Title:	Toward a Small Family Ethic
Authors:	Travis N. Rieder
Keywords:	Family Ethic
Issue Date:	2016
Publisher:	Springer
Description:	The idea that sparked this project began in another paper entitled, “Adoption, Procreation, and the Contours of Obligation ,” which was published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy in 2015. There, I investigated whether each prospective parent might have a duty to adopt rather than procreate, as there are several, powerful lines of reasoning in favor of such a view. Not only are there millions of adoptable children in need of the parenting resources (an argument made independently by philosophers Tina Rulli and Daniel Friedrich), but there seem to be moral concerns about the very creation of children in the fi rst place. In particular, I raised concerns that each new person we create exacerbates global resource shortages and the threat of catastrophic climate change . In 2014, I was discussing an early draft of this project with Macey Leigh Henderson, who was intrigued by the relationship between procreation and climate change. She asked if it was my view that overpopulation thus constituted a public health crisis. And, while I hadn’t thought of it in exactly those terms before, I said “yes” and that the real challenge of my view was accounting for how such a crisis generates individual moral obligation. Macey responded that this sounded like an interesting addition to a new book series that she was editing on public health ethics, and the current project was born. My thanks to the Journal of Applied Philosophy for publishing that original article, to my friends, colleagues, and critics, who have pushed me on its argument, and to Macey for extracting a more sustained treatment of the climate ethics portion of the argument. The bulk of the fi rst draft of this manuscript was written during my time as a Hecht-Levi Postdoctoral Fellow in the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, and I am grateful to the Hecht-Levi Program, as well as the faculty and my fellow postdocs, who provided an exceptionally congenial environment for doing bioethics. In particular, I want to thank Ted Bailey, Jeff Kahn, Stephanie Morain, Bridget Pratt, Kevin Riggs, Yashar Saghai, and Miriam Shapiro, all of whom provided valuable feedback on one or more chapter, and audiences at Georgetown University’s Works-in-Progress Group, Southern Illinois University’s Philosophy Colloquium Series, the Berman Institute’s Faculty Workshop, and James Madison University’s Philosophy Colloquium Series, for helpful dialogue and insightful advice. Marcus Hedahl deserves special mention for reviewing, in detail, the entire manuscript and providing invaluable criticism and suggestions, making the current draft far better than the one he saw. And fi nally, I want to thank my partner in crime and in life, Sadiye, whose thoughtful discussion of ethics and our own family is refl ected in nearly every page written; indeed, it is diffi cult to discern where her infl uence ends and my own ideas begin.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/54292
ISBN:	978-3-319-33871-2
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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