Published June 1, 2026
Social Science Research Network
Abstract:
Motherhood assumes fatherhood. This statement was long self-evident. But with high rates of non-marital childbearing, divorce and single motherhood across the Western world over the last half century, as well as the more recent development of reproductive technologies, a normative relationship of fatherhood to motherhood is no longer assumed. Yet even with these rapid technological and cultural shifts, the existence of a particular child today still transforms a particular woman into a “mother” and a particular man into a “father”, at least as a matter of biological relation. Engaging the classic work of care ethicist, Eva Feder Kittay, I seek in this article to offer a more capacious – and indeed, normative — account of fatherhood, or a paternal ethic of care. Like a maternal ethic of care, the paternal ethic of care is based on a unique personal relation of embodied care, an obligation that arises from being an equal (paternal) source of the child’s existence, one who is specially situated to care for this particular child and his or her mother. As such, paternal care is characteristically distinctive from maternal care in its uniquely situated, special responsibility to create the safe, secure and just conditions that caregiving mothers need to carry out their duties of care with freedom and confidence and that dependent children need to become mature, agentic adults.
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Fellow Erika Bachiochi is a legal scholar who works at the intersection of constitutional law, political theory, women’s history, and Catholic social teaching. She is a Professor of Practice at the School for Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, where she teaches courses in the history of political thought, directs the Mercy Otis Warren Initiative for Women in Civic Life and Thought, and serves as founding editor-in-chief of its online journal, Fairer Disputations.
