Description:
As the term "family values" achieves prominence in the rhetoric of political debate, the social issues at the heart of today's political controversies deserve to be studied in depth. This volume brings together a group of philosophers, political scientists, and legal scholars to explore a wide range of specific topics dealing with the legal, ethical, and political dimensions of familial relationships. Topics addressed include the rights of unwed fathers, the nature of children's autonomy, children's rights to divorce their parents, parental rights with respect to medical treatment and religious education of children, surrogate parenting, same-sex parenting, and single-parent families. Collectively, the essays point out that many contemporary issues pertaining to the having and raising of children pose genuinely hard choices for public policy makers, for those who make and enforce the laws, and for citizens who would like to engage in informed and critical democratic debate on these issues.
Brief description: Julia J. Bartkowiak is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Clarion University in Pennsylvania.
Review Quotes:
"Having and Raising Children is a collection of useful, thought-provoking, and strongly argued papers. The collection almost uniformly presupposes the context of United States law and policy."
--Christine Overall Canadian Journal of Political Science