is not enough. The technologies of visualization recall the important cultural practice of hundng with the camera and the deeply predatory nature of a photographic consciousness.20 Sex, sexuality, and reproduction are central actors in high-tech myth systems structuring our imaginations of personal and social possibility.

Another critical aspect of the social relations of the new technologies is the reformulation of expectations, culture, work, and reproduction for the large scientific and technical work-force. A major social and political danger is the formation of a strongly bimodal social structure, with the masses of women and men of all ethnic groups, but especially people of colour, confined to a homework economy, illiteracy of several varieties, and general redundancy and impotence, controlled by high-tech repressive apparatuses ranging from entertainment to surveillance and disappearance. An adequate socialist-feminist politics should address women in the privileged occupational categories, and particularly in the production of science and technology that constructs scientific-technical discourses, processes, and objects.21

This issue is only one aspect of enquiry into the possibility of a feminist science, but it is important. What kind of constitutive role in the production of knowledge, imagination, and practice can new groups doing science have? How can these groups be allied with progressive social and political movements? What kind of political accountability can be constructed to the women together across the scientific-technical hierarchies separating us? Might there be ways of developing feminist science/technology politics in alliance with and-military science facility conversion action groups? Many sciendfic and technical workers in Silicon Valley, the high-tech cowboys included, do not want to work on military science.22 Can these personal preferences and cultural tendencies be welded into progressive politics among this professional middle class in which women, including women of colour, are coming to be fairly numerous?

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WOMEN IN THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT

Let me summarize the picture of women's historical locations in advanced industrial societies, as these positions have been restructured partly through the social relations of science and technology. If it was ever possible ideologically to characterize women's lives by the disdnction of public and private domains-- suggested by images of the division of working-class life into factory and home, of bourgeois life into market and home, and of gender existence into personal and political realms --it is now a totally misleading ideology, even to show how both terms of these dichotomies construct each other in practice and in theory. I prefer a network ideological image, suggesting the profusion of spaces and identities and the permeability of boundaries in the personal body and in the body politic. 'Networking' is both a feminist practice and a multinational corporate strategy -- weaving is for oppositional cyborgs

So let me return to the earlier image of the informatics of domination and trace one vision of women's 'place' in the integrated circuit, touching only a few idealized social locations seen primarily from the point of view of advanced capitalist societies: Home, Market, Paid Work Place, State, School, Clinic-Hospital, and Church. Each of these idealized spaces is logically and practically implied in every other locus, perhaps analogous to a holographic photograph. I want to suggest the impact of the social relations mediated and enforced by the new technologies in order to help formulate needed analysis and practical work. However, there is no 'place' for women in these networks, only geometries of difference and contradiction crucial to women's cyborg identities. If we learn how to read these webs of power and social life, we might learn new couplings, new coalitions. There is no way to read the following list from a standpoint of'idendfication', of a unitary self. The issue is dispersion. The task is to survive in the diaspora.

Home: Women-headed households, serial monogamy, flight of men, old women alone, technology of domestic work, paid homework, re-emergence of home sweat-shops, home-based businesses and telecom-muting, electronic cottage, urban homelessness, migration, module architecture, reinforced (simulated) nuclear family, intense domestic violence.

Market: Women's continuing consumption work, newly targeted to buy the profusion of new production from the new technologies (especially as the competitive race among industrialized and industrializing nations to avoid dangerous mass unemployment necessitates finding ever bigger new markets for ever less clearly needed commodities); bimodal buying power, coupled with advertising targeting of the numerous affluent groups and neglect of the previous mass markets; growing importance of

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informal markets in labour and commodities parallel to high-tech, affluent market structures; surveillance systems through electronic funds transfer; intensified market abstraction (commodification) of experience, resulting in ineffective utopian or equivalent cynical theories of community; extreme mobility (abstraction) of marketing/financing systems; inter-penetration of sexual and labour markets; intensified sexualization of abstracted and alienated consumption.

Paid Work Place: Continued intense sexual and racial division of labour, but considerable growth of membership in privileged occupational categories for many white women and people of colour; impact of new technologies on women's work in clerical, service, manufacturing (especially textiles), agriculture, electronics; international restructuring of the working classes; development of new time arrangements to facilitate the homework economy (flex time, part time, over time, no time); homework and out work; increased pressures for two-tiered wage structures; significant numbers of people in cash-dependent populations world-wide with no experience or no further hope of stable employment; most labour 'marginal' or 'feminized'.

State: Continued erosion of the welfare state; decentralizations with increased surveillance and control; citizenship by telematics; imperialism and political power broadly in the form of information rich/information poor differentiation; increased high-tech militarization increasingly opposed by many social groups; reduction of civil service jobs as a result of the growing capital intensification of office work, with implications for occupational mobility for women of colour; growing privadzation of material and ideological life and culture; close integration of privatization and militarization, the high-tech forms of bourgeois capitalist personal and public life; invisibility of different social groups to each other, linked to psychological mechanisms of belief in abstract enemies.

School: Deepening coupling of high-tech capital needs and public educa-tion at all levels, differentiated by race, class, and gender; managerial classes involved in educational reform and refunding at the cost of

remaining progressive educational democratic structures for children and teachers; education for mass ignorance and repression in technocratic and militarized culture; growing and-science mystery cults in dissendng and radical political movements; continued relative scientific illiteracy among white women and people of colour; growing industrial direction of education (especially higher education) by science-based multinationals (particularly in electronics- and biotechnology-dependent companies); highly educated, numerous elites in a progressively bimodal society.

Clinic-hospital: Intensified machine-body relations; renegotiations of

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public metaphors which channel personal experience of the body, particularly in relation to reproduction, immune system functions, and 'stress' phenomena; intensification of reproductive politics in response to world historical implications of women's unrealized, potential control of their relation to reproduction; emergence of new, historically specific diseases; struggles over meanings and means of health in environments pervaded by high technology products and processes; continuing feminization of health work; intensified struggle over state responsibility for health; continued ideological role of popular health movements as a major form of American politics.

Church: Electronic fundamentalist 'super-saver' preachers solemnizing the union of electronic capital and automated fetish gods; intensified importance of churches in resisting the militarized state; central struggle over women's meanings and authority in religion; continued relevance of spirituality, intertwined with sex and health, in political struggle.

The only way to characterize the informatics of domination is as a massive intensification of insecurity and cultural impoverishment, with common failure of subsistence networks for the most vulnerable. Since much of this picture interweaves with the social relations of science and technology, the urgency of a socialist-feminist politics addressed to science and technology is plain. There is much now being tione, and the grounds for political work are rich. For example, the efforts to develop forms of collecdve struggle for women in paid work, like SEIU's District 925,* should be a high priority for all of us. These efforts are profoundly deaf to technical restructuring of labour processes and reformations of working classes. These efforts also are providing understanding of a more comprehensive kind of labour organization, involving community, sexuality, and family issues never privileged in the largely white male industrial unions.

The structural rearrangements related to the social relations of science and technology evoke strong ambivalence. But it is not necessary to be uldmately depressed by the implications of late twentieth-century women's relation to all aspects of work, culture, production of knowledge, sexuality, and reproduction. For excellent reasons, most Marxisms see domination best and have trouble understanding what can only look like false consciousness and people's complicity in their own domination in late capitalism. It is crucial to remember that what is lost, perhaps especially from women's points of view, is often virulent forms of oppression, nostalgically naturalized in the face of current violation. Ambivalence towards the disrupted unides mediated by high-tech culture requires not sorting consciousness into categories of clear-sighted critique grounding a solid political epistemology'

*Service Employees International Union's office workers' organization in the US.

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versus 'manipulated false consciousness', but subtle understanding of emerging pleasures, experiences, and powers with serious potential for changing the rules of the game.

There are grounds for hope in the emerging bases for new kinds of unity across race, gender, and class, as these elementary units of socialist-feminist analysis themselves suffer protean transformations. Intensifications of hardship experienced world-wide in connection with the social relations of science and technology are severe. But what people are experiencing is not transparently clear, and we lack aufficiently subtle connections for collectively building effective theories of experience. Present efforts - Marxist, psychoanalytic, feminist, anthropological-- to clarify even 'our' experience are rudimentary.

I am conscious of the odd perspecdve provided by my historical position - a PhD in biology for an Irish Catholic girl was made possible by Sputnik's impact on US national science-education policy. I have a body and mind as much constructed by the post-Second World War arms race and cold war as by the women's movements. There are more grounds for hope in focusing on the contradictory effects of politics designed to produce loyal American technocrats, which also produced large numbers of dissidents, than in focusing on the present defeats.

The permanent pardality of feminist points of view has consequences for our expectations of forms of political organization and participation. We do not need a totality in order to work well. The feminist dream of a common language, like all dreams for a perfectly true language, of perfectly faithful naming of experience, is a totalizing and imperialist one. In that sense, dialectics too is a dream language, longing to resolve contradiction. Perhaps, ironically, we can learn from our fusions with animals and machines how not to be Man, the embodiment of Western logos. From the point of view of pleasure in these potent and taboo fusions, made inevitable by the social relations of science and technology, there might indeed be a feminist science.

CYBORGS: A MYTH OF POLITICAL IDENTITY

I want to conclude with a myth about idendty and boundaries which might inform late twentieth-century political imaginations (Plate 1). I am indebted in this story to writers like Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delany, John Varley, James Tiptree, Jr, Octavia Butler, Monique Wittig, and Vonda McIntyre.23 These are our story-tellers exploring what it means to be embodied in high-tech worlds. They are theorists for cyborgs. Exploring concephons of bodily boundaries and social order, the anthropologist Mary Douglas (1966, 1970) should be credited with helping us to consciousness about how fundamental body imagery is to world view, and so to political language.

French feminists like Luce Irigaray and Monique Wittig, for all their differences, know how to write the body; how to weave eroticism, cosmology, and politics from imagery of embodiment, and especially for Wittig, from imagery of fragmentation and reconstitution of bodies.24

American radical feminists like Susan Griffnn, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich have profoundly affected our political imaginations - and perhaps restricted too much what we allow as a friendly body and political language.25 They insist on the organic, opposing it to the technological. But their symbolic systems and the related positions of ecofeminism and feminist paganism, replete with organicisms, can only be understood in Sandoval's terms as oppositional ideologies fitting the late twentieth century. They would simply bewilder anyone not preoccupied with the machines and consciousness of late capitalism. In that sense they are part of the cyborg world. But there are also great riches for feminists in explicitly embracing the possibilides inherent in the breakdown of clean disdnctions between organism and machine and similar distinctions structuring the Western self. It is the simultaneity of breakdowns that cracks the matrices of domination and opens geometric possibilities. What might be learned from personal and political 'technological' pollution? I look briefly at two overlapping groups of texts for their insight into the construction of a potentially helpful cyborg myth: constructions of women of colour and monstrous selves in feminist science fiction.

Earlier I suggested that 'women of colour' might be understood as a cyborg idendty, a potent subjecdvity synthesized from fusions of outsider identities and in the complex political-historical layerings of her 'biomythography', Zami (Lorde, 1982; King, 1987a, 1987b). There are material and cultural grids mapping this potential, Audre Lorde (1984) captures the tone in the title of her Sister Outsider. In my political myth, Sister Outsider is the offshore woman, whom US workers, female and feminized, are supposed to regard as the enemy prevendug their solidarity, threatening their security. Onshore, inside the boundary of the United States, Sister Outsider is a potential amidst the races and ethnic identities of women manipulated for division, competition, and exploitation in the same industries. 'Women of colour' are the preferred labour force for the science-based industries, the real women for whom the world-wide sexual market, labour market, and politics of reproduction kaleidoscope into daily life. Young Korean women hired in the sex industry and in electronics assembly are recruited from high schools, educated for the integrated circuit. Literacy, especially in English, distinguishes the 'cheap' female labour so attractive to the multinationals.

Contrary to orientalist stereotypes of the 'oral primidve', literacy is a special mark of women of colour, acquired by US black women as well as

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men through a history of risking death to learn and to teach reading and wridng. Writing has a special significance for all colonized groups. Writing has been crucial to the Western myth of the distinction between oral and written cultures, primitive and civilized mentalities, and more recently to the erosion of that distinction in 'postmodernist' theories attacking the phallogo-centrism of the West, with its worship of the monotheistic, phallic, authoritative, and singular work, the unique and perfect name.26 Contests for the meanings of writing are a major form of contemporary political struggle. Releasing the play of writing is deadly serious. The poetry and stories of US women of colour are repeatedly about writing, about access to the power to signify; but this dme that power must be neither phallic nor innocent. Cyborg writing must not be about the Fall, the imagination of a once-upon-a-time wholeness before language, before writing, before Man. Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other.

The tools are often stories, retold stories, versions that reverse and displace the hierarchical dualisms of naturalized identities. In retelling origin stories, cyborg authors subvert the central myths of origin of Western culture. We have all been colonized by those origin myths, with their longing for fulfilment in apocalypse. The phallogocentrie origin stories most crucial for feminist cyborgs are built into the literal technologies - teehnologies that write the world, biotechnology and microelectronics - that have recently textualized our bodies as code problems on the grid of C3I. Feminist cyborg stories have the task of recoding communication and intelligence to subvert command and control.

Figuratively and literally, language politics pervade the struggles of women of colour; and stories about language have a special power in the rich contemporary writing by US women of colour. For example, retellings of the stom~ of the indigenous woman Malinche, mother of the mesdzo 'bastard' race of the new world, master of languages, and mistress of Cortes, carry special meaning for Chicana constructions of identity. Cherrie Moraga (1983) in Loving in the War Years explores the themes of identity when one never possessed the original language, never told the original story, never resided in the harmony of legitimate heterosexuality in the garden of culture, and so cannot base identity on a myth or a fall from innocence and right to natural names, mother's or father's.27 Moraga's writing, her superb literacy, is presented in her poetry as the same kind of violation as Malinche's mastery of the conqueror's language -- a violation, an illegitimate production, that allows survival. Moraga's language is not 'whole'; it is self-consciously spliced, a chimera of English and Spanish, both conqueror's languages. But it is this chimeric monster, without claim to an original language before

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violation, that crafts the erode, competent, potent identities of women of colour. Sister Outsider hints at the possibility of world survival not because of her innocence, but because of her ability to live on the boundaries, to write without the founding myth of original wholeness, with its inescapable apocalypse of final return to a deathly oneness that Man has imagined to be the innocent and all-powerful Mother, freed at the End from another spiral of appropriation by her son. Writing marks Moraga's body, affirms it as the body of a woman of colour, against the possibility of passing into the unmarked category of the Anglo father or into the orientalist myth of 'original illiteracy' of a mother that never was. Malinche was mother here, not Eve before eating the forbidden fruit. Writing affirms Sister Outsider, not the Woman-before-the-Fall-into-Writing needed by the phallogocentric Family of Man.

Writing is pre-eminently the technology of cyborgs, etched surfaces of the late twentieth century. Cyborg politics is the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly, the central dogma of phallogocentrism. That is why cyborg politics insist on noise and advocate pollution, rejoicing in the illegitimate fusions of animal and machine. These are the couplings which make Man and Woman so problematic, subverting the structure of desire, the force imagined to generate language and gender, and so subverting the structure and modes of reproduction of 'Western' idendty, of nature and culture, of mirror and eye, slave and master, body and mind. 'We' did not originally choose to be cyborgs, but choice grounds a liberal politics and epistemology that imagines the reproduction of individuals before the wider replications of 'texts'.

From the perspective of cyborgs, freed of the need to ground politics in 'our' privileged position of the oppression that incorporates all other dominations, the innocence of the merely violated, the ground of those closer to nature, we can see powerful possibilities. Feminisms and Marxisms have run aground on Western epistemological imperatives to construct a revolutionary subject from the perspective of a hierarchy of oppressions and/or a latent position of moral superiority, innocence, and greater closeness to nature. With no available original dream of a common language or original symbiosis promising protection from hostile 'masculine' separation, but written into the play of a text that has no finally privileged reading or salvation history, to recognize 'oneself' as fully implicated in the world, frees us of the need to root politics in identification, vanguard parties, purity, and mothering. Stripped of identity, the bastard race teaches about the power of the margins and the importance of a mother like Malinche. Women of colour have transformed her from the evil mother of

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masculinist fear into the originally literate mother who teaches survival.

This is not just literary deconstruction, but liminal transformation. Every, story that begins with original innocence and privileges the return to wholeness imagines the drama of life to be individuation, separation, the birth of the self, the tragedy of autonomy, the fall into writing, alienation; that is, war, tempered by imaginary respite in the bosom of the Other. These plots are ruled by a reproductive politics --rebirth without flaw, perfection, abstraction. In this plot women are imagined either better or worse off, but all agree they have less selflhood, weaker individuation, more fusion to the oral, to Mother, less at stake in masculine autonomy. But there is another route to having less at stake in masculine autonomy, a route that does not pass through Woman, Primitive, Zero, the Mirror Stage and its imaginaw. It passes through women and other present-tense, illegitimate cyborgs, not of Woman born, who refuse the ideological resources of victimization so as to have a real life. These cyborgs are the people who refuse to disappear on cue, no matter how many dmes a 'western' commentator remarks on the sad passing of another primitive, another organic group done in by 'Western' technology, by writing.28 These real-life cyborgs (for example, the Southeast Asian village women workers inJapanese and US electronics firms described by Aihwa Ong) are actively rewriting the texts of their bodies and sociedes. Sumival is the stakes in this play of readings.

To recapitulate, certain dualisms have been persistent in Western traditions; they have all been systemic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of colour, nature, workers, animals - in short, domination of all constituted as others, whose task is to mirror the self. Chief among these troubling dualisms are self/other, mind/body, culture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive, reality/appearance, whole/part, agent/resource, maker/ made, active/passive, right/wrong, truth/illusion, totaVpartial, God/man. The self is the One who is not dominated, who knows that by the semice of the other, the other is the one who holds the future, who knows that by the experience of domination, which gives the lie to the autonomy of the self. To be One is to be autonomous, to be powerful, to be God; but to be One is to be an illusion, and so to be involved in a dialectic of apocalypse with the other. Yet to be other is to be multiple, without clear boundary, frayed, insubstantial. One is too few, but two are too many.

High-tech culture challenges these dualisms in intriguing ways. It is not clear who makes and who is made in the relation between human and machine. It is not clear what is mind and what body in machines that resolve into coding practices. In so far as we know ourselves in both formal discourse (for example, biology) and in daily practice (for example, the homework economy in the integrated circuit), we find ourselves to be cyborgs, hybrids, mosaics, chimeras. Biological organisms have become biotic systems, com-

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munications devices like others. There is no fundamental, ontological separation in our formal knowledge of machine and organism, of technical and organic. The replicant Rachel in the Ridley Scott film Blade Runner stands as the image of a cyborg culture's fear, love, and confusion.

One consequence is that our sense of connection to our tools is heightened. The trance state experienced by many computer users has become a staple of science-fiction film and cultural jokes. Perhaps paraplegics and other severely handicapped people can (and sometimes do) have the most intense experiences of complex hybridization with other communication devices.29 Anne McCaffrey's pre-feminist The Ship Who Sang (1969) explored the consciousness of a cyborg, hybrid of girl's brain and complex machinery, formed after the birth of a severely handicapped child. Gender, sexuality, embodiment, skill: all were reconstituted in the story. Why should our bodies end at the skin, or include at best other beings encapsulated by skin? From the seventeenth century dll now, machines could be animated - given ghostly souls to make them speak or move or to account for their orderly development and mental capacides. Or organisms could be mechan-ized - reduced to body understood as resource of mind. These machine/ organism relationships are obsolete, unnecessary. For us, in imagination and in other practice, machines can be prosthetic devices, intimate components, friendly selves. We don't need organic holism to give impermeable whole-ness, the total woman and her feminist variants (mutants?). Let me conclude this point by a very partial reading of the logic of the cyborg monsters of my second group of texts, feminist science fiction.

The cyborgs populating feminist science fiction make very problematic the statuses of man or woman, human, artefact, member of a race, individual endty, or body. Katie King clarifies how pleasure in reading these fictions is not largely based on idendfication. Students facingJoanna Russ for the first time, students who have learned to take modernist writers like James Joyce or Virginia Woolf without flinching, do not know what to make of The Adventures of Alyx or The Female Man, where characters refuse the reader's search for innocent wholeness while granting the wish for heroic quests, exuberant eroticism, and serious politics. The Female Man is the story of four versions of one genotype, all of whom meet, but even taken together do not make a whole, resolve the dilemmas of violent moral action, or remove the growing scandal of gender. The feminist science fiction of Samuel R. Delany, especially Tales of Neveyon, mocks stories of origin by redoing the neolithic revolution, replaying the founding moves of Western civilization to subvert their plausibility. James Tiptree, Jr, an author whose fiction was regarded as particularly manly undl her 'true' gender was revealed, tells tales of reproduction based on non-mammalian technologies like alternation of generations of male brood pouches and male nurturing. John Varley

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constructs a supreme cyborg in his arch-feminist exploration of Gaea, a mad goddess-planet-trickster-old woman-technological device on whose surface an extraordinary array of post-cyborg symbioses are spawned. Octavia Butler writes of an African sorceress pithug her powers of transformation against the genetic manipulations of her rival (Wild Seed), of dme warps that bring a modern US black woman into slavery where her actions in relation to her white master-ancestor determine the possibility of her own birth (Kindred), and of the illegidmate insights into idendty and community of an adopted cross-species child who came to know the enem' as self (Survivor). In Dawn (1987), the first instalment of a series called Xenogenesis, Butler tells the story of Lilith Iyapo, whose personal name recalls Adam's first and repudiated wife and whose family name marks her status as the widow of the son of Nigerian immigrants to the US. A black woman and a mother whose child is dead, Lilith mediates the transformation of humanity through genetic exchange with extra-terrestrial lovers/rescuers/destroyers/genetic engineers, who reform earth's habitats after the nuclear holocaust and coerce surviving humans into intimate fusion with them. It is a novel that interrogates reproductive, linguishc, and nuclear politics in a mythic field structured by late twentieth-century race and gender.

Because it is particularly rich in boundary transgressions, Vonda McIn-tyre's Superluminal can close this truncated catalogue of promising and dangerous monsters who help redefine the pleasures and politics of embodiment and feminist writing. In a fiction where no character is 'simply' human, human status is highly problematic. Orca, a genetically altered diver, can speak with killer whales and survive deep ocean conditions, but she longs to explore space as a pilot, necessitating bionic implants jeopardizing her kinship with the divers and cetaceans. Transformations are effected by virus vectors carrying a new developmental code, by transplant surgery, by implants of microelectronic devices, by analogue doubles, and other means. Lacnea becomes a pilot by accepting a heart implant and a host of other alterations allowing survival in transit at speeds exceeding that of light. Radu Dracul survives a virus-caused plague in his outerworld planet to find himself with a time sense that changes the boundaries of spatial perception for the whole species. All the characters explore the limits of language; the dream of communicating experience; and the necessity of limitation, partiality, and indmacy even in this world of protean transformation and connection. Superluminal stands also for the defining contradictions of a cyborg world in another sense; it embodies textually the intersection of feminist theory and colonial discourse in the science fiction I have alluded to in this chapter. This is a conjunction with a long history that many 'First World' feminists have tried to repress, including myself in my readings of Superluminal before being called to account by Zoe Sofoulis,

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whose different location in the world system's informatics of domin-ation made her acutely alert to the imperialist moment of all science fiction cultures, including women's science fiction. From an Australian feminist sensitivity, Sofoulis remembered more readily McIntyre's role as writer of the adventures of Captain Kirk and Spock in TV's Star Trek series than her rewriting the romance in Superluminal.

Monsters have always defined the limits of community in Western imaginations. The Centaurs and Amazons of ancient Greece established the limits of the centred polls of the Greek male human by their disruption of marriage and boundary pollutions of the warrior with animality and woman. Unseparated twins and hermaphrodites were the confused human material in early modern France who grounded discourse on the natural and supernatural, medical and legal, portents and diseases -- all crucial to establishing modern identity.30 The evolutionary and behavioural sciences of monkeys and apes have marked the multiple boundaries of late twentieth-century industrial identities. Cyborg monsters in feminist science fiction define quite different political possibilities and limits from those proposed by the mundane fiction of Man and Woman.

There are several consequences to taking seriously the imagery of cyborgs as other than our enemies. Our bodies, ourselves; bodies are maps of power and identity. Cyborgs are no exception. A cyborg body is not innocent; it was not born in a garden; it does not seek unitary identity and so generate antagonistic dualisms without end (or until the world ends); it takes irony for granted. One is too few, and two is only one possibility. Intense pleasure in skill, machine skill, ceases to be a sin, but an aspect of embodiment. The machine is not an it to be animated, worshipped, and dominated. The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. We can be responsible for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us. We are responsible for boundaries; we are they. Up till now (once upon a time), female embodiment seemed to be given, organic, necessary; and female embodiment seemed to mean skill in mothering and its metaphoric exten-sions. Only by being out of place could we take intense pleasure in machines, and then with excuses that this was organic activity after all, appropriate to females. Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex and sexual embodiment. Gender might not be global identity after all, even if it has profound historical breadth and depth.

The ideologically charged question of what counts as daily activity, as experience, can be approached by exploiting the cyborg image. Feminists have recently claimed that women are given to dailiness, that women more than men somehow sustain daily life, and so have a privileged epistemo-logical position potentially. There is a compelling aspect to this claim, one that makes visible unvalued female activity and names it as the ground of life.

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But the ground of life? What about all the ignorance of women, all the exclusions and failures of knowledge and skill? What about men's access to daily competence, to knowing how to build things, to take them apart, to play? What about other embodiments? Cyborg gender is a local possibility taking a global vengeance. Race, gender, and capital require a cyborg theory of wholes and parts. There is no drive in cyborgs to produce total theory, but there is an intimate experience of boundaries, their construction and deconstruction. There is a myth system waiting to become a political language to ground one way of looking at science and technology and challenging the informatics of domination—in order to act potently.

One last image organisms and organismic, holistic politics depend on metaphors of rebirth and invariably call on the resources of reproductive sex. I would suggest that cyborgs have more to do with regeneration and are suspicious of the reproductive matrix and of most birthing. For salamanders, regeneration after injury, such as the loss of a limb, involves regrowth of structure and restoration of function with the constant possibility of twinning or other odd topographical productions at the site of former injury. The regrown limb can be monstrous, duplicated, potent. We have all been injured, profoundly. We require regeneration, not rebirth, and the possibilities for our reconstitution include the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender.

Cyborg imagery can help express two crucial arguments in this essay: first, the production of universal, totalizing theory is a major mistake that misses most of reality, probably always, but certainly now; and second, taking responsibility for the social relations of science and technology means refusing an anti-science metaphysics, a demonology of technology, and so means embracing the skilful task of reconstructing the boundaries of daily life, in partial connection with others, in communication with all of our parts. It is not just that science and technology are possible means of great human satisfaction, as well as a matrix of complex dominations. Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a feminist speaking in tongues to strike fear into the circuits of the supersavers of the new right. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.

Source: Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in: Socialist Review, 80, 1985, S. 65–108, reprinted in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 149-181; (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html)

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Donna Haraway"A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" AN IRONIC DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WOMEN IN THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification.

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