As discussed in a previous post, there are competing philosophical theories regarding the relationship between parents and children. Libertarians are divided between two of these theories:
1. The Theory of Parental Responsibility
According to The Theory of Parental Responsibility, parents have enforceable positive obligations to their children. Here are some implications:
Parents have enforceable positive obligations to bring their child out of peril, which means both protecting the child and doing whatever is necessary to enable the child to become an independent (self-sustaining) adult.
Parents also have the negative obligation to not aggress against their child (no spanking, beating etc).
Both parents are jointly and severally liable for their positive obligations, since both have responsibility for their actions.
Both parents are obligated regardless of whether they wanted the child, since the obligation comes from responsibility for actions, not desire or agreement.
Parents cannot abandon their responsibilities, since the obligation is based on action not agreement. They can only pass on the obligation by finding others willing and able to adopt the children and thereby assume the responsibility. The original parents must also exercise due diligence in choosing adoptive parents, or they could share liability for any mistreatment by the adoptive parents.
2. The Theory of Parenting as Charity
According to the Theory of Parenting as Charity, parents do not have enforceable positive obligations to their children. Here are some implications:
Parents only have the negative obligation to refrain from directly aggressing against their child.
Deliberate starvation of children is permissible (Rothbard was honest enough to acknowledge this).
All forms of neglect (regardless of how extreme and regardless of whether it is intentional) are permissible.
There is no way in which fathers can be held responsible towards children. Any support they provide is merely akin to charity.
Parents can abandon their children whenever they want.
Unborn children may be justifiably aborted at any point (although many libertarians fail to see any problem with this implication as they want abortion to be permissible).
Which is The Correct Libertarian Theory?
Which theory is compatible with broader libertarian principles? Prima facie, the theory of parental responsibility appears entirely reasonable to me, whereas the theory of parenting as charity appears horrifically unreasonable. However, the reasonable theory is in fact the minority view among libertarians who have written on this topic. The majority have argued some version of the theory of parenting as charity (the one with the horrific implications).
Some libertarians have attempted to create workarounds to blunt some of the horrific implications of the theory of parenting as charity:
Rothbard argued that parents do have a duty to provide care based on personal morality, albeit not an enforceable duty. On this line of argument, deliberately starving your child to death is a vice, but not a crime.
Block has argued that although parents can abandon their children, they have an obligation to ask others first, and only if nobody else wants to care for the child can the parent leave them to starve. In this bizarre view, it is not that parents have any obligation to their own children not to starve them, but rather they are obliged to random strangers not to deprive those strangers of the chance to adopt their children.
Such workarounds are not only ineffective, they do not address the core problem which is that the theory itself is wrong.
Libertarians pride themselves on being tough-minded enough to accept highly counter-intuitive ideas when those ideas are correct. But the fact that a theory is counter-intuitive is not evidence that it is correct. Sometimes it is just an awful idea. Adopting the view that parents have no obligations has been a huge error in libertarian thinking. There is a perfectly reasonable alternative libertarian theory of parental obligations. Libertarians should rethink their views on this.