"Children and the Limits of Paternalism" (Ethical Theory and Moral Practice) (original) (raw)

In this article...I will argue that there are limits to how we may permissibly paternalize children. I begin in Section 1 by describing and endorsing Jonathan Quong’s account of paternalism, which defines paternalistic acts as acts that involve particular kinds of judgments that the paternalizer makes about the capacities of the paternalizee. In Section 2, I introduce a distinction between two kinds of paternalism: ‘compensatory’ paternalism, and ‘exploitative’ paternalism. In Section 3, I explain why compensatory paternalism is usually permissible in the case of children. In section 4, I argue that exploitative paternalism is often, if not always, impermissible even when directed toward children.