Parents’ Duties, Children’s Debts

First published in 1995, Parents’ Duties, Children’s Debts (reissued with a new preface) examines the state’s role in regulating parent-offspring relations. The book opens with parents’ responsibilities for young children, discussing controversies surrounding the 1991 Child Support Act, parents’ financial obligations towards their children, the 1989 Children Act that defines mutual responsibilities of parents and the state during family crises, and the youth justice system’s engagement when children prove ‘troublesome’. It raises critical questions about cultural specificity in parent-offspring relations and the limits of state intervention in child-rearing practices.

The book then addresses children’s responsibilities for elderly, frail, or disabled parents, examining the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act’s provisions and how the state defines parental needs and children’s duties. It explores the social and political reconstruction of adult children’s –especially daughters’ – caring responsibilities and how the state ‘contracts out’ liabilities between children and parents.

The book concludes that while the welfare state facilitates the ‘beneficent self-giving’ characterizing parent-offspring relations, it also burdens these relationships with ideologically and historically fashioned debts and liabilities, rather than merely biological ones. This work will be a valuable read for students and researchers of sociology.