Family Values: A Liberal Egalitarian Theory of the Family

The research aims to provide an original philosophical account of the value of parent-child relationships ( the 'familial relationship goods' account) and to set out the implications of that account for a wide range of controversial moral, political and legal issues. Such issues include the nature and extent of parents' rights over their children's education, and of children's rights against their parents; the extent to which, and ways in which, parents may legitimately promote their children's interests at cost to others; the justification of 'family-friendly' social and economic policies; the question of who should pay the cost of childrearing; whether the state may legitimately promote marriage; and the significance (or otherwise) of biological connectedness between parents and children.

It is a common complaint against abstract or idealistic political philosophy that it fails to provide sufficient guidance for our actions - both political in the form of policies and personal in the form of prescriptions for individuals - in our actual, non-ideal, circumstances. As well as presenting the deep structure and normative foundations of the value of the family, the research develops a systematic methodology for moving from that kind of philosophical work to prescriptions for action in actually existing circumstances. It then illustrates and applies that methodology to the range of issues outlined above.

'The family' is currently hotly contested political terrain, as anxieties about 'family breakdown' and emotional well-being become increasingly central to political argument. Our research offers a philosophically sophisticated way of thinking clearly about the values at stake and how to go about balancing them in order to reach justified policy conclusions.

Likely beneficiaries of the research include politicians, policy-makers, practitioners in public services and the wider public. Our work is already known to some key politicians and policy-makers at the national level (see below) and as it becomes more widely disseminated we expect its benefits to spread more directly to the wider community.

The research aims to reorient our understanding of the significance and value of parent-child relationships and to explore the implications of that reorientation for people's personal lives and for public policy. It does this by interrogating the contribution such relationships make to human well-being. The research is thus essentially about enhancing people's quality of life. This is more than a vague claim of the kind that any philosopher might make about 'impact', as can be seen by the way in which 'the family' is crucial terrain in current political debate. Politicians and policy-makers on all sides worry about family breakdown and argue about the way in which the state can best promote stable family life. More generally there is widespread concern that policy has sometimes aimed too single-mindedly at economic growth without regard to the value of relationships and other contributors to happiness. Our research feeds directly into policy debates of that kind, providing the 'back to basics' philosophical analysis that explains what is important about familial relationships, what is (and is not) needed for them to make their proper contribution to well-being, and thus helping to guide policy and practice in the public sector.

The research has been presented, at their invitation, to HM Treasury, and I was also invited to participate in a series of seminars and workshops that led to the publication, jointly by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unity and the Department of Children, Schools and Families, of *Families in Britain: an evidence paper* (published 18 December 2008). The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has read our paper 'Family Values and Social Justice', and Michael Gove, the shadow Minister for Children, Schools and Families, has cited another paper of ours in a speech. In the past I have given presentations at many workshops and conferences organised by think-tanks designed specifically to bring together academics, politicians and journalists (e.g. Independent Public Policy Research (IPPR) conferences on social mobility and meritocacy attended by Gordon Brown, David Miliband, and Ed Miliband).

Publication of the book will be accompanied by journalism and, I expect, media appearances, presenting the key basic ideas in intelligible ways to a wider audience. My previous book on school choice was featured in The Guardian, The Observer and Prospect Magazine and led both to newspaper articles (Daily Telegraph, the New Statesman and the Independent) and appearances on radio (The Learning Curve (R4), The Moral Maze (R4)) and television (BBC1 News, The Education Debate (BBC4)). I am confident that these and similar outlets will be interested in contributions spreading the word about the research.