Title Pending 7232

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.What is wrong with violence? This paper explores an under-recognized aspect of violence: its moral significance for parents. For many parents, raising children is part of what gives meaning, structure, and shape to their lives and senses of self—it is a reproductive project. I offer a substantive account of projects which explains their role in our moral lives; and I argue that we have an obligation not to undermine the permissible projects of others without good reasons. Violence harms children and thereby undermines the reproductive projects which they are central to. Thus, violence fails our obligation and is a pro tanto wrong in part for this reason. This is particularly salient to mothers who, taking a global and historical perspective, perform the vast majority of reproductive work. Taken seriously, this account has potentially revisionary implications for criminal sanction and the waging of war.