How procreation generates parental rights and obligations

This chapter evaluates some common ethical convictions about procreation and its relationship to both parental rights and parental obligations. Rooting parental obligations in compensatory duties offers a superior justification of the procreative model, including its claims regarding parental rights. Parental rights and obligations must come into existence due to procreation itself. Much of the popular rhetoric and legal practice surrounding parenthood and procreation assumes that children's interests are well served, perhaps even best served, when those responsible for their biological existence are assigned the distinctive rights and obligations of parenthood. One can have a minimally satisfying life without having the distinctive sort of parent-child relationship afforded by procreation. Procreation serves to place an individual into a specific web of social relations not of her choosing and hence functions to determine the specific contents of one's moral duties.