1st St Cross Seminar HT13: Two Conceptions of Children's Welfare

What makes a child's life go well? This paper examines two answers to this question, one put forward by Wayne Sumner in Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics and another by Richard Kraut in What is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-being. The argument of this paper is that neither view is entirely satisfactory. A better account of the nature of children's welfare combines elements of both views. This paper is divided into five sections. The first section examines possible reasons why philosophers have neglected to discuss children's welfare. The second section outlines and evaluates Sumner's view. The third section outlines and evaluates Kraut's view. The fourth section sketches an account of children's welfare that rivals the accounts discussed in sections two and three. The final section summarizes my results.