ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the conflict between the partiality which parents typically exhibit towards their children and the demands of egalitarian justice which arise from a commitment to the value of impartiality. Parental partiality seems natural, indeed valuable, but given the numerous advantages which children from advantaged family circumstances enjoy, the prospects of achieving genuine equality of opportunity in any society where parents can pass on those advantages are slender indeed. It is no solution to theorise away parental partiality as simply a social convention, nor to replace the family with collective child-rearing arrangements. Family structures, in fact, perform an important moral role in child development. It’s argued that to tackle the conflict it is necessary to combine public policies, which will do something to realise egalitarian justice, with a defence of moderate partiality, which would disbar better-off parents from further advantaging their children to the extent that they currently do.
