Why Treat One’s Children as Equals?

Abstract In “Parental Love and Filial Equality,” Giacomo Floris and Riccardo Spotorno offer an explanation for why parents should treat their children as equals. The authors argue that this moral obligation is grounded in parents’ duty to love their children in an attitudinal, though not necessarily emotional, sense. This duty, they contend, requires them to disregard variations in their children’s status-conferring properties, as long as those properties meet a minimum threshold. This article argues that this account of filial equal treatment has serious shortcomings. In its place, it proposes a more outcome-oriented or consequentialist account.