Founding a family 'well': A virtue-based approach to the ethics of procreation

Dr Ryan Tonkens (Monash University Centre for Human Bioethics)

Abstract: There are two main goals of this paper: (1) to offer a detailed discussion of some of the central components of a virtue-based approach to the ethics of procreation (i.e. the issue of whether and when one is morally permitted to bring new life into existence), including how this view compares to deontological and consequentialist (e.g. benatar 1997) approaches that currently dominate this area of philosophy; and (2) from this theoretical foundation, an assessment of the common reasons for having children (see e.g. Christine Overall 2012 and Saul Smilansky 1995).
While much more work needs to be done in developing a robust virtue-based approach to procreative ethics, there is good reason to suggest that the reasons typically on offer in the philosophical literature in favour of having children are poor ones. Thus, one of the main (albeit tentative) conclusions of this paper is that good (virtuous) prospective parents have good reason to consider adopting already existing children as their mode of founding a family, since bringing new life into existence may not be in line with their founding a family well.