What Parents Owe to Children

If one accepts, as I do, that children do not owe anything to their parents simply because of the parent/child relationship which exists between them, then it might occur to one to ask what, if anything, parents owe to their children.  After all, if children's lack of filial obligation is due to their inability to choose their parents, then shouldn't parents (who cannot choose the sort of people their children will be) also base their actions towards their offspring purely on voluntary friendship?

I think that the answer is firmly in the negative, for a number of reasons.  Firstly, while it is true that parents cannot choose the personality of their children, they do choose to have children.  With that choice comes an unspoken agreement to provide certain services and resources for the children, regardless of what sort of people the children turn out to be.  This applies even in cases where the children deviate hugely from the parents' expectations, such as when a child turns out to be autistic or a prodigy, gay or transgendered, a follower of a different religion or philosophy, and so on.

But why should such an agreement exist?  That answer lies partly with society and partly with biology.  Biologically, children are incapable of caring for themselves prior to reaching a certain age, so if their parents neglect them they will suffer large amounts of harm or even death.  This harm is a direct result of their parents' decisions to create and then neglect them, and harming another human being without justification is morally wrong, so the parents are morally obligated to care for them in order to prevent harming them.  Sociologically, children (or, in legal terms, minors) are subject to more legal restrictions than are adults; for example, they cannot work more than a certain number of hours in a given period of time.  Thus, parents are morally obligated to provide them with what they cannot obtain due to society's restrictions, because to do otherwise would be creating a severely unequal society, which is again morally wrong.  Once children become biological and legal adults, parents' obligations towards them dissolve, and any further services they provide must either be out of friendship or part of mutually agreed-upon deals.

The last issue we must address is that of love.  Depriving children of parental love almost invariably causes lasting or even permanent psychological damage to those children.  As such, agreeing to love one's children is one of the initial requirements in the decision to conceive or adopt children in the first place.  However, love is not something which people can create artificially; it is an emotion, and must occur naturally.  In most cases, parents do naturally love their children.  However, in the extremely rare cases in which they do not, we cannot blame them for it - ought implies can, and if a parent cannot love their child then we cannot say they ought to.  However, the parent has indeed committed an immoral act - not, as it might first appear, neglecting to love their child, but instead deciding to have a child in the first place when they would be incapable of loving that child.  In such cases, the parent might be wise to attempt to locate a situation in which to place their child where the child could receive the sort of love necessary for healthy psychological development.