What Is A Family? A Constitutive-Affirmative Account

AbstractBio-heteronormative conceptions of the family have long reinforced a nuclear ideal of the family as a heterosexual marriage, with children who are the genetic progeny of that union. This ideal, however, has also long been resisted in light of recent social developments, exhibited through the increased incidence and acceptance of step-families, donor-conceived families, and so forth. Although to this end some might claim that the bio-heteronormative ideal is notnecessary for a social unit  to count as a family, a more systematic conceptualization of the family—the kind of family thatmatters morally —is relatively underexplored in the philosophical literature. This paper makes a start at developing and defending an account of the family that is normatively attractive and in line with the growing prevalence of non-conventional families and methods of family-formation. Our account, which we ca ll aconstitutive-affirmative model of the family, takes the  family to be constituted by an ongoing process of relevant affective and affirmative relations between the putative family members.
Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research