Banter 51: Motherhood and Defeasible Duties to Benefit

Thursday, October 17th at 6:30pm
at Annette's and Kirk's house

Motherhood and defeasible duties to benefit is a philosophical and cultural problem that contemporary philosopher Fiona Woollard is concerned with in her current research and writing.  


(A quasi comedic, short lecture of Woollard's at a comedy club about this topic.)

I had the good luck of attending a lecture of hers in Oxford this past April (due to picking up a newspaper blowing past in a park as Edel played and seeing the event began in 45 minutes). It was fascinating to note the discomfort of various audience members around me for having dragged my six-year old to the lecture (a familiar feeling in Oxford, for last time I'd been there I had a 9-10 year old Naya hanging onto my apron-strings with confused onlookers at formal dinners in Christ Church hall, etc.); what kind of mother was I, what kind of mothering was I offering, shouldn't this child's needs come first, shouldn't the adult-oriented event come first above this mother's needs to attend if no childcare is at hand; or, perhaps they squirmed and stared in our direction for other reasons, wishing they'd or others had brought their children too (doubtful, though Edel did hang in there pulling off her childhood duties to benefit her mother, haha). Fiona, however, stared at Edel or alternately at me for lengthy periods when making various points about her argument, and seemed to have a soft set to her face in so doing, one of fascination and philosophical observation perhaps.  Risking an egocentric take on her gaze, it did please me greatly to think of her mind to be the sort that would connect these obvious dots.

Woollard summarizes:

"A recurring mistake influences discussion of the behaviour of pregnant women and mothers.  The mistake in question is the assumption that a mother who fails to do something that might benefit her child must be able to provide over-riding countervailing considerations to justify her decision.  It is assumed that in the absence of such a justification the mother is liable for moral criticism.  We see this assumption operating in academic literature, medical advice given to mothers, mainstream media and social media.  

I argue that this mistaken assumption involves attributing to the mother a defeasible duty to perform each action that might benefit her child.  This attribution is supported by implicit appeal to two arguments, both of which are initially appealing but ultimately unsound.

My first paper on this topic, which lays out the general philosophical issues is called 'Motherhood and Mistakes about Defeasible Duties to Benefit'.  It has been published at Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.  If you don't have access to PPR, you can download a author's draft of the paper at Publications and Works in Progress." (click on links embedded in this previous line)

It may help to review the concepts of defeasible reasoning also here:  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-defeasible/#DefeConvComm

For this banter session, we can start with perhaps the specifics of what Woollard is concerned with and then expand outward or sideways to include other related issues as the group is interested in about defeasible duties, cultural/societal expectations that are constricting, motherhood, our own limiting ideas on our own duties or the duties of others.