The Department of philosophy is happy to welcome Daniela Cutas (Senior lecturer, Head of office, Medical Ethics at LU). She will give a self-contained talk entitled:

The interest in becoming a grandparent

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Do parents have an interest in becoming grandparents – and if so, which claims does this interest generate against other parties (such as offspring, healthcare professionals, or the state), if any? While the interest in becoming a parent has been discussed extensively in reproductive and family ethics in recent years, grandparents and grandparenthood have been at best marginal in this growing literature. However, there are many instances in which prospective grandparents have actively contributed towards making grandparenthood possible for them. Mothers have donated their uterus to their daughters. Parents have mandated the collection of reproductive material from their children at risk of losing their fertility. Parents have also directed the use of reproductive material of their deceased offspring in order to produce grandchildren. While there may be good reasons to avoid voicing an interest in becoming a grandparent when making decisions regarding the reproductive potential of one’s offspring, it seems that there are also reasons to suspect that such an interest is at play in some of these cases. 

Whether one has an interest that can ground a moral claim is different from being interested in the object of that claim. Someone may be interested in something without it generating a claim onto others to allow or facilitate it for them. They may have an interest in it in the sense that it would be good for them, whether or not they are interested in it. Both meanings of ‘interest’ can be at play here: prospective grandparents show interest in their grandparenting future, and they may have an interest in becoming a grandparent which can ground a claim onto others. An interest in the former sense (of being interested) may not by itself suffice to ground any substantial claim. In this talk, I aim to discuss what an interest in the latter sense could be and which kinds of claims it could ground.

I will explore possible paths towards conceptualising an interest in becoming a grandparent and the degree to which it could ground a claim to facilitate its fulfilment. I start by offering a number of examples of cases in which parents have been involved in their offspring’s reproduction. I subsequently explore how an interest in becoming a grandparent could be constructed, and what it may require of whom. Finally, I outline some challenges for such an interest. Hopefully, this will show that there is a need for a more explicit analysis of intrafamilial interests that takes into account all the forces that may do substantial normative work in this area: including the often but not always implicit interests of prospective grandparents.