What Is The Libertarian Theory of Parental Obligations?

One of the most important philosophical questions relating to the family concerns the nature of parental obligations. What do parents owe their children—and on what basis? In answering this question, libertarians must confront the problem of how to reconcile the parental role with two fundamental issues in libertarian theory. First, do parents merely have the standard negative obligations not to initiate aggression toward their children—as they have to others—or do they have positive obligations (for example, to provide protection, food, shelter, clothing, education, and so on)? Second, are such obligations merely duties grounded in personal virtue and left to private conscience, or do they constitute obligations of justice that are enforceable within a libertarian legal framework?

These questions have proved highly controversial among libertarians and remain a source of debate and confusion. How one answers them depends on one’s theory of the relationship between parents and children. There are four competing philosophical theories of the parental role: (1) parental ownership, (2) parenting as charity, (3) parenting as voluntary social contract, and (4) causal parental responsibility. Each of these theories of the parental role has implications not only for the nature of parental obligations but also for the nature of parental authority and children’s rights. There have been libertarian proponents of each one of these four theories.^[1] But most proponents have not accepted all the logical implications of one theory alone, preferring to advocate a mixture of positions that has led to contradictions, as will be discussed.

To determine whether libertarianism supports enforceable parental obligations, one must first assess which of the competing theories is both sound and compatible with libertarian principles. What follows is a critique of each theory, identifying its logical implications and evaluating its compatibility with those principles.

THE THEORY OF PARENTAL OWNERSHIP

The theory of parental ownership views parenting as a kind of property ownership. In this view, parents are the owners of their children and children are the property of their parents. This is an ancient theory, versions of which have been expressed by Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics 1134b10), codified in Roman law (Smith 1991, 269), and defended by Hobbes ([1651] 1996, 139). This is the main line of argument:

1. Creators rightfully own what they create.

2. Parents create a child.

3. Therefore, parents rightfully own their children.

4. Owners can do whatever they want with their property.

5. Therefore, parents do not have any positive obligations.

Implications

Here are the logical implications of the theory of parental ownership:

1. Children are property in the same way that slaves are.

2. Parents have no enforceable obligations toward their children, since a property owner has no obligation to his property.^[2]

3. There is a clear basis for parental authority, since ownership gives the parent full justification for authority.

4. There is no basis for limiting parental authority, since parental authority is absolute. Parents can conceivably do anything to their children, including kill them.

5. Child abandonment is logically compatible with the ownership theory, since an owner may legitimately abandon a property right.

6. Similarly, selling children is also compatible with the theory, since property can be sold.

Compatibility with Libertarianism

A few thinkers in the libertarian tradition have advocated the theory that parents own their children as property. One example is Benjamin Tucker (1895, 5), who states the idea bluntly: “The unemancipated child is the property of its mother, of which, by an obvious corollary, she may dispose as freely as she may dispose of any other property belonging to her.”

It seems self-evident, however, that the theory of parental ownership cannot be reconciled with libertarianism, since self-ownership is the central principle of libertarian philosophy. Individuals own themselves, and this ownership right is inalienable; therefore, individuals cannot be owned as property.^[3]

The vast majority of classical liberal and libertarian thinkers have been against the parental ownership theory^[4] ever since Locke ([1689] 1988) published the Two Treatises in 1689. Locke spent the whole of the first treatise arguing against Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha. Whereas Filmer ([1680] 2006) had argued for unlimited parental (patriarchal) ownership of children, Locke argued that parental authority has limits and children have rights.^[5]

The core premise of the theory of parental ownership—that homesteading is the method of establishing ownership over bodies—is incorrect.^[6] Homesteading is not the only way to allocate property rights. Property rights are rightfully assigned to the person with the best objective link. For unowned physical objects, the best objective link is demonstrated by first-use homesteading. When it comes to human bodies, each individual has the best objective link for ownership of his or her own body (Hoppe 1987, 74–75; Kinsella 2023, 268–72). This is the objective rule used for establishing self-ownership of bodies. Babies own themselves because nobody else has a better objective claim to own them.

The best objective link is also not dependent on the capabilities of the baby. It doesn’t matter if babies cannot yet argue a syllogism or advocate for their rights; they still have the objectively better claim to be the owners of their own bodies simply because they are the inhabitants of those bodies.

Furthermore, the theory of parental ownership is logically flawed because there is no way to account for an owned child becoming a self-owning adult. You cannot acquire ownership of yourself, because an individual cannot homestead anything unless he already has self-ownership (Kinsella 2023, 271). So how is a baby supposed to acquire self-ownership? Self-ownership must be presumed from the get-go as the only noncontradictory basis for libertarian ethics (Hoppe 2006, 335; 2016, 170–71). All other libertarian principles, such as homesteading, depend on the assumption of self-ownership (Kinsella 2023, 639). There is no way to come up with a noncontradictory account of an individual starting as property and becoming a self-owner, because one cannot homestead oneself.

THE THEORY OF PARENTING AS CHARITY

The theory of parenting as charity denies that children can be owned. It views children as self-owners who have rights. According to this view, parents do have the negative obligation not to actively abuse (aggress against) their children. This is the same general negative obligation that any adult has toward another adult. According to this theory, however, parents do not have any positive obligation to provide care to their children if they don’t want to (or if they stop wanting to).

The theory of parenting as charity emerged in the postwar era of the twentieth century. The ideas of Judith Jarvis Thomson (1971) had a strong influence on both Williamson Evers (1978, 3–4, 7) and Murray Rothbard (1998, 99), two key proponents of this theory. It has this main line of argument:

1. Parents create children.

2. Creation itself is not a source of obligation.

3. Children are temporarily helpless.

4. Helplessness itself is not a source of obligation.

5. Therefore, there are no enforceable parental obligations (making any parental care a voluntary act of charity).^[7]

Why isn’t creation a source of parental obligation? One argument given is that if it were, parents would be obligated to care for their children forever, and this is self-evidently false (Evers 1978, 8; Rothbard 1998, 102). Why isn’t helplessness a source of obligation? The argument is that the mere fact that some person is in need does not logically create an enforceable obligation on any other person to provide for them.

The theory is summarized by Rothbard (1998, 100):

Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die. The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive.

Implications

Here are the logical implications of the theory of parenting as charity:

1. Parents only have the negative obligation to refrain from directly aggressing against their children. They have no positive obligations to their children.

2. Deliberate starvation of children is permissible, as acknowledged by Rothbard (1998, 100).

3. All forms of neglect (regardless of how extreme and regardless of whether it is intentional) are permissible.

4. There is no basis for parental authority provided in this theory; therefore, the logical implication of the theory is that parents have no authority to act paternalistically toward children. As a corollary of this view, parents should treat children in the same way they would treat a rights-bearing adult.^[8]

5. There is no way in which reluctant fathers or mothers can be held liable for supporting their children. Any support they provide is merely akin to charity.

6. Parents can abandon their children whenever they want.

7. Unborn children may be justifiably aborted since the mother has no obligation toward the child.^[9]

Some libertarians have attempted to create work-arounds that serve to blunt some of the implications of the theory of parenting as charity. Rothbard (2000, 150) argued that parents do have a duty to provide care based on personal morality, albeit not an enforceable duty. On this line of argument, deliberately starving your child to death is a vice but not a crime.

Compatibility with Libertarianism

It is tempting to argue that this theory can be summarily rejected simply on the basis that it logically allows for such evils as the deliberate starvation of children, and leave it at that. But the theory can also be refuted without any appeal to consequentialist arguments.

The theory is based on the premise that since a parent has not aggressed against a child by creating it, the child’s peril should be viewed as but one example of “the general problem of the sick or the helpless” (Rothbard 1977, 3). This premise is only sustainable if one denies liability for the creation of peril, yet libertarian theory is fully compatible with the principle of liability for creation of peril. Certain actions create a positive obligation without voluntary agreement and without having committed a crime. The obligation is essentially to prevent from taking place a crime that one has set in motion but has not yet occurred.

Although the parents have not aggressed against their child by creating it, they are responsible for creating the peril that the child is in. If the parents do not look after the child, the child will die. Their obligations are not to provide restitution for a harm done; rather, they are obligated to stop the peril that they created from turning into harm. Evers (1978, 3) explains how creation of peril is linked to aggression:

The criminal law punishes persons who put into motion some force that invades individual rights and who then neglect to halt the force which they originally set in motion. What is really being punished is the bringing forth of an emergency, as when the pilot of a passenger airplane bails out on a whim, leaving the passengers to crash. Returning to the idea of causality and its central role in the law, we can see that the creator of the peril has effectively committed an invasive act. If he neglects to halt or mitigate the force or effect of that act, then he can rightly be held responsible.

A person is culpable who omits to halt a force which he originally put in motion. If, for example, a person accidentally starts a fire in a building, then escapes the building, but sees others who could be rescued still in the building, it is his duty to try to aid them.

Some advocates of the theory acknowledge that liability for creation of peril is compatible with libertarianism but argue that there is no liability in the case of parents. One argument is that the child is a kind of aggressor against the mother during pregnancy.^[10] Another argument is that parents give children a net benefit by creating them (Evers 1978, 7; Dominiak 2015, 94; Block 2011b, 7, 10; Rothbard 1998, 103). This argument has the following form:

1. When parents create children, they are giving them the gift of life.

2. Life is a net benefit.

3. Since the parents benefit children by creating them, it would be an injustice if on top of that they were obligated to provide other things.

There are numerous problems with this. It is not clear how the philosophical problem of whether it is better never to have existed or to exist can be converted into values in such a way that makes it susceptible to mundane cost-benefit analysis. But even if one accepts the premise that existing is a huge benefit, beneficial gifts do not nullify obligations.^[11]

The argument is a moral offsetting fallacy. One cannot simply “net out” an obligation against a benefit to escape accountability. The two are separate, and the validity of any obligation must be addressed on its own terms. Most importantly, an actor does not get to weigh his own case and decide for himself whether he is liable for an obligation based on benefits he has provided. If I take you up in my aircraft, give you a million dollars in cash, and then parachute out of the plane, leaving you unable to fly, I cannot legitimately argue that since I just gave you an enormous gift, I don’t have obligations to you.

The denial of liability for parents on these moral offsetting grounds implies that parents have a sort of blank check to do anything to their children. Since the gift of life is so valuable, there is nothing that a parent could ever do that could outweigh the net benefit in a cost-benefit calculation. The reductio ad absurdum of this idea is the argument that because it is of a higher net benefit to be created and then killed than not to be created at all, parents have no obligation to refrain from killing their children. Remarkably, Block (2010, 5) even uses this logic when he argues that since it is better to be created for a few months and then killed via abortion than to not have been created at all, abortion cannot be a rights violation.^[12] He does not seem to view this as a reductio, but it seems self-evidently absurd to me.

Another way to defend the denial of liability is to argue that there is no way to come into existence as a human without being helpless, and since being created is a net benefit, helplessness just comes as part of the package and is therefore not a source of obligation (Dominiak 2015, 94; Block 2010). On this view, parents have no responsibility, so helpless kids just have to hope their parents feel like helping them. In the event that the parents are not inclined to look after their children, the kids should presumably just suck it up and accept their fate as entirely legitimate.

But this assertion unjustly reverses the burden of proof. It is the parents who chose to act, and they are the agents who must justify themselves if their actions start a causal chain that ends in aggression. As a consequence of their actions, they have changed the state of the universe from one in which there was no child in peril to one in which a child is in peril. The child did not act to create this state of affairs, nor did he consent to it.

It is true that there is no way of creating a child that does not involve the child existing in a state of peril. This logically implies that creating children always entails the creation of peril and therefore the incurring of obligations. It does not imply that children ought to accept that nobody has any obligations toward them.

THE THEORY OF PARENTING AS VOLUNTARY SOCIAL CONTRACT

Another theory that emerged in the postwar period of the twentieth century is parenting as voluntary social contract. This theory accepts the legitimacy of enforceable parental obligations but argues that these obligations can only be voluntarily assumed. The claim is that only those who voluntarily accept the responsibility of parenting a child are obligated to do so—and only from the point that they accept this role onwards and only unless or until they give it up for adoption. So parents do have enforceable obligations but only if they have voluntarily agreed to them. The main line of argument used to justify this theory is as follows:

1. Enforceable positive obligations can only arise from two sources: voluntary agreement or as restitution for having committed an act of aggression.

2. Creating a child is not an act of aggression.

3. Therefore, parental obligations can only arise as a result of voluntary agreement.

This argument was made by Judith Jarvis Thomson (1971, 65) and has also been made by Elizabeth Brake (2010, 156). A voluntary agreement that gives rise to obligations is a contract, so this can be called a contract theory of parental obligations.

Implications

Here are the logical implications of the theory of parenting as voluntary social contract:

1. Unlike the theory of parenting as charity, parents not only have the negative obligation to refrain from directly aggressing against their children but also take on some positive obligations to care for their children while they are responsible for them. For example, neglect is not allowable.

2. Being the biological parent of a child has no relevance in itself for this theory and incurs no obligations, since the theory depends on voluntary agreement; therefore, biological parents do not have any obligations to their children unless they choose to accept such obligations.

3. Parents can give up a child whenever they want: they are “free to dump him out” (Block, Smith, and Reel 2014, 89), although the argument is usually that parents have an obligation to find someone who will adopt the child.

4. There is no way in which reluctant men can be held responsible toward any children that they father, since a man may always decide not to volunteer for fatherhood obligations.

5. Unborn children may be justifiably aborted, since their existence depends on the voluntary agreement of the mother, which she is free to withhold.^[13]

Compatibility with Libertarianism

The first fatal problem with this theory is that it denies liability of parents for the creation of peril.^[14] The critique of this position discussed in relation to the theory of parenting as charity can equally be applied to the theory of parenting as voluntary social contract: the premise is false and therefore the theory is unsound.

A second core problem for this theory is defining toward whom the obligations are directed and explaining why. Any agreement or contract made by the parent cannot be made with the child.^[15] Given that the contract is not with the child, parents must be contracting with someone else. If parents simply declared to themselves that they choose to accept obligations, that would not create any kind of enforceable claim against them. They could change their minds at any time and nobody would be able to argue otherwise. So who are the parents contracting with?

Theorists attempt to resolve this problem with the following argument: by volunteering to be a parent, one makes an implicit contract not with the child but with society at large (i.e., with all other adults). By voluntarily taking on the role of parent, one commits oneself to society at large to assume obligations toward the child.

As should now be clear, the theory of voluntary parental obligations is a social contract theory. According to the theory, parents are making an agreement with society at large that obligates them to care for their children. It is not the child who has an enforceable claim on the parents; rather, it is “society” that has the claim. Joseph Millum (2017, 3), a proponent of this theory, summarized the argument: “Parental responsibilities are acquired through the performance of certain voluntary acts that signify the taking on of parental responsibilities. . . . Social convention determines both which acts have this significance and exactly what responsibilities are taken on. . . . The core of parental responsibilities is the provision of certain goods that all children are owed as a matter of justice. Parents provide these goods on behalf of society.”

Libertarians deny the validity of positive obligations to society at large. According to libertarianism, individuals only have negative obligations to society at large. An individual can have positive obligations toward specific individuals arising from contract, tort, or restitution, but such positive obligations are not to society at large. Any theory that posits a contract between parents and society at large is therefore refuted by libertarianism. Indeed Williamson Evers (1978, 7) and Murray Rothbard (1998, 100) reject this theory on these grounds.^[16]

Some libertarians apparently do not see the problem with theories that assert that individuals have positive obligations toward society at large based on a tacit social contract. They go so far as to argue that this is the very basis of parental obligations. Steve Horwitz (2015) gives a version of the argument:

Parental obligations come when parents engage in the positive act of treating the child as theirs by asserting their parental rights. . . . “Treating the child as theirs” is a kind of public declaration of the exercise of parental rights. . . . You can think of taking a child home from the hospital as analogous to homesteading: you are declaring to others (not to the child) that this child is yours and that you thereby accept the responsibilities to care that come with exercising those parental rights. . . . Accepting parental rights but refusing to accept the corresponding obligations to care for a helpless child is a form of breach of contract. Again, the contract is not with the child, but with “the rest of us.” Given the helplessness of infants, someone has to provide that care and those who act in ways that exercise parental rights simultaneously announce their willingness to accept the obligation to care.

Whatever else can be said about this, it is fundamentally incompatible with the libertarianism that denies social contract theory.

THE THEORY OF CAUSAL PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

The theory of causal parental responsibility argues that obligations can come from a different basis than merely the act of creation, the fact of a child’s helplessness, or any voluntary agreement. The core argument is as follows:

1. People are responsible for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their actions, whether intended or not.

2. As a consequence of creating a child, parents have put another human being (the child) in a state of peril.

3. Children cannot consent to being born.

4. Since the child did not create their own state of peril nor consent to it, the child’s peril is entirely the responsibility of the parents.

5. Therefore, parents have a positive obligation to do whatever is necessary to remove the child from a state of peril, since not doing so would constitute an act of aggression as a form of tort.

Parental obligation does not arise through contract, but rather as a result of the parents’ actions being causally responsible for the peril that the child faces. Even if the parents did not intend to create a child (and even if they took the precaution of using contraception), creating a life was a foreseeable risk that they are responsible for.^[17]

When parents create a child, one consequence is that the child is in a state of temporary helplessness or peril. The creation of peril is not itself an act of aggression, but it does give rise to a positive obligation.^[18] The parents have an enforceable obligation to bring the child out of this state of helplessness. This means doing whatever it takes to raise him safely to the independence or self-sufficiency of adulthood. This is the basis of the causal principle of parental obligations.

Parental obligation arises from the voluntary act of making one’s gametes available for fertilization—whether through sexual intercourse, which entails the natural possibility of fertilization, or through assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization (IVF).^[19] In both cases, the gamete providers bear ultimate causal responsibility for the creation of a child and therefore both the mother and father are equally causally obligated.^[20]

Parental positive obligations are ultimately rooted in negative obligations. The parents have a negative duty not to be responsible for an act of aggression taking place against the child. Having been responsible for starting a causal chain that will result in an act of aggression taking place, the parents’ choices result in a positive obligation to prevent the peril from actualizing. These positive obligations must be accepted as “chosen” as a consequence of the parents’ reasonably foreseeable actions.

The origins of this theory are in the Enlightenment. The earliest presentation of the causal argument for parental obligations is by the eighteenth-century legal theorist William Blackstone ([1765] 1979, 435), who argued that creating a child entails the obligation to care for it:

The duty of parents to provide for the maintenance of their children is a principle of natural law; an obligation, says Pufendorf, laid on them not only by nature herself, but by their own proper act, in bringing them into the world: for they would be in the highest manner injurious to their issue, if they only gave the children life, that they might afterwards see them perish. By begetting them therefore they have entered into a voluntary obligation, to endeavour, as far as in them lies, that the life which they have bestowed shall be supported and preserved. And thus the children will have a perfect right of receiving maintenance from their parents.

In this brief passage,^[21] Blackstone captures some essential features of the causal argument:

1. As a result of their action of bringing children into the world, parents are responsible for their children’s condition of helplessness.

2. If parents were to fail to care for their children, the result would be that the children would perish.

3. Therefore, parents have an obligation to maintain their children to prevent this from happening.

The first major philosopher to put forward the causal argument for parental obligations was Kant. Kant ([1797] 1991, 98–99) argued that parental obligation comes from bringing children into the world without consent and placing them in a state in which they are not yet “able to look after themselves”:

There follows from procreation . . . a duty to preserve and care for its offspring; that is, children, as persons, have by their procreation an original innate (not acquired) right to the care of their parents until they are able to look after themselves, and they have this right directly on the basis of principle (lege), that is, without any special act being required to establish this right. . . . So from a practical point of view it is a quite correct and even necessary Idea to regard the act of procreation as one by which we have brought a person into the world without his consent and on our own initiative, for which deed the parents incur an obligation to make the child content with his condition so far as they can. They cannot destroy their child as if he were something they had made (since a being endowed with freedom cannot be a product of this kind) or as if he were their property, nor can they even just abandon him to chance, since they have brought not merely a worldly being but a citizen of the world into a condition which cannot now be indifferent to them even just according to concepts of Right.

In this section, Kant expresses the main points of the causal theory.^[22] He repudiates the theory of parental ownership and argues that children have rights. Instead of a merely biological explanation, he argues that obligation results from the actions of the parents. Although Kant’s writing style is notoriously obscure, one can see some essential features of the concept of creation of peril already present. His argument that parents cannot “just abandon” the child to “chance,” having “brought” the child “into a condition which cannot now be indifferent to them,” implies that the child is in peril, which can also be inferred from Kant’s argument that children are not yet “able to look after themselves.”^[23] Like Blackstone, however, Kant did not explore the wider implications of the causal theory.

Other statements of the causal argument for parental obligations have been made by diverse thinkers, including the nineteenth-century utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick (2012, 220),^[24] the Objectivist Nathaniel Branden (1962, 55), the philosopher Richard Werner (1974, 212), the bioethicist James Lindemann Nelson (1991), the libertarian pro-life activists Doris Gordon (1999) and John Walker (1999), the philosopher Rivka Weinberg (2008),^[25] and the libertarian legal theorist Stephan Kinsella (2023, 50, 641).

Implications

Here are the logical implications of the theory of causal parental responsibility:

1. Parents have enforceable positive obligations to bring their child out of peril, which means both protecting the child and doing whatever is necessary to enable the child to become an independent (self-sustaining) adult.

2. Parents also have the usual negative obligation to not aggress against their child (no spanking, beating, etc.).

3. There is a clear basis for parental authority provided by the theory. To remove a child from peril, a parent must act paternalistically toward the child; therefore, the parent is justified in assuming authority over the child.

4. There is also a clear basis for limiting parental authority. The use of such authority is only justified in fulfillment of the parent’s positive obligation toward the child, and there are objective criteria for detecting misuse of that authority—criteria grounded in the obligation to remove peril.

5. Both parents are jointly and severally liable for their positive obligations, since both are responsible for their actions in creating the child.^[26] This is the only theory that has this implication.

6. Both parents are obligated regardless of whether they intended to create the child, since the obligation comes from responsibility for actions, not desire or agreement.^[27] This is the only theory that implies this obligation.^[28]

7. Parents cannot abandon or give up their obligation, since the obligation is based on action, not agreement, and the obligation is to the child, not others. They may be able to delegate their responsibilities, but they cannot give up their parental obligations.^[29]

8. Parents cannot legitimately absolve themselves of all obligation by giving up a child for adoption. In extreme circumstances, giving up a child for adoption may be justifiable if the biological parents are genuinely unable to fulfill their obligation.^[30] But this act should rightly be construed as delegating the responsibility to the adopters to fulfill the obligation on the biological parents’ behalf.^[31]

9. Abortion cannot be justified in cases arising from consensual sex, since it is incompatible with parental obligations.^[32] As Gordon (n.d.) puts it, “Given that human offspring begin life when conceived, and then given parental obligation, it follows that parental obligation begins not at birth but at fertilization.”^[33]

10. Gamete donation or sale cannot be justified, since it constitutes an unjust abandonment of parental obligation.^[34] This includes traditional surrogacy, which is a specific case of gamete sale or donation.^[35]

11. Parents have obligations to every embryo created using IVF, since it is the act of making one’s gametes available for fertilization that gives rise to obligation.^[36]

Compatibility with Libertarianism

The theory of causal parental responsibility is fully compatible with libertarian principles. Unlike the theory of parental ownership, causal responsibility is compatible with the libertarian concept of self-ownership and acknowledges that children are self-owners. Unlike both the theory of parenting as charity and the theory of parenting as voluntary social contract, causal responsibility accepts the validity of obligations arising from creation of peril. Unlike the theory of parenting as voluntary social contract, causal parental responsibility is not based on a fallacious social contract theory.

The main libertarian objection^[37] to this theory is that “libertarianism does not recognize positive legal obligations except as established by agreement” (McElroy 2013). This objection is based on a misunderstanding of the libertarian principle. Libertarianism does not oppose positive obligations per se; the principle is that positive obligations can only be incurred as a result of one’s voluntary actions. This can include obligations that result from the undesired but reasonably foreseeable consequences of one’s actions. Some libertarians reject parental positive obligations on the grounds that to accept them would open the door to general positive rights. As Walter Block (2011a, 6) puts it, “Once we open up the floodgates of positive obligations, there is no logical stopping place. We will be logically obligated to accept a right to food, clothing, shelter, medical care, etc. Welfare ‘rights’ cannot be far behind.” This objection is simply false.^[38] Parental obligations do not entail general welfare obligations for two reasons:

1. The justification of parental obligations is specific, not general.

2. The justification is based on responsibility for an individual’s own actions, not some general responsibility for humanity arising from membership of the human race.

Without contradiction, we can both acknowledge the validity of chosen positive obligations (including those obligations one must accept as “chosen” as a consequence of one’s actions) and deny the validity of unchosen positive obligations.

PARENTAL OBLIGATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY LIBERTARIAN THOUGHT

Many postwar libertarians who address the question have denied the validity of enforceable parental positive obligations. For example, Murray Rothbard (1998, 100), Wendy McElroy (2013), Walter Block (2021, 143), and Harry Browne^[39] all deny them. Most justify denying positive parental obligations by arguing some variant of the theory of parenting as charity. At the same time, advocates of this theory have been unwilling to accept all its implications and so have equivocated between different theories of the parental role in their arguments.

Rothbard accepted some of the most shocking implications of the theory of parenting as charity and was honest in showing how these consequences are clearly implied in the logic of the argument.^[40] Interestingly, he did not accept one clear implication of this theory: without parental obligation there is no justification for parental authority. Instead, Rothbard added on a variant of the theory of parental ownership to his argument, which he used to justify parental authority as a homesteaded property right.

Despite the incompatibility between parental ownership and self-ownership, it is notable that libertarian writers on this subject have never fully repudiated the theory of parental ownership. Like Rothbard, other libertarian thinkers have conceded the principle that parents have some kind of property right over children, in order to provide a basis for parental authority. They do argue that this right is limited in time and extent but nonetheless still concede the basic premise that parenting is a kind of property right.

There is also still inconsistency and confusion among libertarian writers about whether children are self-owners. Rothbard (1998) puts forward four conflicting propositions on parental ownership versus child self-ownership in the same book.^[41] This contradiction results partly from Rothbard combining two conflicting theories of the parental role.

Walter Block defends both the theory of parenting as charity (arguing that parents do not have obligations) and the add-on variant of the theory of parental ownership (arguing for parental authority as a homesteaded property right), but he is unwilling to accept the permissibility of negligence implied by the theory of parenting as charity. Block (2004) tries to remedy this by adding to the top of this teetering tower of theories a variant of social contract theory as the basis of voluntary parental obligations. Whereas Horwitz (2015) puts forward a social contract argument plainly, Block uses extremely convoluted arguments that ultimately reach the same destination, while simultaneously denying that he has done any such thing.^[42]

It is not necessary to equivocate between these invalid theories to justify parental authority or to deny the legitimacy of negligence. The theory of causal parental responsibility achieves both of the aims that Rothbard and Block were pursuing—without the inconsistency. Parental obligation provides a justification for parental authority without appealing to parental ownership and provides clear grounds for denying the validity of negligence without appealing to a social contract.

As Locke points out,^[43] parental authority is derivative of parental obligation, not the other way around.^[44] Far from being a homesteaded right, the authority that parents have is a responsibility arising from (and temporally subsequent to) their acquiring obligations toward the child. This also entails that all use of parental authority must be justifiable in terms of the fulfillment of parental obligations—otherwise, it is a misuse of authority.

I argue that the denial of parental positive obligations has been an error in libertarian theory. Only the theory of causal parental responsibility (which affirms enforceable parental obligations) is defensible. A few libertarian thinkers have argued for variants of this theory in the past. Nathaniel Branden (1962, 55), Doris Gordon (1999), and John Walker (1999) all made arguments along these lines, but only in short fragments. In recent years, Kinsella’s (2023, 50, 641) argument from analogy with pushing someone into a lake has been the most influential libertarian statement of this idea, although this theory is not the focus of his work. Some of these thinkers do not accept all the implications of the theory.^[45] And some may have been unaware of the radical implications since they do not address them.

CONCLUSION

Rightly conceived, libertarian philosophy can provide a beautiful moral understanding of parental responsibility. It provides a philosophical foundation for parental authority and delineates clear limits to that authority. Only libertarianism provides a sound philosophical basis for respecting children as individuals with rights.

It is strange that modern libertarianism currently does none of this. Modern libertarianism denies parental obligations, denies parental responsibility, and is incoherent on parental authority. Libertarian positions on family matters have often been criticized and ridiculed. Unfortunately, some of the criticisms are well-founded, but not because of a fault in libertarian principles.

There is a coherent theory of the parental role that is compatible with libertarian principles: the theory of causal parental responsibility. Elements of the theory can be found scattered across the works of disparate thinkers since the Enlightenment, but none of those thinkers synthesized these insights into a coherent framework or traced the theory to its full, and potentially radical, logical conclusions. This article has attempted to bring those insights together.

Adopting a consistent theory of the parental role requires from libertarians a change of mindset. It requires taking seriously our opposition to the theory of parental ownership and finally repudiating that ancient theory in full.

The parental role is an obligation, not a property right. Children are not homesteadable objects—they are self-owners. Parents are guardians of their children as a result of obligation, not as a result of a homesteaded property right. Parents have authority over their children because parents have an obligation to raise them to the safety and self-sufficiency of adulthood. Parental authority is only justified in fulfillment of this obligation.