On Parenting and Child-Rearing
In the seminar I am taking on Liberalism and Religion, we have been reading and discussing Kevin Vallier’s Liberal Politics and Public Faith: Beyond Separation. For those who don’t know: Vallier is a public reason liberal who works within the convergence tradition, popularized by Gerald Gaus. What this means, in a nutshell, is that Vallier believes individuals in liberal society can offer justifications against the implementation of certain laws using what is known in the public reason tradition as an intelligible reason. Under Vallier’s framework, very few laws would be passed because people could use any sort of reason so long as it was intelligible to defeat the passage of the legislation. Assume that a bill was under consideration that would require taxpayer funds to pay for abortion services. Many religious individuals would be able to provide sound reasons for why this law should not apply to them. Because of this, convergence liberals like Vallier would suggest that the policy would have to either a) provide exemptions for all those who have conscientious objection to the policy, or b) be repealed altogether.
In the final section of his book, Vallier applies his iteration of convergence to the contentious issue of school choice. Vallier contends that standardized liberal education can easily be defeated by the intelligible reasons of (religious) parents on his understanding of convergence:
If we recognize the obvious fact that citizens’ reasons of integrity often involve raising children, then it is easy to see how citizens could have defeaters for state intervention in child development…When the consensus liberal [who stands in juxtaposition to the convergence liberal] demands that the state impose shared values on children so long as the imposition of these values is the result of democratic choice, the convergence liberal dissents, as collective choice cannot override the intelligible defeaters of citizens qua parents. (232)
To understand why liberal citizens would likely have defeaters for state intervention in child development, it is important to examine the Loren Lomasky quote that Vallier included alongside this analysis:
Having children is often an integral component of personal projects…And having children in whom one invests one’s devotion is to undertake a commitment that spans generations and creates personal value for the parent that transcends his or her own span of life…Few people can expect to produce a literary or artistic monument, redirect the life of a nation, garner honor and glory that lives after them. But it is open to almost everyone to stake a claim to long-term significance through having and raising a child.
When I first read this, I was taken by its force. It is self-evident (to me, at least) that a level of freedom and discretion child-rearing is of utmost importance both to parent and child. Having the freedom to raise one’s child in accordance with one’s values is, as Lomasky aptly suggested, one of the most universal and accessible ways to ensure that one’s legacy extends beyond a single lifetime. Children also benefit from having a closeness with their parents facilitated by shared values. This is not to say that parents do have or ought to have the ability to coerce their children into accepting certain values because their interest in a lasting legacy overrides the interest that children have in an open future. It is simply to say that parents should be able to share their values with their children insofar as they can. If this means sending your child to a school whose teachings align with the teachings of your household, so be it.
Many in class were disturbed by Lomasky’s take on the interests of parents in child-rearing. People were put off by the analogy that Lomasky makes between literary/artistic monuments and children. Children are not some type of monument that you erect to sanctify your selfish interests as a parent; they are ends in themselves that need to be provided with opportunities to forge their own identities. A second point of contention cropped up in that parental discretion in school choice seems to necessitate information siloing of a certain kind. Rather than being gridlocked merely geographically (as most children are in the United States), there would be some kind of ideological gridlock which coerces children through habituation to adopt certain views and beliefs. The state may have a vested interest in forgoing the interests of parents in child-rearing so as to ensure that children have their interests as potential agents secured to the highest degree.
As somebody who (at the present moment) believes that both children and parents have legitimate interests that are deserving of protection, I want to assess these criticisms and see how, if at all, the interest that a parent may have in sharing their values with a child can be reconciled with the interest that a child may have in growing to be an autonomous, independent individual.
Children are not monuments. If anything, I feel that Lomasky used the monument analogy for rhetorical flourish. It goes without saying that children are not monuments in the sense that they can be erected and manipulated and ordered in a certain kind of way. Based on the way my parents talk to me about what it is to be a parent, however, I feel that it is not unreasonable to say that regardless of how a child grows up, a parent comes to see something of themselves in their child. And once a parent dies, that metaphysically distinct aspect of themselves that seems to have presented in the child continues to live on. Long after the death of their parents, children reflect on the ways that their parents continue to have an impact on them. In a very real sense, children are monuments because they survive the death of their parents and in that survival carry with them an aspect of their parent that is noticeable, considerable, and has the potential to be present in their progeny too.
Children need an impartial education. I can see a case for this being made under ideal conditions. But we live in a non-ideal world. The public schools that we go to fail to provide students with an impartial education. In high school, I was taught that the only plausible explanation for the stock market crash preceding the Great Depression was laissez-faire economics. If it weren’t for the internet, I wouldn’t have known that alternative explanations have been given and substantially supported about the role that the Federal Reserve may have played in the lead-up to the stock market crash. If public education as it stands is meant to represent impartiality in the education of children, alternative perspectives like this would be taught. I am afraid that information siloing is something that the education system will fall prey to, regardless of whether or not school choice is legislatively permitted. So I agree that children have an interest in being educated impartially under ideal conditions, but this interest is unrealizable under the conditions of this world. If the government determines the educational standard for children, certain perspectives will inevitably be left out of the curriculum. If parents determine the educational standard for their children, certain perspectives will inevitably be left out of the curriculum. But parents have an interest in sharing values with their children that the government does not, and this is why discretion should be left up to parents in matters of child development.
None of this is to say that the government can have no say in certain kinds of educational standards, or that there would be no standards whatsoever about what could be taught in public schools. It is to say, however, that there are some things that are up for dispute and parents should be able to have a say in these matters. I strongly believe that children have an interest in an open future and in being autonomous, but I am not so sure that school choice stands in the way of them realizing these ends. My education certainly did not stand in the way of me forging my own, unique path and it certainly did not reflect any of the values that I currently hold.