What about the Kids of Racist Parents? The Containment of Unreasonableness and the Challenge of Parenthood
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21701785 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Areti Theofilopoulou (0000-0001-9838-8119, University of Warwick, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 109-124 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1386-2820 • E-ISSN: 1572-8447 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10677-025-10522-y |
| OpenAlex | W4415348067 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 24 |
Contemporary history is, unfortunately, full of examples of democratic societies in which many citizens came to hold deeply unjust views. One cause of this phenomenon is that unjust views spread intergenerationally within the family. This paper questions how parents are to be prevented from transmitting unjust views onto their children. The standard response is that states have a duty to contain these views and ensure that they do not spread to future adults. I argue that this response is incomplete because state policies that are likely to be effective are unjustifiable, and policies that are justifiable are unlikely to be sufficiently effective. By contrast, I defend an alternative view: individuals who have access to the children of parents who hold unjust views have a duty to bear costs, such as time and emotional labour, in order to influence these children. I defend two arguments in favour of this duty and then respond to the objection that it is unfair to hold individuals liable for the costs of unreasonable parents’ decisions
Democracy · Duty · Duty to protect · Phenomenon · Philosophy of medicine · Political philosophy · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Racial and Ethnic Identity Research
Family Values
Political Liberalism
Political Liberalism, Ethos Justice, and Gender Equality
Growing up Sexist
Liberalism without Perfection
Political Liberalism, Justice, and Gender
Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing
On the Injustice of Dysfunctional Upbringing
Doing more than one’s fair share
The Rights of Unreasonable Citizens
The relationship between parental racial attitudes and children’s implicit prejudice
Bad Civil Society
Child-rearing With Minimal Domination
Three Models of Democratic Self-Defence
Distributing Responsibility
Collective narcissism as a framework for understanding populism
Development of anti-immigrant attitudes in adolescence
The apple does not fall far from the tree, or does it? A meta-analysis of parent-child similarity in intergroup attitudes
| Highly cited | No |
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