I recently did an interview for The Philosopher's Zone on Australian radio. Careless polemical journalism around that piece has seriously misrepresented my views and led to a barrage of abusive emails.
For the record: My work with Harry Brighouse on Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships (Princeton UP 2014) is in large part about how vitally important for children are informal interactions like bedtime stories, and many other forms of loving help, from parents. We would never discourage anybody from reading their children bedtime stories, nor criticize them for doing so. Where parents are not willing or able to provide that kind of help, then they should be encouraged to do so, and where necessary supported in doing so.
We argue that the various means by which parents confer advantage on their children are not all equally important for loving family life. In our view the grounds for protecting elite private education, for example, are considerably less weighty. We also think it is good occasionally to be mindful of the children who, due to factors entirely beyond their control, are disadvantaged because of lack of loving attention from parents. Of course many will disagree with those views. But if you have read or heard that we object to bedtime stories, or want to create a level playing-field between children in different families, then you have read or heard someone who has misunderstood our theory.
