My research explores how morality applies to the family and regulates the relationships within and between families. I am particularly interested in questions about the moral rights and obligations of parents, including how parents come to acquire special rights and/or obligations to parent particular children, what they are morally permitted and/or obligated to do to, with, and for the children under their care, and how their procreative and parenting projects fit within broader accounts of social and distributive justice. Not only are these questions philosophically interesting in their own right, forcing reflection on issues such as the value of parenting and the moral status of children, but they also lie at the heart of some of the most pressing ethical controversies involving families, from the assignment of parental rights and obligations in child custody disputes, to the intergenerational transmission of culture or advantage, to the social distribution of childrearing costs more generally. By exploring the grounds and contents of the rights and obligations of parents, my research seeks to shed light on these issues and thereby advance our understanding of the moral dimensions of the family.
Details of my past publications can be seen below. Currently, I'm actively working on several projects, including a series of papers on the ethics of parental dietary choice and series of papers and accompanying book project on anti-natalism.
Books
Procreative Justice: Balancing the Interests of Parents, Children, and Society
Routledge, 2025
This book explores how considerations of justice apply to procreative decision-making.
Despite its immense personal significance, procreation is an inherently other-regarding endeavor. By its very nature, the decision to procreate is the decision to bring into existence another morally considerable being, one who will be exposed to the full range of harms, benefits, and risks that accompany a typical human life, and one who cannot by its nature ever consent to being born. Moreover, when this decision is undertaken in a community of persons, it is also a decision to affect the lives of others in a host of profound if often underappreciated ways, from its effects on population size and environmental sustainability to its consequences for a community’s distribution of resources. In many ways, of course, these interests coincide: adults need children for their parenting projects, societies need citizens for the maintenance of their institutions, and children themselves are often happy to have been brought into existence. However, as the book demonstrates, the various interests that are implicated by procreative decision-making can also come into conflict as well, and in ways that raise basic questions of justice. Through a systematic examination of six of these questions, the author argues that taking adequate stock of the conflicting interests at stake in procreative decision-making leads to a narrower view of the conditions under which it is morally permissible to procreate and a much more demanding conception of our procreative responsibilities.
Procreative Justice will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on the morality of procreation and related areas of philosophy, including bioethics, intergenerational ethics, environmental ethics, population ethics, and the ethics of the family.
Articles
Disability, Relational Equality, and the Expressivist Objection
Hastings Center Report, 55(2) (2025) forthcoming.
Since the early 1990s, one of the most prominent objections to the use of prenatal or pre-implantation testing to prevent the birth of children with disabilities has focused on the negative judgments it expresses to and about existing persons with disabilities. Commonly known as the expressivist objection, it is based on the conjunction of two key claims: (1) the use or provision of tests to select against disability in offspring expresses negative judgments about existing persons with disabilities; and (2) the expression of these judgments itself constitutes a wrong to those persons. Despite depending on both claims, however, philosophical discussion of the expressivist objection has largely centred on the first: while commentators continue to debate whether disability screening does or does not express negative judgments, relatively little attention has been paid to explaining how the expression of those judgements wrongs persons with disabilities. In this paper, I argue both that whether or not the expressivist objection succeeds will ultimately depend on whether a plausible explanation can be supplied for how persons with disabilities are wronged by the expression of negative judgments, and that the existing literature surrounding relational egalitarianism can provide such an explanation, albeit with important limitations.
Do Prospective Parents Have a Duty to Adopt Rather than Procreate?
Public Affairs Quarterly, 39(1) (2025), pp. 68-88.
Is it wrong to bring new children into existence when there are so many existing children in need of parental care? Several philosophers have defended the view that prospective parents have a pro tanto duty to adopt rather than procreate as a means of fulfilling their interest in parenting. The most prominent argument for this view in the existing literature is the rescue-based argument, which derives an individual duty to adopt rather than procreate from a more general duty to rescue or assist those in need. In this paper, I critically examine the rescue-based argument and explain why it fails. First, I argue that we do not necessarily have a duty to rescue in cases that resemble the global orphan crisis, where one’s intervention is merely sufficient to prevent serious harm to a potential victim. Second, I argue that even if we had such a duty, it would not necessarily generate a duty to adopt rather than procreate given the significant financial, emotional, and agency-related costs of adoption, particularly in current, non-ideal conditions. The upshot of these arguments is that the rescue-based argument can only generate a duty to adopt rather than procreate with respect to a relatively small constituency of orphaned children, who are likely to be adopted anyway by willing volunteers. In the vast majority of cases, then, the rescue-based argument does not entail that it is wrong to create new children when there are already existing children in need of parental care.
On Risk-Based Arguments for Anti-Natalism
Journal of Value Inquiry, 56(1) (2022), pp. 101-117.
In this paper, I explore the prospects for risk-based arguments in favour of anti-natalism, which explain the wrongness of procreation in terms of wrongful risk-imposition on the resultant child. After considering and rejecting two risk-based arguments from the existing literature - David Benatar's and Matti Häyry's - I propose a more promising version that focuses on the lack of appropriate justification for imposing the risks of existence, namely, one that refers to the essential interests of the child on whom those risks are imposed. The paper proceeds in four parts. In Part 2, I set the stage for my discussion by clarifying the basic structure of risk-based arguments and identifying some of their important features. In Parts 3-5, I consider three distinct risk-based arguments for anti-natalism and argue that only the third, justificatory argument has the potential to be successful.
Can Gestation Ground Parental Rights?
Social Theory and Practice, 46(1) (2020), pp. 111-142.
In law and common-sense morality, it is generally assumed that adults who meet a minimum threshold of parental competency have a presumptive right to parent their biological children. But what is the basis of this right? According to one influential account, the right to parent one’s biological child is best understood as being grounded in an intimate relationship that develops between babies and their birth parents during the process of gestation. This paper identifies three major problems facing this view—the explanatory, adjudicatory, and theoretical problems—and proposes an alternative autonomy-based account that is capable of avoiding them.
e
How to Reject Benatar’s Asymmetry Argument
Bioethics, 33(6) (2019), pp. 674-683.
In this paper, I reconsider David Benatar’s primary argument for anti-natalism—the asymmetry argument—and outline a three-step process for rejecting it. I begin in Part I by reconstructing the asymmetry argument into three main premises. I then turn in Parts II-IV to explain how each of these premises is in fact false. Finally, I conclude in Part V by considering the relationship between the asymmetry argument and the quality of life argument in Benatar’s overall case for anti-natalism and argue that it is the latter argument that is actually doing the work. In this sense, the asymmetry argument is not only unsuccessful in generating Benatar’s anti-natalist conclusion; it is also unnecessary as well.
Children’s Rights and the Non-Identity Problem
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 49(5) (2019), pp. 580-605.
Can appealing to children’s rights help to solve the non-identity problem in cases of procreation? A number of philosophers have answered affirmatively, arguing that even if children cannot be harmed by being born into disadvantaged conditions, they may nevertheless be wronged if those conditions fail to meet a minimal standard of decency to which all children are putatively entitled. This paper defends the tenability of this view by outlining and responding to five prominent objections that have been raised against it in the contemporary literature: (1) the identifiability objection; (2) the non-existence objection; (3) the waiving of rights objection, (4) the lack of legitimate complaint objection; and (5) the unfairness objection.
Parental Justice and the Kids Pay View
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 12(4) (2018), pp. 963-977.
In a just society, who should be liable for the significant costs associated with creating and raising children? Patrick Tomlin has recently argued that children themselves should be liable on the grounds that they benefit from being raised into independent adults. This view, which Tomlin calls 'Kids Pay', depends on the more general principle that a beneficiary can incur an obligation to share in the cost of an essential benefit that the benefactor is responsible for her requiring. I argue in this paper that this principle is both generally false and particularly suspect in the kinds of cases that Tomlin needs it to be true, namely, cases in which a benefactor has created the need to be benefitted to satisfy a self-regarding interest in providing the benefit. In a nutshell, I argue that because parents (a) electively put their children into a needy circumstance for the purpose of (b) satisfying a self-regarding interest in meeting their children’s needs, they lack a legitimate claim against their children to share in its associated costs.
Book Chapters
Three Theories of Well-Being and their Implications for School Education
in Thomas Falkenberg (ed.) Well-Being and Well-Becoming in Schools. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024.
Different theories of well-being provide different accounts of what is ultimately good for a person and why. If we are to propose a model of schooling that takes the cultivation of well-being as a central goal and measure, then we owe a more precise account of the concept of well-being. In this chapter, we distinguish between three main substantive theories of well-being: hedonistic, desire fulfillment, and objective list theories. With an understanding of these three distinct approaches to well-being, we then turn to the question of what each theory of well-being means for school practitioners, administrators and policymakers in education.
Do Motives Matter? On the Political Relevance of Procreative Reasons (with Steven Lecce)
in Sarah Hannan, Samantha Brennan, and Richard Vernon (eds.) Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
According to the "reasons-relevance" thesis, why we have children matters for assessing the morality of our procreative conduct. In this paper, we consider whether, and on what grounds, procreative motives might be politically relevant. We argue that reasonable disagreement about procreative motives complicates an extension of the reasons-relevance thesis into the political domain. Taking that disagreement seriously leads to the doctrine of liberal neutrality, and its attendant notion of public reason. The application of public reason to procreative motives generates what we call the Principle of Presumptive Motivational Irrelevance (PPMI). According to that principle, the state must tolerate otherwise morally suspect procreative motives so long as, when acted upon, they do not violate the justice-based entitlements of others. Similarly, it cannot tolerate such violations even when they are motivated by otherwise morally innocuous motives.
Edited Collections
Symposium on David Boonin's The Non-Identity Problem and the Ethics of Future People, Law, Ethics and Philosophy, 7 (2019), pp. 9-155.
Featuring contributions by David Boonin, Molly Gardner, Rahul Kumar, Janet Malek, Tim Mulgan, Melinda Roberts, and David Wasserman.
Book Reviews
Review of David Benatar and David Wasserman's Debating Procreation: Is it Wrong to Reproduce?
Social Theory and Practice, 42(4) (2016), pp. 894-900.
Review of Sarah Conly's One Child: Do We Have a Right to More?
Contemporary Political Theory, 15(4) (2016), pp. 477-480.
Details of my past publications can be seen below. Currently, I'm actively working on several projects, including a series of papers on the ethics of parental dietary choice and series of papers and accompanying book project on anti-natalism.
Books
Procreative Justice: Balancing the Interests of Parents, Children, and Society
Routledge, 2025
This book explores how considerations of justice apply to procreative decision-making.
Despite its immense personal significance, procreation is an inherently other-regarding endeavor. By its very nature, the decision to procreate is the decision to bring into existence another morally considerable being, one who will be exposed to the full range of harms, benefits, and risks that accompany a typical human life, and one who cannot by its nature ever consent to being born. Moreover, when this decision is undertaken in a community of persons, it is also a decision to affect the lives of others in a host of profound if often underappreciated ways, from its effects on population size and environmental sustainability to its consequences for a community’s distribution of resources. In many ways, of course, these interests coincide: adults need children for their parenting projects, societies need citizens for the maintenance of their institutions, and children themselves are often happy to have been brought into existence. However, as the book demonstrates, the various interests that are implicated by procreative decision-making can also come into conflict as well, and in ways that raise basic questions of justice. Through a systematic examination of six of these questions, the author argues that taking adequate stock of the conflicting interests at stake in procreative decision-making leads to a narrower view of the conditions under which it is morally permissible to procreate and a much more demanding conception of our procreative responsibilities.
Procreative Justice will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on the morality of procreation and related areas of philosophy, including bioethics, intergenerational ethics, environmental ethics, population ethics, and the ethics of the family.
Articles
Disability, Relational Equality, and the Expressivist Objection
Hastings Center Report, 55(2) (2025) forthcoming.
Since the early 1990s, one of the most prominent objections to the use of prenatal or pre-implantation testing to prevent the birth of children with disabilities has focused on the negative judgments it expresses to and about existing persons with disabilities. Commonly known as the expressivist objection, it is based on the conjunction of two key claims: (1) the use or provision of tests to select against disability in offspring expresses negative judgments about existing persons with disabilities; and (2) the expression of these judgments itself constitutes a wrong to those persons. Despite depending on both claims, however, philosophical discussion of the expressivist objection has largely centred on the first: while commentators continue to debate whether disability screening does or does not express negative judgments, relatively little attention has been paid to explaining how the expression of those judgements wrongs persons with disabilities. In this paper, I argue both that whether or not the expressivist objection succeeds will ultimately depend on whether a plausible explanation can be supplied for how persons with disabilities are wronged by the expression of negative judgments, and that the existing literature surrounding relational egalitarianism can provide such an explanation, albeit with important limitations.
Do Prospective Parents Have a Duty to Adopt Rather than Procreate?
Public Affairs Quarterly, 39(1) (2025), pp. 68-88.
Is it wrong to bring new children into existence when there are so many existing children in need of parental care? Several philosophers have defended the view that prospective parents have a pro tanto duty to adopt rather than procreate as a means of fulfilling their interest in parenting. The most prominent argument for this view in the existing literature is the rescue-based argument, which derives an individual duty to adopt rather than procreate from a more general duty to rescue or assist those in need. In this paper, I critically examine the rescue-based argument and explain why it fails. First, I argue that we do not necessarily have a duty to rescue in cases that resemble the global orphan crisis, where one’s intervention is merely sufficient to prevent serious harm to a potential victim. Second, I argue that even if we had such a duty, it would not necessarily generate a duty to adopt rather than procreate given the significant financial, emotional, and agency-related costs of adoption, particularly in current, non-ideal conditions. The upshot of these arguments is that the rescue-based argument can only generate a duty to adopt rather than procreate with respect to a relatively small constituency of orphaned children, who are likely to be adopted anyway by willing volunteers. In the vast majority of cases, then, the rescue-based argument does not entail that it is wrong to create new children when there are already existing children in need of parental care.
On Risk-Based Arguments for Anti-Natalism
Journal of Value Inquiry, 56(1) (2022), pp. 101-117.
In this paper, I explore the prospects for risk-based arguments in favour of anti-natalism, which explain the wrongness of procreation in terms of wrongful risk-imposition on the resultant child. After considering and rejecting two risk-based arguments from the existing literature - David Benatar's and Matti Häyry's - I propose a more promising version that focuses on the lack of appropriate justification for imposing the risks of existence, namely, one that refers to the essential interests of the child on whom those risks are imposed. The paper proceeds in four parts. In Part 2, I set the stage for my discussion by clarifying the basic structure of risk-based arguments and identifying some of their important features. In Parts 3-5, I consider three distinct risk-based arguments for anti-natalism and argue that only the third, justificatory argument has the potential to be successful.
Can Gestation Ground Parental Rights?
Social Theory and Practice, 46(1) (2020), pp. 111-142.
In law and common-sense morality, it is generally assumed that adults who meet a minimum threshold of parental competency have a presumptive right to parent their biological children. But what is the basis of this right? According to one influential account, the right to parent one’s biological child is best understood as being grounded in an intimate relationship that develops between babies and their birth parents during the process of gestation. This paper identifies three major problems facing this view—the explanatory, adjudicatory, and theoretical problems—and proposes an alternative autonomy-based account that is capable of avoiding them.
e
How to Reject Benatar’s Asymmetry Argument
Bioethics, 33(6) (2019), pp. 674-683.
In this paper, I reconsider David Benatar’s primary argument for anti-natalism—the asymmetry argument—and outline a three-step process for rejecting it. I begin in Part I by reconstructing the asymmetry argument into three main premises. I then turn in Parts II-IV to explain how each of these premises is in fact false. Finally, I conclude in Part V by considering the relationship between the asymmetry argument and the quality of life argument in Benatar’s overall case for anti-natalism and argue that it is the latter argument that is actually doing the work. In this sense, the asymmetry argument is not only unsuccessful in generating Benatar’s anti-natalist conclusion; it is also unnecessary as well.
Children’s Rights and the Non-Identity Problem
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 49(5) (2019), pp. 580-605.
Can appealing to children’s rights help to solve the non-identity problem in cases of procreation? A number of philosophers have answered affirmatively, arguing that even if children cannot be harmed by being born into disadvantaged conditions, they may nevertheless be wronged if those conditions fail to meet a minimal standard of decency to which all children are putatively entitled. This paper defends the tenability of this view by outlining and responding to five prominent objections that have been raised against it in the contemporary literature: (1) the identifiability objection; (2) the non-existence objection; (3) the waiving of rights objection, (4) the lack of legitimate complaint objection; and (5) the unfairness objection.
Parental Justice and the Kids Pay View
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 12(4) (2018), pp. 963-977.
In a just society, who should be liable for the significant costs associated with creating and raising children? Patrick Tomlin has recently argued that children themselves should be liable on the grounds that they benefit from being raised into independent adults. This view, which Tomlin calls 'Kids Pay', depends on the more general principle that a beneficiary can incur an obligation to share in the cost of an essential benefit that the benefactor is responsible for her requiring. I argue in this paper that this principle is both generally false and particularly suspect in the kinds of cases that Tomlin needs it to be true, namely, cases in which a benefactor has created the need to be benefitted to satisfy a self-regarding interest in providing the benefit. In a nutshell, I argue that because parents (a) electively put their children into a needy circumstance for the purpose of (b) satisfying a self-regarding interest in meeting their children’s needs, they lack a legitimate claim against their children to share in its associated costs.
Book Chapters
Three Theories of Well-Being and their Implications for School Education
in Thomas Falkenberg (ed.) Well-Being and Well-Becoming in Schools. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024.
Different theories of well-being provide different accounts of what is ultimately good for a person and why. If we are to propose a model of schooling that takes the cultivation of well-being as a central goal and measure, then we owe a more precise account of the concept of well-being. In this chapter, we distinguish between three main substantive theories of well-being: hedonistic, desire fulfillment, and objective list theories. With an understanding of these three distinct approaches to well-being, we then turn to the question of what each theory of well-being means for school practitioners, administrators and policymakers in education.
Do Motives Matter? On the Political Relevance of Procreative Reasons (with Steven Lecce)
in Sarah Hannan, Samantha Brennan, and Richard Vernon (eds.) Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
According to the "reasons-relevance" thesis, why we have children matters for assessing the morality of our procreative conduct. In this paper, we consider whether, and on what grounds, procreative motives might be politically relevant. We argue that reasonable disagreement about procreative motives complicates an extension of the reasons-relevance thesis into the political domain. Taking that disagreement seriously leads to the doctrine of liberal neutrality, and its attendant notion of public reason. The application of public reason to procreative motives generates what we call the Principle of Presumptive Motivational Irrelevance (PPMI). According to that principle, the state must tolerate otherwise morally suspect procreative motives so long as, when acted upon, they do not violate the justice-based entitlements of others. Similarly, it cannot tolerate such violations even when they are motivated by otherwise morally innocuous motives.
Edited Collections
Symposium on David Boonin's The Non-Identity Problem and the Ethics of Future People, Law, Ethics and Philosophy, 7 (2019), pp. 9-155.
Featuring contributions by David Boonin, Molly Gardner, Rahul Kumar, Janet Malek, Tim Mulgan, Melinda Roberts, and David Wasserman.
Book Reviews
Review of David Benatar and David Wasserman's Debating Procreation: Is it Wrong to Reproduce?
Social Theory and Practice, 42(4) (2016), pp. 894-900.
Review of Sarah Conly's One Child: Do We Have a Right to More?
Contemporary Political Theory, 15(4) (2016), pp. 477-480.
