Equality of opportunity and the family

David Miller

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139236898.006

5 - Equality of opportunity and the family

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013

David Miller

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David Miller: Affiliation:
University of Oxford

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Summary

The family is a crucial determinant of our opportunities in life, of what we ‘become’…. We are not born as isolated, equal individuals in our society, but into family situations: some in the social middle, some poor and homeless, and some superaffluent; some to a single or soon-to-be-separated parent, some to parents whose marriage is fraught with conflict, some to parents who will stay together in love and happiness. Any claims that equal opportunity exists are therefore completely unfounded.

One of Susan Okin's main achievements in political philosophy – perhaps her greatest achievement – was to place the institution of the family at the centre of the theory of social justice. She noted how, in the history of political thought, philosophers had assumed for no good reason that family relations were to be regarded as beyond the realm of justice. And in the case of the modern political philosopher whose work she admired most – John Rawls – she detected and criticized a profound ambivalence in his treatment of the family. Rawls wavered between seeing the family as a key component of the basic structure of society – by virtue of its pervasive effects on the life chances of its members – and therefore as central to the theory of justice, and viewing it as a private association on which, accordingly, principles of justice were to bear only peripherally. In Okin's eyes this was symptomatic of the way that the liberal tradition as a whole had failed to take seriously the gendered nature of family relations and to follow through on the implications this has for social justice.

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Type: Chapter
Information: Justice for Earthlings
Essays in Political Philosophy
, pp. 115 - 141

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139236898.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2013

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