ABSTRACT
Important questions of justice about the family arise once we acknowledge and keep in view that procreation and parenthood are both integral to the existence of any society, and that they involve substantial benefits and burdens for parents, children, and society at large. Yet, existing theories of justice generally neglect these questions by assuming that the principles they formulate are to regulate the main institutions of societies constituted by fully formed adult individuals whose creation and care are taken as given. This chapter asks two related questions: first, does justice require that parents and non-parents share, and share equally, the costs and benefits of having children; and second, how do different answers to this question bear on our theory of distributive justice?
