The Branch of Philosophy All Parents Should Know

Of the many challenges I encountered as a parent of young children, the biggest was trying to answer the question: Am I doing a good job? I found plenty of people, drawing on expertise in biology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary history, eager to offer opinions and tips. Some of this information was useful. But none of it gave me what I really wanted—a big-picture vision of what it meant to be a “good” parent, or of what I fundamentally owed my kids.

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A relatively recent attempt to integrate care into everyday thinking is the Social Science of Caregiving. The project, based at Stanford University, is led by the UC Berkeley psychology professor Alison Gopnik, who has brought together economists, philosophers, biologists, and psychologists to better understand the nature of caregiving. It’s a subject “whose time has come,” Gopnik told me. One of the project’s big aims, she said, is to consider the ways in which government policies and culture rest on the assumption that people are independent, and to reimagine a social contract that acknowledges the ubiquity of dependency.

Read the whole story (subscription may be required): The Atlantic