## 1. Preliminary Distinctions



Here, "relationship goods" refers to those goods of
constitutive (as well as, often, instrumental) value that accrue to
individuals in virtue of them being in relationships with other
people, and that could not be enjoyed outside relationships. Examples
include companionship, affection, intimacy, attachment, love,
friendship, empathy, social respect, solidarity, trust. The
distinction between relationships and some of the relationship goods
identified here may be purely analytical: Relationships partly consist
of these goods, as they would not exists--or would not be the
kind of relationships they are--in the absence of these
"goods". To some extent, our language bears witness to
this: we use "love" or "friendship" both in
order to refer to types of relationships and to refer to the things
that individuals "get" out of relationships. Therefore,
talking about relationship goods--as well as about distributing
them--is artificial, yet helpful for the purpose of the present
normative analysis.



One sub-category of relationship goods that has received philosophical
attention recently are familial relationship goods: these are
relationship goods that accrue to individuals in virtue of them being
in an adequate parent-child relationship (Macleod 2002; Brighouse
& Swift 2014). They include things such as providing authoritative
care for a child, the special spontaneous love and intimacy that (it
has been argued) is only possible between a child and a parental
figure, and a sense of continuity with the past and the future that is
created by being part of a family. Another example of relationship
goods are political relationship goods: These are relationship goods
that accrue to individuals in virtue of them being in political
relationships with each other (personal or not)--for instance
with co-citizens or co-nationals, fellow members of the same political
organization such as a party or a trade union. Examples include voting
rights, social respect, social trust, social solidarity, as well as
those goods that are the focus of relational egalitarianism--a
strand of egalitarianism interested in how we relate to each others as
equals--such as respect, recognition, inclusion, and community
(Honneth 1992; Wolff 1998; Anderson 1999; Young 1990; Gheaus
2018).



The subject of this entry is a large sub-class of relationship goods,
"personal relationship goods"; they accrue to individuals
in virtue of them being in relationships that involve some kind of
direct, personalized interaction--for instance with friends,
family members, neighbors, colleagues, people who are active in the
same political or social movement, or even strangers with whom one
gets into direct contact that is substantial enough to be personal.
Relationships that don't qualify for this description are often
anonymous interactions, like one-off interactions with a clerk or a
mall employee often are. People involved in some personal
relationships may also stand in a political relationship, and then the
goods realized in the relationships are also political. Examples are
the personalized trust, solidarity or loyalty that can bind
individuals who relate directly to each other as part of a political
movement. Other such goods are personal relationship goods realized in
non-political relationships. Examples are companionship, affection,
attention, sympathy, encouragement, acceptance or loyalty and trust
that one gives and receives *qua* part of a personal
relationship.



Examples of relationship goods that are *not* personal
relationship goods are social solidarity--expressed through the
existence of a social security net--social
inclusion--expressed, for instance, in anti-discrimination
laws--or voting rights. One can enjoy these goods even in the
absence of direct, personal encounters with other individuals.



Because the scope of this entry includes goods that are realized in
relationships that are personal but not close, or intimate, this
definition of relationship goods is wider than that implicit in Chiara
Cordelli's notion of relational resources. These are resources
made available through



> 
> 
> intimate relationships such as relationships of familial love,
> friendship, and kinship, as well as non-intimate relationships between
> colleagues, neighbors, members of voluntary associations, and
> participants in a common social network
> 
> 
> 



but not through



> 
> 
> the more abstract relation of political citizenship. (Cordelli 2015a:
> 90)
> 
> 
> 



At the same time, it is a narrower understanding of relational goods
than other notions discussed in recent literature (Seglow 2013), which
include relationship goods that do not flow from personal, but from
more anonymous, relationships such as those between co-citizens.



"Personal relationship goods in general" are personal
relationship goods that are accessible to, valuable for, and possibly
owed to people of any age. For the purpose of this entry,
"personal relationship goods for children" are personal
relationship goods that have only been said to be owed to
children.



The main philosophical issue raised by personal relationship goods is
the following: They are highly valuable for all individuals (in ways
explained below) both non-instrumentally and instrumentally. And they
are especially important for children, because they are essential for
their survival, for flourishing *qua* children and for
developmental reasons. For these reasons, it is clear that personal
relationships generate weighty *reasons* for action. The main
task of practical philosophers is then to see how weighty these
reasons are, and, in particular, whether personal relationship goods
also generate moral duties: Are there any duties to ensure people
enjoy (opportunities to) them? And if so, are some of these duties
duties of justice? Are they enforceable as in a) feasible to enforce
and b) legitimate to enforce? And what kind of measures can states
take to ensure a fairer distribution of these goods?


## 2. Personal Relationship Goods in General



Two bodies of philosophical work, on the ethics of care and on
associative duties, are centered around the normative significance of
personal relationship goods and the moral and political issues they
raise.


### 2.1 The Ethics of Care



An influential strand of feminist ethics developed over the past four
decades, the ethics of care, is one area of philosophy that implicitly
recognizes personal relationship goods because "care" is,
itself, a main relationship good which has been claimed to play a
central role in moral, and, more recently, in political thinking.



Perhaps the best way to individuate the ethics of care is as a strand
of ethics concerned with the meeting of the needs of others within
personal relationships (Tronto 1993). But "care" is used
in feminist ethics to refer to slightly different things (Collins
2015). The reference to needs is the common link between different
accounts of the proper subject-matter of the ethics of care. (In this
entry, "needs" and "important interests" are
used interchangeably). The ethics of care is, first, about a type of
work, or labor, as when someone is said to "take care of"
someone else in situations like nursing a baby or looking after an ill
person. Some care ethicists ascribe special, if not exclusive, moral
value to caring for those individuals who cannot meet the needs in
question themselves (Bubeck 1995). This meaning often extends to a
wider range of activities such as education or physical and mental
health care. According to a second view, the ethics of care is about
close relationships between persons, based on a special emotional bond
and including a commitment to each other's wellbeing (Ruddick
1998). Much of the ethics of care--at least in early
stages--has focused on close personal relationships such as
mothering or friendship; the assumption here is that caring meets the
need for bonding, or attachment (Gheaus 2009: 64). In a third way,
"care" is understood as a disposition to behave in certain
ways: to be attentive and sensitive to other people's needs and
willing to help them. In this sense, "care" is a virtue,
and the ethics of care a form of virtue ethics. As a virtue, care is a
general attitude, opposed to callousness and indifference to the needs
of others.



Whether understood as an activity, relationship or disposition geared
towards meeting needs, care has been attributed universal moral value.
Many care ethicists were interested in the crucial role of care-giving
for agency and for individual and species survival. First, without
receiving care within relationships, infants are unlikely to survive,
let alone thrive (Ruddick 1989). Moreover, care is necessary for the
coming into existence of persons: it is only within relationships with
good care-givers that children can acquire moral knowledge and
dispositions and, ultimately, full agency (Held 1993). Similarly, some
care ethicists argue that friendship is necessary for developing a
rich sense of autonomy, since friends give us the most direct access
to particular values and conceptions of the good (Friedman 1993)
Second, as Eva Kittay argues, care has universal value because most
individuals require it to different degrees at different moments
throughout their lives beyond infancy or childhood: some of us only
during illness and old age, while others--people who are
chronically ill or disabled--more or less continuously (Kittay
1999).



Because it is necessary for the creation of persons, care ethicists
have claimed that care is more basic to morality than rights and
duties, since in its absence most rights are useless. Care being so
basic to our survival and flourishing provides a presumptive reason to
assume there are duties to ensure that everyone receives sufficient
care. It is difficult to determine what some care ethicists think
about such a duty, because the ethics of care has, at least in the
beginning, been coined in opposition to the language of rights and
duties (Gilligan 1982; Noddings 1984). More generally, much of the
ethics of care arose from a skepticism concerning moral principles
(Collins 2015). Thus, the question of whether we have a general duty
of beneficence to extend our care to those who seem to be left out has
not received much attention (but for a recent exception see Collins
2013).



More recently, care ethicists interested in theories of distributive
justice have defended the view that care is one of the goods whose
distribution should concern us. This means that we ought to shape
institutions to ensure that everyone receives care in accordance to
the demands of justice. Kittay proposed a principle of distributing
care that regulates both the giving and the receiving of care:



> 
> 
> To each according to his or her need for care, from each according to
> his or her capacity for care, and such support from social
> institutions as to make available resources and opportunities to those
> providing care, so that all will be adequately attended in relations
> that are sustaining. (Kittay 1999: 113)
> 
> 
> 



Similarly, Daniel Engster (2007) believes that care is the core of
morality: because human dependency is universal, individuals have a
moral duty to care for others as well as a moral right to receive care
when they cannot meet the relevant needs themselves. The duty is to
give care, when possible, directly; but, because uncoordinated
individuals cannot ensure that everyone receives adequate care,
governments should take on the responsibility to organize it such that
it reaches all individuals in times of need.



A new wave of philosophical work (reviewed in
 section 3)
 looks more closely at the goods that are uniquely available through
personal relationships, including relationships based on care, and
provides a variety of reasons why there may be duties to provide these
goods. Most of these views have a particular interest in reasons why
the distribution of (access to) these goods is a matter of
justice.


### 2.2 Material and Non-Material Needs



Because of their central concern with meeting needs, care ethicists
have identified different goods generated by different types of caring
relationships; for instance, according to Ruddick, the three main aims
of mothering are to protect the child from physical harm, to foster
her physical, emotional and intellectual growth and to socialize her
(Ruddick 1989). To fulfill such aims, and especially the second two,
one has to provide a mix of material and non-material care-giving.
Care ethicists in general have not operated with the distinction
between material and non-material care-giving. This distinction is
crucial for establishing which are the goods that can be uniquely
realized in caring, and, more generally, in personal relationships.
And some have proposed definitions of care that indirectly exclude
some of the personal relationship goods from the scope of care. For
instance, according to Engster, care is



> 
> 
> everything we do directly to help individuals to meet their vital
> biological needs, develop or maintain their basic capabilities, and
> avoid or alleviate unnecessary or unwanted pain and suffering, so that
> they can survive, develop and function in society. (Engster 2007:
> 29)
> 
> 
> 



This implies that meeting some of the psychological needs of an adult
friend--those related to flourishing rather than with avoiding
suffering--may not qualify as care.



Yet, material care-giving may be available outside any (personal)
relationship: for instance, robots can actually or conceivably provide
it. It is likely that the goods that require only material care-giving
can be realized outside any relationship with people and therefore are
not personal relationship goods. Note that the distinction between
material and non-material care-giving does not overlap with that
between material and non-material needs: It may take some non-material
care-giving in order to meet a material need--if, for instance,
it turned out that physical health and normal development depends in
part on providing emotional nurturance. Further, it might matter
non-materially that some material needs are supplied by a person
rather than a robot.



It is normatively important whether some non-material care-giving,
too, can be given outside relationships--for instance, whether
robots can successfully be used to meet the psychological needs that
are usually met by those who relate to us within caring relationships.
Some argue that we should use robots to make certain kinds of
emotional care-giving available--for instance, to ensure that
elderly people living alone (usually in highly atomized societies)
have access to robot-provided companionship (Aronson 2014). However,
one can plausibly assume that no robot can provide genuine
companionship, which requires access to another individual's
mind. (At least, as Brake (2017) notes, unless and until we will have
developed true artificial intelligence.) The same is true for other
personal relationship goods--attention, affection, sympathy,
encouragement etc.--which are necessary to meet psychological
needs. Therefore, of the senses of "care" outlined above,
the most relevant for personal relationship goods is that of caring
relationships (see also Brake 2017).


### 2.3 Personal Relationships: Reasons, Duties and Goods



The interest in how personal relationships and the goods they produce
generate reasons has given rise to a large and growing body of
literature outside the ethics of care (Scheffler 2001; Kolodny 2003;
Keller 2013; Seglow 2013). Our reasons to be partial towards our close
associates often take the form of *prima facie* duties. Unlike
some of the care ethicists (Noddings 2002), its authors do not assume
that (close) personal relationships are the paradigm of the rest of
morality. Rather, they start from the observation that people have
special permissions towards, and owe special duties to, those with
whom they are in personal relationships, such as friends, spouses, or
family members. Often such duties are called associative duties.
(Although it is also possible that the reasons generated by personal
relationships are not moral reasons, in which case they do not
generate moral duties; for an argument why not all good reasons are
moral reasons see Susan Wolf 1992).



There is a debate over whether or not all associative duties can be
reduced to impartial duties. One plausible interpretation is that we
all have a general duty to protect the vulnerable and those with whom
we stand in personal relationships are unusually vulnerable to us; and
we have powerful consequentialist reasons to welcome the formation of
personal relationships--and hence the generation of associative
duties--in order to solve coordination problems (Goodin 1985). A
common complaint about reductionist, or impartial, theories is that
they are self-effacing (Keller 2013; Collins 2013): it seems
appropriate for the agent who is subject to the duty to be motivated
by their attitude towards the individual to whom the duty is owed, or
maybe by the value of the relationship, rather than by impartial
considerations.



Assuming associative duties are indeed irreducible to impartial
duties, what is their ground? Most prominent families of accounts
point to personal projects, to the value the relationship or the value
of the person to whom the duty is being owed (for a recent critical
discussion see Keller 2013). On the first kind of view, agents'
ground projects--that is, fundamental commitments that are
closely connected to their practical identity--give rise to
reasons (Williams 1981), and possibly duties, and some personal
relationships are amongst these projects. According to another view,
projects are not morally appropriate grounds for associative duties;
rather, associative reasons respond to the value of the person with
whom one has a personal relationship (Keller 2013). But strangers have
the same moral value as our associates; this account will struggle to
explain why we only have reasons of partiality towards those with whom
we are in relationships. Finally, perhaps the most widespread family
of views justifies associative duties as grounded in the
non-instrumental value of relationships (Scheffler 2001; Seglow 2013),
or in their final value (Kolodny 2003), or in their moral goodness
(Jeske 2008). According to some philosophers, moreover, the value of
some personal relationships is partly constituted by parties living up
to their associative duties (Raz 1989; Brighouse & Swift 2014).
One version of this view, that is particularly interesting for this
entry, is Jonathan Seglow's appeal to relationship goods in
order to justify associative duties (Seglow 2013). Seglow argues that
the most plausible way of interpreting the claim that relationships
generate duties on account of their value is to see how the
relationships contribute to the flourishing of the people involved.
And this, in turn, is best understood in terms of the goods uniquely
made possible by relationships such as friendships, parent-child
relationships and membership in various associations. According to
Seglow, personal relationship goods are distinctive to these
relationships: for instance parents and children owe each other love,
co-citizens owe each other respect, etc.



Note that there is also logical space for the possibility that
*some* associative duties exist independently from the value of
the relationship, for pragmatic reasons, while others, which some have
called pure associative duties, exist in virtue of the
non-instrumental value of the relationship (Macleod 2010a).



The existence and weight of personal relationship goods is widely
acknowledged irrespective of one's position on these debates,
namely whether one thinks that (a) personal relationships generate
associative duties or merely (non-moral) reasons, (b) associative
duties are reducible to impartial duties or not and (c) associative
reasons are grounded in personal projects, the value of individuals to
whom the duty is being owed, or the value of the relationship.
Obviously, some goods that are crucial for most people's
wellbeing can only exist due to human beings' relational nature:
friendship, love, emotional care, attention, affection, company
etc.



Personal relationship goods are not always easy to individuate. This
is illustrated in debates about one particular personal relationship,
and the good that it generates, namely love--a topic that has
received much recent philosophical interest. Love is a form of valuing
another individual, whether as an appropriate response to her value
(Velleman 1999) or by bestowing value on her through the relationship
with the beloved (Frankfurt 2004), perhaps by creating a common
history between the individuals in the relationship (Kolodny 2003,
2010). In either case, love has been said to depend on, or even be
constituted by, other personal relationship goods. On David
Velleman's (1999) account, according to which love is an
appraisal of value, an ability to pay special attention to some
individuals to whom one is willing to become vulnerable is what makes
possible love for particular individuals. Others, too, think that
loving consists in directing one's attention in order to attend
to the valuable features of the beloved (Jollimore 2011) and some of
Velleman's philosophical predecessors, such as Iris Murdoch,
believed that attention is the very essence of love and claimed that
"Love is the extremely difficult realization that something
other than oneself is real" (Murdoch 1959: 51). On this view,
love seems to respond to a need to be seen by others, to be known as
one really is rather than be a mere pretext for other
individuals' projections. An alternative view identifies love as
a form of robust concern, or care, for the beloved, for her own sake
(Soble 1990; LaFollette 1996; Frankfurt 1999).



The existence of personal relationship goods and of the reasons that
flow from personal associations create several moral problems: One is
to explain why it is justified to display partiality towards some
individuals, given the standard assumption that morality requires us
to treat people impartially. The various accounts of associative
reasons/duties outlined at the beginning of this section grapple with
this problem.



A second problem is that it seems morally objectionable, and possibly
wrong, that people do not benefit equally from personal relationships
and the goods they generate. Some people are lonely, out of no choice
or fault of their own; and those who do enjoy (good) personal
relationships have partners who can be very unequally resourceful
and/or invested in the relationship. This is a distributive objection
(Scheffler 2001), and it obtains independently from the truth about
the existence and nature of associative duties. However, if we do have
associative duties towards our near and dear, rather than mere reasons
to bestow personal relationship goods onto them, the inequalities and
unfairness are even more evident. Personal relationship goods have
both instrumental and non-instrumental value (the next section unpacks
these different kinds of value and the way it bears on matters of
justice). To illustrate, love is non-instrumentally valuable to the
beloved, and it also allows the beloved to enjoy other desirable
things--such as pleasure, or the advantages of having someone who
knows her well and who is motivated to serve her interests. Therefore,
the enjoyment of functional loving relationships makes one better off.
Further, some of the benefits that loving relationships bestow on the
beloved can have a positional aspect--that is, they give the
beloved a competitive edge over others when it comes to opportunities
for goods that are external to the relationship. For instance, the
formal and informal education that loving and resourceful parents give
to their children do not merely make these children better off than
they would otherwise be; but, because they place them in more
advantageous positions in the competition for the social goods, they
render children who do not benefit from loving and/or resourceful
parents worse off (Brighouse & Swift 2006).



The distributive objection provides support to the belief that there
are moral duties to try and associate with those who don't yet
benefit from close relationships in order to give them an opportunity
to enjoy various personal relationship goods (Collins 2013) or to
create the social conditions in people are likely to form valuable
relationships (as surveyed in
 section 6).


## 3. The Value of Personal Relationship Goods



Personal relationship goods have been argued to have constitutive
value, as explained in 3.1. Maybe even more obviously, they are
valuable as instrumental to various important ends, explored by
subsections 3.2 to 3.7. Philosophers advance arguments proceeding from
the particular kinds of value of personal relationship goods to the
conclusion that there are duties to provide them. In some cases, they
may generate duties of justice and individual entitlements.


### 3.1 Constitutive Value



One of the main insights of the ethics of care is that some goods that
are only available through close personal relationships are essential
for any flourishing life. Other philosophers have, more recently,
defended more specific claims.



First, personal relationship goods realized in close relationships are
constitutive of good lives (Liao 2006; Lynch et al. 2009; Gheaus 2009,
2017; Brownlee 2013, 2016a). This is perhaps most obvious for those
goods that have an affective quality (that is, most of them). The
largest longitudinal study in adult development to date (Vaillant
2012) indicates that personal relationships are--most likely
thanks to the goods they generate--indispensable to subjective
life satisfaction (but also positively correlated with other valuable
outcomes such as longevity and health--see
 3.2).
 And an extensive study conducted by a team of philosophers and
sociologists in Ireland revealed that close relationships and the
unique goods they generate are for many adults the most important
component of their life plans, or at least more important than other
forms of advantage (Lynch et al. 2009). For children, too, some
personal relationship goods, especially those available in
parent-children relationships, are constitutive of good lives: it is
hard to see how a good childhood could be (entirely) devoid of loving
care from parental figures, kindness from adults in general and
friendship with peers. Familial relationship goods--including the
special sort of intimacy between parents and children and the unique
fiduciary responsibility of parents--have also been said to be
constitutive of (most) potential parents' full flourishing
(Brighouse & Swift 2014). On this latter account, the goods have
constitutive value in an objective sense.



Further personal relationship goods that are political may contribute
in a constitutive way to good, or flourishing, lives (Brownlee 2013:
200; Gheaus 2018). These goods include non-discrimination,
non-marginalization and non-domination by fellow citizens with whom we
stand in personal relationships, such as those with whom we work in
political organizations or with whom we repeatedly share public
spaces.



Because personal relationship goods are part and parcel of good lives,
some believe we have duties to extend our friendship to others if we
can (Collins 2013). Onora O'Neill (1988) thinks that adults have
a fundamental duty to be kind and cheerful towards children, and
involved in their lives, but perhaps the duty could be extended to all
individuals. The duty is, originally, incomplete, or
imperfect--that is, not owed to all children and up to the agent
to judge when to exercise. O'Neill acknowledges that part of the
duty can become perfect--and its recipients can acquire
corresponding rights--through institutionalization, which is what
happens when children are being taken into care; but she doubts that
all the moral duties associated with the roles of parent, teacher or
social worker can be institutionalized. More generally, one view is
that duties with respect to at least some of the personal relationship
goods are matters of benevolence rather than justice, and that
attempts to institutionalize them would be particularly stigmatizing
or otherwise self-defeating (Gheaus 2009; Valentini 2016). Another,
possibly compatible, view, defended by Kimberley Brownlee is that the
provision of some personal relationship goods is a matter of justice
when they are constitutive of *minimally* good lives.
Specifically, her claim is that there is a human right to the
unconditional provision of enough opportunities for decent
interpersonal contact (Brownlee 2013, forthcoming). With respect to
familial relationship goods, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift (2014)
argue that adults who would make adequate parents are owed an
opportunity to enjoy the goods of intimate, caring and authoritative
relationships with children.


### 3.2 Survival, Health and Development



First and foremost, personal relationship goods are necessary for
minimally functional lives (Kittay 1999; Liao 2006; Gheaus 2009;
Brownlee 2013, 2016a). As already noted, a foundational claim of the
ethics of care is that all individuals go through periods of
vulnerability--most notably childhood--during which they
cannot survive, let alone flourish, without the care of another human
being. Relying on empirical research, Brownlee (2013) extends a
similar claim to people of all ages. She argues that chronic lack of
adequate social contact



> 
> 
> generates the same threat response as pain, thirst, hunger, or fear by
> setting off a chain of anxiety-inducing physiological reactions known
> as the 'fight or flight' response. (p. 211)
> 
> 
> 



and leads to a host of physical and mental health problems such as
high blood pressure, obesity, diminished immunity, alcoholism,
suicidal tendencies and depression. Adequate social contact, in this
context, includes ongoing relationships that are not (significantly)
abusive or neglectful and that provide psychological support and
acceptance. Not only children's health, and that of individuals
who are ill or disabled, but everybody's, depends on being in
some personal relationship(s). Further, she claims, individuals'
emotional, linguistic, and social abilities also depend on enough
social contact.



Brownlee argues that, because "when we are deprived of adequate
social connections ... we tend to break down mentally,
emotionally, and physically" (2016a: 55), we have rights to the
provision of those personal relationship goods that make minimally
adequate lives possible. A group of personal relationship goods that
has obvious instrumental value are those realized in very close caring
relationships. It is difficult to dispute that some such goods,
including affection, companionship, emotional care, attention,
encouragement and so on contribute to other aspects of
individuals' wellbeing. More controversially, Matthew Liao
argues--relying on empirical sources--that lack of love
threatens the physical, psychological and social development of
children and therefore entitles them to love (Liao 2006, 2015; Cowden
2012a). (The alleged duty to love children is more fully discussed in
 section 4).


### 3.3 Autonomy



Certain personal relationship goods have been argued to be
instrumentally valuable in a way that provides a direct reason for
their universal provision: If we cannot develop autonomy without
enjoying some of these goods, and if we owe individuals help to
develop and preserve their autonomy, then all individuals are entitled
to the personal relationship goods necessary for autonomy.



As we have seen, with respect to children the argument is
straightforward: it is difficult to see how one could acquire moral
responsibility, and eventually become fully autonomous, without close
and ongoing relationships with moral mentors. As Virginia Held argues,
it is the work of parents to create persons (Held 1993). But adults,
too, have been said to require enough decent human constant in order
to maintain their autonomy: if social deprivation is likely to
seriously erode mental health, then it will eventually also undermine
autonomy (Brownlee 2013). One illustration, often discussed by
Brownlee (2013, forthcoming), is that of prisoners held in isolation
who sometimes end up preferring brutal interaction with interrogators
to continued forced solitude. Even less than minimally decent
relationships seem desirable compared to the mental suffering, and
eventual psychological disintegration provoked by complete social
isolation.


### 3.4 Necessary to Secure Other Rights



If, as the arguments in subsection
 3.2.
 and
 3.3.
 indicate, some personal relationship goods are essential for survival
and health and for developing autonomy, then they are also necessary
in order to ensure the securing of various (human) rights. This at
least will be the case on the interest theory of rights (Brownlee
2013, forthcoming): If rights protect powerful interests, and if we
have powerful interests in surviving, in opportunities to preserve our
health, and to pursue our (reasonable) conception of life etc., then
our social needs have to be met for our rights to be respected. She
concludes this is a reason to believe that we also have an even more
urgent right to those personal relationship goods that are necessary
in order to stay alive, remain healthy, develop, and have the physical
and psychological conditions necessary to pursue any life plans.



Note that the same logic could apply to a theory focused on
individuals' entitlements to certain capabilities or
functionings, rather than to a theory of human rights. Martha Nussbaum
(2000; 2011: 33-34), for instance, believes that some of the
core capabilities to which we all have a claim of justice are
capabilities for affiliation and emotion. If, indeed, being affiliated
and enjoying the capacity of forming attachments with others are
preconditions for achieving other capabilities--such as bodily
health, practical reasoning, or play--then the former are more
basic. Similarly, on one view (Wolff & de-Shalit 2007), some forms
of advantage are "fertile", in the sense that their
achievement either conditions or makes more likely the achievement of
other forms of advantage. In this sense, personal relationship goods
are "fertile", provided that the above arguments
concerning their instrumental value are correct.


### 3.5 Primary Goods as All-Purpose Goods



Several arguments support the conclusion that certain personal
relationship goods are akin to primary goods in the sense that John
Rawls gives to this term: that is, goods whose distribution is a
concern of justice. A first reason is that some personal relationship
goods are all-purpose: whatever else one may want, one will need these
goods in order to pursue one's conception of a worthwhile life
(Kittay 1999; Brake 2017; Cordelli 2015a, 2015b).



As Elizabeth Brake (2017) notes, not all goods that are necessary for
the pursuit of any life plan are properly conceived of as primary
goods:



> 
> 
> being normally needed for the pursuit of plans of life and the
> development and exercise of the moral powers are necessary, not
> sufficient conditions, for inclusion on the list of primary goods.
> After all, oxygen, water, and food are ineliminable to survival, but
> they are not included on the list of primary goods. (p. 138)
> 
> 
> 



However, as she further notes, while individuals can buy various care
services, especially those concerning the meeting of material needs,
they cannot buy caring relationships. This means that the
implementation of just distributions of other goods cannot ensure that
all individuals will have proper access to personal relationship
goods. Brake's example is that of elderly individuals living
alone, with little mobility and without any social relations, for whom
no level of material wealth alone can provide adequate conditions for
forging caring relationships. If we cannot obtain (opportunities to
enjoy) personal relationship goods in exchange for money, and if these
goods are all-purpose goods, then there is a Rawlsian case for
including them on the agenda of justice (Brake 2017). (Note that,
under certain conditions, this could also qualify oxygen and clean
water as primary goods.)


### 3.6 Primary Goods as Necessary for the Two Moral Powers



Some philosophers (Brake 2017; Cordelli 2015a) claim that certain
personal relationship goods are akin to Rawlsian primary goods because
they are necessary to develop the two moral powers of persons: a sense
of justice and the capacity for a conception of the good. If so, this
is a second Rawlsian argument for them. It appears different from the
argument in the previous section, since some goods may be all-purpose,
yet not strictly necessary for developing the two moral powers (for
example, money).



In this sense, one way in which some personal relationships goods are
relevant is because of their role in self-formation and, more or less
directly, in the acquisition of self-respect. Not only care ethicists
(Held 1993), but also contemporary philosophers influenced by Hegel
have noted this; the latter elaborated on the Hegelian idea that we
gain self-consciousness only through a process of mutual recognition.
This insight has been applied to various contexts. The child's
subjectivity is shaped within her the relationship with her primary
care-givers--including her identity alongside various categories
such as gender and her future (in)ability to relate to others as
equals, in non-dominating ways (Benjamin 1988). Through relationships
in which they receive other people's recognition, individuals
gain self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem (Honneth 1992,
1995: ch. 5). If this is correct, and if the social bases of
self-respect is a primary good--as Rawls (1971) definitely
believed--this is another reason to think that access to some
personal relationship goods is a matter of justice.



Within analytical political philosophy, Brake (2017) noted that the
goods uniquely created by caring relationships are usually necessary
at *all* stages of life in order to exercise the two moral
powers. This is very likely, given their role in maintaining mental
health; but perhaps even when personal relationship goods are not
necessary for mental health, they are required for maintaining as
sense of justice and revising life plans, as suggested by
Cordelli:



> 
> 
> many relational resources should count as primary goods ...
> because they secure those conditions of support, stability, and the
> self-confidence that foster the development and maintenance of the
> first moral power over time. Further, relational resources also play a
> relevant role in helping individuals *revise* their life plans.
> (Cordelli 2015a: 97)
> 
> 
> 


### 3.7 Primary Goods as Necessary for Equality of Opportunity



If they have the instrumental value attributed to them by the above
arguments, then it is plausible that universal enjoyment of personal
relationship goods is also necessary in order to ensure (fair)
equality of opportunity. This is a third Rawlsian argument for being
concerned with their distribution. Some argue that a minimum of social
resources are necessary for an individual to enjoy equal opportunities
(Cordelli 2015b) and that "[s]ocial deprivation conflicts with
equality of opportunity" (Brownlee 2013, 214). And some
egalitarians noted that the quality of personal, micro-interactions
between parents and children are an important determinant of
children's future opportunities (Swift 2003; Brighouse &
Swift 2009, 2014); presumably, some of the influencing of future
opportunities is due to the benefits in motivation and self-confidence
that come with being well loved and emotionally cared for by
one's parents.



Some philosophers sympathetic to the aim of including personal
relationship goods on the agenda of justice deny that the principle of
equal opportunities to positions of advantage - like good jobs -
requires that all adults enjoy certain relationship goods, like those
uniquely available through marriage. Brake (2017) illustrates this
claim with the case of gay people who can have equal opportunities for
advantageous jobs without having access to marriage. It seems,
however, that, if the arguments at
 3.2
 are correct, some decent social contact that goes beyond occasional
social interactions with strangers is necessary for mental health and
hence also for equality of opportunity. Further, if the principle of
fair equality of opportunity applies to all positions of advantage, it
should also apply to marriage.


## 4. Personal Relationship Goods for Children



Some personal relationship goods have been said to be especially
important, and possibly owed only to, children. Alternatively, some of
them may be owed to children in a more robust way than they are owed
to adults--as outcomes to children and as mere opportunities to
adults (Macleod 2010b; Lindblom 2018). Children can fully enjoy these
goods only if they are well cared for; and some of these
goods--discussed below--are themselves personal relationship
goods.



During childhood, personal relationship goods are instrumental to the
good life of children in two ways: by allowing them to enjoy good
health and pleasure during childhood and, due to their developmental
role, by contributing to their future adult flourishing, including
their future ability to relate to others (Vaillant 2012). Because of
this double aspect, conflicts are in principle possible between
allowing children to enjoy personal relationship goods in ways that
maximize childhood wellbeing versus allowing them to enjoy these goods
in ways that optimize the wellbeing of the future adult (Hannan 2018).
For instance, it is possible that it is best for a child *qua*
child to enjoy as much time as possible in playful interaction with
loving adults, while for the future adult it may be more
instrumentally valuable to use the time for honing competitive
abilities. An interesting possibility, so far unexplored by normative
theorists, is that personal relationship goods are also of
developmental value for adults. Given that we are capable of some
degree of psychological development throughout our lives--or, in
neurobiological terms, some degree of brain plasticity--it is
possible that enjoying the goods of personal relationships can help
foster psychological development during adulthood. For the purpose of
this section, the assumption is that the goods discussed below are of
particularly high value to children thanks to their developmental
role, and that childhood is a period of life which is developmentally
special, thus requiring that we pay special attention to developmental
goods.


### 4.1 The Right to Familial Relationship Goods



It is undeniable that children have claims with respect to their
wellbeing against adults--whether collectively or specifically
against their parents--and many think these are claims of
justice. Brighouse and Swift (2014) influentially defend the
institution of the family by appeal to family relationship goods, many
of which are relational: parental love, trustworthy and spontaneous
intimacy and being subject to beneficial authority from an individual
who loves, knows and is responsible for the child.



Being part of a family relationship, and enjoying its goods is also
good for adults, and possibly part of the *distribuenda* of
justice for both children and adults. Brighouse and Swift believe that
adults' entitlement is to an opportunity to enjoy family life,
and it is conditional on them being adequate parents. For children,
presumably, the entitlement to familial relationship goods is
unconditional and it is to the actual outcomes rather than to mere
opportunities. Brighouse and Swift make an exception for one of the
goods, namely love; they--like many other
philosophers--believe there cannot be a right to be loved. This
issue deserves a separate discussion.


### 4.2 The Right to be Loved



On one view (Liao 2006, 2015) children have a right to be loved on
grounds of the huge instrumental value that love has for childhood
wellbeing and development. He claims that the empirical literature
shows that children who lack love suffer in terms of physical health
and development, learning ability, interest in interacting with the
environment, ability to sleep and mental health. The right is said to
be held by each child primarily against her biological biological
parents, but all of us have secondary duties to ensure that all
children are loved. A similar claim, that love is irreplaceably
instrumental to children leading meaningful childhoods has been
recently endorsed (Ferracioli 2014) but also criticized (Grahle
2016).



There are several objections to Liao's thesis. The most
prominent is that there cannot be rights without correlative duties,
and there cannot be a duty to do what we cannot do; since we cannot
fully control our love for particular persons, there cannot be a right
to love (Cowden 2012b; Brighouse & Swift 2014). Against this
objection, (which he anticipates) Liao (2006) argues that we can do
more than it is commonly assumed in order to control our feelings of
love. However, as Brake (2011) noted, love is responsive to the
qualities of the beloved--which are outside of the lover's
control and which can change--and therefore there are important
limits to agent's abilities to control their loving. This may be
enough to show that there cannot be a duty to love.



A different objection to the claim that children have a right to be
loved is that, *contra* Liao's interpretation, all that
the empirical literature shows is that children require certain
parental behavior in order the thrive (Cowden 2012a, 339):



> 
> 
> the internal emotion of love is neither necessary nor sufficient for
> the child's best interests and does not constitute a primary
> essential condition for a good life.
> 
> 
> 



If so, then children have an interest, and possibly a right, only in
the behavioral aspects of love which, presumably are possible to
control. In addition, it may be impossible to measure the impact of
love as emotion, rather than as behavior, on children (Cowden 2012a,
2012b).



Finally, it is possible that some of the intrinsic value of love
consists in the confirmation, or maybe conferral, of value on the
beloved. This validation depends on the lover enjoying the beloved for
her own (the lover's) sake, independently from the lover's
will (or duty) to enjoy her. In turn, this requires that the emotional
response to the beloved is not fully controlled by the lover but
consists, at least in part, in a spontaneous reaction to the beloved
(Gheaus 2017). In this case, too, there cannot be a duty (and hence a
right) to be loved, because these would be incompatible with the full
value of love. This is the reason why even a perfect love drug, one
inducing all the subjective experiences and behaviors associated with
love, would not be capable of creating the same value that genuine
love creates (Nyholm 2015).


### 4.3 The Right to Non-Parental Care-Giving



Children may have a right to non-parental emotional care received
within enduring, robust, and protected relationships between children
and adults who are not their parents (Gheaus 2011). Empirical
literature seems to indicate that some non-parental care in good
childrearing institutions often confers overall benefit to children
older than one (Waldfogel 2006). Additional grounds include the
minimization of the risk of serious failures of care (such as abuse
and neglect) and a more egalitarian redistribution of opportunities to
good care: If all children are exposed to various care-givers and
styles of childrearing, it will hopefully be easier for them to
overcome the effects of more minor failings of care (Gheaus 2011).
Further, by undermining the parental monopoly of care over children it
would diminish objectionable domination of the child (especially
assuming that non-parental care benefits the child) (Gheaus 2011).



In particular, if children have long-term non-parental carers
alongside with parents, they may have better chances to encounter
people able to love them. This consideration is particularly important
if indeed there cannot be a duty to love. It is an interesting
question whether any of the value of the parent-child bond would be
lost if more than two people were emotionally and responsibly involved
long-term in the life of the child. The experience of living and
loving in extended families and the general belief that the
parent-child bond is no less valuable in families with many children
than in families with one or two children suggest a negative
answer.


### 4.4 The Right to Solitude



For both children and adults, periods of solitude can be a condition
for a good life (as well as for fully enjoying relationships with
others). Unlike adults, children cannot decide to exit all
relationships; nor should they, provided they are subject to the
legitimate authority of guardians. Therefore they must rely on adults
in order to have some protected time during which to be free from
others' company if they chose so. Recently, it has been argued
that children greatly benefit from having a significant amount of
unstructured time during which they can realize a number of
goods--such as play or creativity--to which they have
unique, or privileged access (Macleod 2010b, 2014; Brighouse &
Swift 2014; Brennan 2014; Gheaus 2015a, 2015b). It is possible that
occasional voluntary solitude is necessary for the full enjoyment of
such goods. The existence of the right will depend on how these goods
contribute to children's wellbeing *qua* children, to
their developmental interests, and--in cases of conflict between
the two--on how we ought to weight the child's interest in
wellbeing during childhood against her interest in future
wellbeing.


## 5. Personal Relationship Goods and Distributive Justice



There are several reasons to be concerned with the distribution of
personal relationship goods, yet there are also theoretical
difficulties with, and mere peculiarities about, putting these goods
on the agenda of distributive justice.


### 5.1 State Neutrality



People vary in the weight they give to personal relationship goods in
their views of how to live, and different ways of distributing
personal relationship goods will inevitably reflect some, but not
other, individuals' conception of the good. There may be no
neutral justification for particular *ways* of attempting to
distribute certain relationship goods--even if there are some
neutral justifications for wanting to distribute some of them in the
first place. To decide on any particular set of institutions, one
would need to know how to balance the distribution of a relationship
good against the distribution of another, or perhaps against the
distribution of non-relational goods. More generally, including
personal relationship goods amongst the primary goods will raise the
indexing problem (Brake 2017) by making it difficult to establish who
are the worse off without assigning relative weights to different
goods such as money and personal relationship goods. Doing this would
involve some kind of perfectionism.



Against this worry, Brake thinks that making caring relationships and
their goods available to all "is relatively low cost and does
not interfere with implementing the existing principles" (Brake
2017, 141), and, in particular, "it would not conflict with
distribution of income and wealth" (Brake 2017, 143). Yet, it is
not clear this would solve the indexing problem, since trade-offs will
still be needed. Moreover, funding institutions and programs to
facilitate access to personal relationship goods (of the kind
discussed in
 section 4)
 could be costly, partly because caring relationships and the personal
relationship goods they provide take time, and time is expensive. The
provision of most personal relationship goods cannot happen without
people spending enough time together. For instance, providing parents,
or adult children, with care breaks and flexible working hours is
going to be expensive.



Also, supporting these relationships could take particular forms, each
of which may reflect different conceptions of the good. Should we
ensure that people may work shorter hours in order to have more time
for their personal relationships, or should the state create good
caring institutions to try and meet children's interests in
personal relationship goods outside the family, and possibly more
efficiently? Adults who prefer to work (and earn) more will favor the
latter solution, while those who give more weight to personal
relationships will favor the former, and there may not be any neutral
justification to prefer one solution over the other. Similarly, some
people will prefer that society be shaped such that the elderly have
an opportunity to be cared for by their adult children, while others
will favor having opportunities to institutional care-giving, or
care-giving provided by strangers. In ideal circumstances, all these
preferences could be equally accommodated--but if and when this
is not possible, how to decide?



One possibility is to appeal to a Dworkinian hypothetical insurance
scheme (Dworkin 2000) to establish a way of distributing personal
relationship goods without violating state neutrality (see Bou-Habib
2013 for an application of this device to the question of individual
access to the material resources needed for child-rearing). For this
we should be able to determine what opportunities for personal
relationship goods would the average person chose for herself, under
conditions of perfect information and rationality.


### 5.2 Which Principle of Distribution?



So far, the right principle for distributing personal relationship
goods has received little attention: views ranged from requiring equal
access to love and care (Lynch et al. 2009) to sufficient access to
socially decent relationships (Brownlee 2013, 2016a); or, perhaps
"different principles govern the distribution of different
relational opportunities" (Cordelli 2015a: 103).



Brownlee thinks that, in order to respect the human right against
social deprivation it is enough to have "minimal opportunities
for non-threatening, decent, or supportive social interaction"
(Brownlee 2013, 206) rather than relationships with friends or loved
ones. She doubts that equality of social connection is valuable in
itself; yet, the rich arguments that she provides concerning the
importance of personal relationship goods suggest that justice
requires more than the securing of the human right she advocates. And
her worry that requiring equality instead of sufficiency could lead to
leveling down can be assuaged by adopting a prioritarian
principle.



In this context, it is important to know that sufficiency may ensure
the full benefits to which personal relationship goods are
instrumental: Some empirical research indicates that, while social
isolation is a major risk factor, there is little or no variation
across moderate to high levels of social relationships (House
2001).


### 5.3 Which Metric of Justice?



Does the identification of the correct metric of justice bear on the
thesis that justice requires the distribution of personal relationship
goods? According to Cordelli,



> 
> 
> although it might be easier for welfarist or perfectionists to include
> relational goods within their metric of justice, even those who adopt
> a non-welfarist and non-perfectionist, resourcist metric have good
> internal reasons to include (opportunities for) relational resources.
> (2015a: 89)
> 
> 
> 



To judge this, it is useful to operate with the following distinction
(Gheaus 2018): On the one hand, there is the question of the metric of
justice, that is, what should we make sure people have a fair amount
of. Examples include resources, (opportunities for) wellbeing and
capabilities. The correct metric of justice has been the subject of a
long, and not yet concluded, debate. On the other hand, one can be
concerned with the *distribuenda* of justice--that is,
what should we make sure our institutions and policies make available
to individuals in order to bring about a just distribution of the
right metric of justice. Examples include money, rights, leisure time,
and, possibly, opportunities for relationships. It is possible that
people who disagree about the correct metric of justice will--at
least occasionally--agree about the *distribuenda*.



Understood as part of the *distribuenda* of justice, personal
relationship goods--and relationship goods in general--can
plausibly be accommodated by different conceptions of the right metric
(Gheaus 2018). Indeed, friendship has been presented as one amongst
the many resources to be distributed by justice (Cordelli 2015a) and
some see the ability to form and maintain caring, meaningful
relationships as a basic capability (Nussbaum 2000: 82-83). Good
family relationships--including childrearing--have been
presented as a main contributor to wellbeing for at least some
individuals (Arneson 2014).


### 5.4 The Holistic Egalitarian Challenge



Even if personal relationship goods can be accommodated by any metric
of justice, there is another serious objection to seeing them as the
proper object of (re)distribution. Many egalitarians think that what
matters for realizing justice is equality of overall advantage, and
that losses of advantage in one area of life can be compensated by
higher levels of advantage in another. In this sense, they are
holistic. If this is correct, it means that it could be just for some
people to enjoy hardly any (opportunities for) personal relationship
goods--beyond what they need for minimal functioning and
autonomy--as long as they enjoy other goods more abundantly.
Rejecting holism will make it difficult for a theory to avoid being
(perhaps, mildly) perfectionistic; at the same time, it seems very
counterintuitive that the unchosen lack of certain kinds of
goods--which likely include personal relationship
goods--from an individual's life can be adequately
compensated for by any amount of other goods.


### 5.5 Fully Rivalrous Resources?



Often, the goods that are the object of just distributions are
rivalrous: money, health care etc. Some personal relationship goods do
not seem to be fully rivalrous: with respect to attention, friendship,
or the emotions of love, it is not true that consumption by one
individual prevents simultaneous consumption by others. As Brownlee
puts it:



> 
> 
> If each of us gives love to everyone and seeks love from everyone,
> it's not the case that there will be an insufficient amount of
> love to go around. (2016a: 71)
> 
> 
> 



At the same time, since everybody's resources are finite, there
are obvious limits to home many people can simultaneously enjoy a
person's love, friendship, attention, company etc. The fact that
personal relationship goods are not fully rivalrous should, in
principle, create a relative abundance that facilitates their
distribution, especially if the right principle of distribution is
sufficiency rather than equality.


### 5.6 Duty Bearers?



Some believe that the duty to provide personal relationship goods is
primarily a responsibility of individuals, not of institutions,
because



> 
> 
> [i]f no one will take on the job of associating with a given person,
> then that person's social needs go unmet despite the presence of
> appropriate institutions. (Brownlee 2016a: 69)
> 
> 
> 



It is not obvious that this argument succeeds. We all have an obvious
and powerful interest in many personal relationship
goods--especially in those that are necessary for survival,
health and autonomy--any yet it is often unclear who is under the
duty to satisfy the interest. So, the question is whether the
existence of a right requires a priorly specified duty and
duty-bearer. Some (Cowden 2012a, b) assume a positive answer, while
others (Brighouse & Swift 2014; Brownlee 2013) believe this is not
necessary on an interest theory of rights. If rights are grounded in
powerful interests that can be satisfied without imposing
disproportionate burdens on others, it is possible to identify them
prior to having in place a system that allocates correlative duties to
particular individuals.



Another question is whether there can be any direct duties to offer
company, affection or even love, or whether duties with respect to
providing these goods are in fact merely duties to create the
conditions in which personal relationships can thrive. One of the
arguments discussed above with respect to a possible right to parental
love may generalize to all types of love--romantic, erotic,
friendship--and even to lesser kinds of affection. It is possible
that one of the psychological needs met by close relationships is that
others want us to be part of their lives for self-interested reasons.
When some people want our company for their own sake, this is a
confirmation that we are important for their well-being (in some cases
in a non-fungible way). This kind of validation is possible only if
the love, or affection, is not entirely given out of duty. Therefore,
it seems that a duty to provide this particular personal relationship
good--the recognition that one is important for another
person's wellbeing--would be self-defeating, because it
would be incompatible with some personal relationship goods having the
full the intrinsic value they have when given out of inclination.
Therefore, it is possible that the reasons for offering love,
friendship, and even company may bear on the value of what is offered
in a way in which the reasons for offering other kinds of goods do
not. It is possible that only love, friendship and company given out
of certain reasons--having to do with the appreciation of the
individuality of the one to whom they are offered--will (fully)
do. (In contrast, the satisfaction of one's interests in, say,
nutrition, shelter or health care, are indifferent to the reasons why
others are providing these goods.) Perhaps the best solution to this
worry is to admit that perfect distributive justice can only be
realized indirectly, when people go above and beyond their duty in
providing personal relationship goods (Gheaus 2017).



Both considerations above suggest that, when people's powerful
interests in certain relationship goods generate duties, these are, in
the first instance, collective duties to provide the conditions in
which the kinds of relationships that generate these duties can
flourish. As the next section shows, there are many policies and
institutions that, individually or together, can achieve this
goal.


### 5.7 Implementation Issues



There are obvious problems of implementing requirements of justice
with respect to (opportunities for) personal relationship goods that
have to do with both the feasibility and the desirability of various
implementation methods. It seems important to draw a distinction
between how feasible it is to enforce duties corresponding to the
right to enjoy personal relationship goods, and how desirable it is to
enforce the duties in particular circumstances. Some (Cowden 2012b)
run the two considerations together, while others (Brownlee 2013)
distinguish them.



For instance, it may be undesirable to enforce a duty to provide
personal relationship goods because we lack a legitimate way of doing
it--we do not know how to enforce the duty without violating some
rights. As some have noted (Collins 2013), duties to associate with
others in adult personal relationships limits freedom of association;
but perhaps freedom of association is much more restrictive in nature
and scope than we tend to think (Brownlee forthcoming).



If a person has a right to a certain good, this means that if the
right is violated she is owed compensation. But, in some cases, the
loss cannot be compensated because certain goods have significant and
unique non-instrumental value. At least some personal relationship
goods--such as love and friendship--are like this (Gheaus
2009). The loss of other personal relationship goods seems impossible
to compensate due to their instrumental value to survival, functioning
and autonomy. Even if emotional care for children, or decent social
interaction amongst adults, had only instrumental value, if it is true
that these goods are necessary for minimally good health, their
absence cannot be compensated.



The impossibility of compensation may be relevant for the importance
of protecting the any rights to personal relationship goods--like
in the case of the right to life. It may count as an argument that it
is more urgent to provide (opportunities to) personal relationship
goods than other goods to the provision of which we have a right.


### 5.8 The Bads of Personal Relationships?



A topic so far not discussed by philosophers is that of the fair
distribution of the bads of personal relationship goods. We are,
neuro-biologically, prone to connect to other people, but relationship
often go badly, creating bads as well as goods--especially when
people's attachments to others are dysfunctional (Bowlby 1968,
1973, 1980). In particular, bad relationships early in life--with
parents and parental figures--can make people unable to form and
maintain healthy relationships, and this generates relationship bads.
Psychological evidence indicates that insecure attachment and the
ensuing relationship dysfunctions is inter-generationally transmitted
(Jones et al. 2015). Whose obligation is it to address the possible
unfairness that some people, out of no fault or choice of their own,
have to shoulder a much larger share of relationship bads than others?
Obviously, we cannot directly distribute relationship bads. And it is
not obvious how we could legitimately restrict childrearing to prevent
the creation of any such bads, as some of the philosophical literature
on licensing parents suggests (see the discussion in 6.2). Maybe
justice requires that we share the costs of helping people to overcome
bad relationship dynamics--for instance through psychotherapy and
counseling? This, however, will lead to a fair redistribution only if
it leaves everybody having (equally good) relationships. If not, it
will only be an improvement in the quality of relationships. Such
improvement seems desirable, in spite of possible distributional
complaints; this is likely to be an area where leveling down is,
all-things-considered, undesirable.


## 6. Policies and Institutions



Philosophers working on justice in childrearing, marriage, and the
ethics of care suggest or defend several institutions and policies
that could promote a fair distribution of personal relationship
goods.


### 6.1 General Measures



There is general agreement that states cannot distribute personal
relationship goods--or the relationships that generate
them--directly, but it can shape society in numerous ways that
would affect both the existence and the distribution of these goods
(Brake 2017; Cordelli 2015a). More specifically, policies and
institutions--including social norms--can enable people to
meet other people in conditions that make them more likely to relate
to them in personal ways, encourage people to voluntarily enter
personal relationships and influence people's internal resources
and abilities to have good relationships (Cordelli 2015a).



Care ethicists who believe that care-giving should be treated as a
primary good advocate the creation of social safety networks to
support care-givers and make sure that, by performing the
time-intensive work of care, they do not end up socially disadvantaged
(Kittay 1999). One view is that we ought to socially support
care-giving through a restructuring of economies, such that all
individuals have access to jobs remunerated well enough to allow them
to care for themselves and their dependents (Engster 2007; Cordelli
2015a) and, moreover, that jobs should not systematically interfere
with workers' ability to care, and that governments should
ensure enough caring services (Engster 2007).



But more specific measures have also been proposed in order to ensure
that all individuals have access to personal relationships and their
goods--including caring relationships. Most generally, states
could educate citizens to be competent care-givers (Brake 2017) and
even target boys as future care-givers (Behrends & Schouten 2017).
More generally, states could inculcate sociability through education
(Cordelli 2015a). Further, states could support the civil society by
encouraging volunteering and educational organizations (Cordelli
2015a), for example by using tax-incentives to encourage engagement in
voluntary associations--this could mean the provision of each
citizen with a voucher or tax-credit to be spent in support of
qualifying associations that produce personal relationship goods
(Cordelli 2015a). Also, states could create, run and subsidize
cultural centers and social clubs (Brake 2017). They could also design
public spaces such that people have ample opportunities to socialize
on playgrounds, parks and other public spaces (Brake 2017; Brownlee
2016a).



Brake (2010, 2012) defends a radically reformed institution of
marriage, justified by reference to the goods created by caring
relationships between spouses, but which would allow individuals to
de-bundle these goods and spread them across several relationships.
Currently, spouses can confer various advantages--including
relational advantages--on each other, but the institution of
marriage restrict access to these advantages by organizing them around
monogamous sexuality. If marriage were to be minimal, that is if
people could associate with each other for the sake of forming caring
(and not necessarily sexual) relationships, and also to choose the
number of partners and the kind of relational goods at the center of
their union, this would give them more ample and fair opportunities to
form and protect their caring relationships.



Brownlee (2013, forthcoming) advocates a reform of the punishment and
medical care institutions to avoid long-term isolation whenever
possible, in order to ensure that prisoners' and patients'
right against social deprivation is not violated. Quarantine, she
thinks, should only be used when strictly necessary, and even then
individuals should be enabled to remain in touch with their near and
dear with the help of technology; and particular individuals (such as
parents) ought to be allowed to take more risks than they currently
may for the sake of avoiding separation from their children. She also
argues that the practice of punishing through solitary confinement
should be abolished.



Finally, several philosophers defended the proposal that states should
ensure everybody's access to caring relationships (which,
presumably, includes access to some personal relationship goods) by
requiring all citizens to spend some time caring for those in need.
This policy could mean the creation of a "care corps"
service based on conscription (Bubeck 1999; Fabre 2006; Robeyns 2011)
or voluntary, state-incentivized, participation (Brake 2017).
Depending on how such a service would be set up, it could encourage
the formation of robust, long-term personal relationships--for
instance, by enabling continuity in care between the care-givers and
those in need for care. Yet, if there cannot be a duty to love, this
proposal could only work for some, but not all personal relationship
goods.



As mentioned above, due to personal histories that go back to their
childhood, many people fail to enjoy personal relationship goods
altogether (when they are unable to enter or maintain relationships)
or else disproportionately struggle with the bads of personal
relationships. To the extent to which they are not responsible for
this situation, there is a case for arguing that they are entitled to
subsidized programs--such as counseling or therapy--to
remedy their inability to relate to others in healthy ways.



Some proposals have to do specifically with enabling adults to enjoy
the personal relationship goods that families make available. Richard
Arneson (2014) argues that non-parents ought to subsidize parents in
order to ensure that the less well-off parents--who would
otherwise need to spend most of their time in payed jobs--have
access to the meaningful work of childrearing.


### 6.2 Measures Aimed at Children



Children have the strongest case for an entitlement to certain
personal relational goods, within ongoing caring relationships, on the
double ground that they are being owed the goods for their wellbeing
*qua* children and for the sake of the developmental importance
of the goods. One of the developmental reasons is to enable the future
adults to secure personal relationship goods for themselves (Brighouse
& Swift 2014; Brownlee 2016a).



As in the general case, a variety of state measures can ensure a fair
provision of personal relationship goods to children. Most basically
perhaps, the elimination of child poverty--which, in practice
would mean the elimination of poverty in general--is needed in
order to allow all parents to parent well (Brighouse & Swift
2014).



Further, states can and should be held accountable for ensuring that
children have adequate parents or parental figures (Ferracioli 2014).
The fair provision of personal relationship goods for children may
start with regulating procreation. Lisa Cassidy argues that those
people who do not expect to make good parents have a duty to abstain
from having children (Cassidy 2006), and several philosophers argues
that people who decide to have children are under a duty to adopt
instead of bringing new ones into existence (Friedrich 2013; Collins
2013; Rulli 2016). Nobody, to the best of my knowledge, argues in
favor of enforcing these duties *via* state policy. A milder,
and in some conditions possibly justified, approach would be for
states to nudge prospective adequate parents to adopt rather than
procreate. Another way of curtailing the kind of procreation that
results in some children lacking due access to personal relationship
goods would be the introduction of parental licenses. Licensing
procreators would require those who fail to obtain them to refrain
from procreating. It is however difficult to see what legitimate means
of enforcing such licenses exist (Engster 2010; De Wispelaere &
Weinstock 2012).



While it is hard to find legitimate ways to regulate
procreation--although perhaps we should not stop searching for
solutions--the situation is a bit more hopeful with respect to
regulating in order to ensure better parenting and, more generally,
better child-rearing. On the first count, there is a convincing case
for licensing biological parents (LaFollette 2010) although
implementation is difficult. But a bundle of second-best policies
include the introducing of parenting classes, perhaps mandatory (Cutas
& Bortolotti 2010; De Wispelaere & Weinstock 2012) and the
encouragement of fathers to take up parental leave in order to be
involved in childcare from the start.



Beyond improving parental care, states have also been said to have a
duty to create robust, state-subsidized and mandatory institutional
care to complement parental care, with the aim of containing abuse and
neglect care and giving more children the opportunity to enjoy
personal relationship goods (Gheaus 2011). States could also make sure
that all schools put the intrinsic goods of justice on their curricula
(Macleod 2018), including any such goods that are relational in
nature--for instance, by adding counseling and guidance functions
to the academic function of schools. Finally, the parents of a growing
number of children world-wide engage in long-term migration. These
children spend a significant time of their childhoods physically
separated from their parents and without good alternative parental
figures. One remedial solution would be for states to use some of the
remittances sent by migrant parents in order to organize counseling
and emotional support for the children left behind (Gheaus 2013).



Some policies that have been proposed for other reasons may, as a
side-effect, also ensure that more children enjoy the personal
relationship goods they are owed. Such is Arneson's (2014)
proposal discussed in the previous subsection; Gina Schouten's
(2015) suggestion that states support gender justice by subsidizing
parental leaves, care breaks for parents and good quality childcare
institutions; and, possibly, Anne Alstott's (2004) suggestion
that states help parents to honor the demanding, non-exit demand of
parenting through financial support.