Is it ok to love your children?

A vexed political question

An audio version of this essay – read by me – is available below the paywall.

In 2003, the philosopher Adam Swift – founder of the Centre for the Study of Social Justice at the University of Oxford, now Professor of Political Theory at UCL – published a book titled How Not to be a Hypocrite: School Choice for the Morally Perplexed Parent. I read it as a student, long before I had my own children, and at the time I found the thesis quite persuasive. 

In brief, Swift argues that parents should not pay to send their children to private schools because doing so entrenches socioeconomic inequality. It is usually moral, in his view, for parents to help their children in other ways, for instance by reading them bedtime stories. Both of these parenting behaviours might improve a child’s academic attainment (though not by much, actually – the correlation is mostly an effect of genetic confounding). But while any parent can read bedtime stories, only rich parents can buy private education, which means – says Swift – that the latter behaviour is immoral.

I recently came across a TikTok summarising Swift’s argument. One of the people in the comments section was not impressed, and expressed his displeasure in earthy terms, writing:

Adam Swift sits in the corner and watches his wife and her boyfriend I am absolutely sure of it.

A bit rude, yes. But I think this comment contains an important insight into the incompatibility of egalitarianism and good parenting.