Stephan Kinsella argues that even though parents do have rightful positive obligations, these obligations could be largely unenforceable for practical reasons:
a parent who needs to be forced to care for their kid will not be a good parent, so probably best to let a third party adopt the kid. It could be the case that the positive obligations we think parents have assumed in the case of kids, are simply mostly unenforceable, except for some narrow cases like forced heirship law or legal obligations of financial support, and so on.
Are parental obligations practically unenforceable? And if they are practically unenforceable, what do we infer about any failure to meet such obligations?
Are Parental Obligations Practically Unenforceable?
Some positive parental obligations do present enormous practical challenges to enforce. For example, there are sociopathic or incompetent people who are so dangerous to children that presumably they could never be forced to provide even the bare minimum survival care required for any child.
There are workarounds for enforcement even in these cases. A dangerous parent could be rightfully forced both to give up custody of their child to a responsible party and/or to provide financial support, as Kinsella suggests.
What Do Practical Barriers Imply About Justice?
It is incontestable that- at least in some cases- positive parental obligations may be practically impossible to enforce. What are we to make of this? There are three competing inferences that one might draw from this:
- Since the practical barriers to enforcement are insurmountable in some cases, it cannot be defined as an injustice if parents fail to meet their positive obligations.
- It may be an injustice if parents fail to meet positive obligations, but since we can't practically do anything about it, it is meaningless to even talk about it.
- Justice matters, even if there is no practical way to redress an injustice at present.
For me, the correct inference to draw is 3: justice still matters even if we sometimes can't enforce it for practical reasons.
Rothbard once made the point that is valid to have a goal like the eradication of murder even if you do not ever expect that goal to be achieved. Similarly, it is valid to have the goal of eradicating the neglect and abuse of children, even if you never expect this to be achieved for practical reasons.
There are insurmountable practical barriers to achieving a 100% enforcement on the prohibition of murder, but the injustice of every murder still matters. Similarly, there are insurmountable practical barriers to enforcing every parent to fulfil all their positive obligations to their children, but the injustice of child neglect and abuse still matters.