ABSTRACT
Parenting has an ambiguous place within the liberal tradition. On the one hand, liberal theorists have traditionally portrayed parenting as a private activity. According to this view, parents should not only be allowed to raise their children as they wish however, also has responsibility for meeting the costs of childrearing through their own resources. On the other hand, liberal theorists have also generally acknowledged an important public dimension to parenting. Robert Taylor suggests that this liberal antinomy regarding parenting can be resolved through the implementation of a parental licensing scheme. This chapter argues that Taylor's and other theorist's parental licensing plans are incompatible with some basic liberal values. Although these plans would address some of the problems associated with the private parenting model, they would generate new problems that are at least equally as bad. In order to arrive at a more tenable parenting policy, the chapter outlines an alternative public parenting model.
