1 As Carole Pateman writes, ‘One of the most striking features of the past two decades is the extent to which the assumptions of liberal individualism have permeated the whole of social life.’ Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation: A Critique of Liberal Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press 1985), 182-3. All those fields influenced by rational choice theory - and that includes most of the social sciences - thus ‘hark back to classical liberal contract doctrines,’ Pateman writes, ‘and claims that social order is founded on the interactions of self-interested, utility-maximizing individuals, protecting and enlarging their property in the capitalist market’ (183).

2 E.g. Hobbes, ThomasMacpherson, Leviathan C.B. ed. (Baltimore: Penguin 1971);Google ScholarLocke, JohnTwo Treatises of Government, Laslett, Peter ed. (New York: Mentor 1965);Google ScholarRousseau, Jean-JacquesThe Social Contract, Frankel, Charles ed. (New York: Hafner 1947);Google Scholar The U. S. Declaration of Independence; and of course a literature too vast to mention. As Carole Pateman writes of this tradition, ‘a corollary of the liberal view Ȇ is that social contract theory is central to liberalism. Paradigmatically, contract is the act through which two free and equal individuals create social bonds, or a collection of such individuals creates the state’ (180).

3 E.g. Smith, AdamThe Wealth of Nations, Lerner, M. ed. (New York: Random House 1937)Google Scholar and virtually the whole of classical and neo-classical economics.

4 The phrase has been entrenched in judicial and social discussion since Oliver Wendell Holmes used it in Abrams v. United States (250 U.S. 616, 630 [1919]).

5 E.g. Rawls, JohnA Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1971);Google ScholarNozick, RobertAnarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974);Google Scholar and Dworkin, RonaldTaking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1977).Google Scholar

6 E.g. Richards, David A. J.A Theory of Reasons for Action (New York: Oxford University Press 1971);Google Scholar and Gauthier, DavidMorals By Agreement (New York: Oxford University Press 1986).Google Scholar

7 For a recent sample, see the symposium ‘Explanation and Justification in Social Theory,’ in Ethics 97, 1.

8 Held, VirginiaRights and Goods. Justifying Social Action (New York: Free Press/Macmillan 1984)Google Scholar

9 Rousseau, J.-J. The Social ContractGoogle Scholar

10 Rousseau, J.-J.Emile, trans. Foxley, B. (New York: Dutton 1911)Google Scholar

11 See especially Chodorow, NancyThe Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1978);Google Scholar and Trebilcot, Joyce ed., Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory (Totowa, NJ: Row-man and Allanheld 1984).Google Scholar

12 See e.g. Peterson, Susan ‘Against “Parenting,”’ in Trebilcot, Mothering.Google Scholar

13 By then ‘parenting’ might also be acceptable to those who find it presently misleading.

14 Adam Smith, Book I, Chap. II

15 See, e.g., Baier, Annette ‘Hume: The Women’s Moral Theorist?’ in Women and Moral Theory, Kittay, Eva and Meyers, Diana eds. (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield 1986).Google Scholar

16 Hume, DavidEssays Moral, Political, and Literary, vol. 1, Green, and Grose, T.H. eds. (London: Longmans 1898), 176Google Scholar

17 Gilman, Charlotte PerkinsHerland (New York: Pantheon 1979), 60;Google Scholar orginally publ. 1915

18 Ibid., 66

19 Flax, Jane ‘The Family in Contemporary Feminist Thought: A Critical Review,’ in The Family in Political Thought, Elshtain, Jean Bethke ed. (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press 1982), 252Google Scholar

20 The collection of readings in Thorne, Barrie ed., Rethinking The Family (New York: Longmans 1982)Google Scholar is a useful source. Trebilcot, Joyce’s Mothering is another helpful collection. And among the best sources of suggestions are feminist Utopian novels, e.g. Piercy, Marge’s Woman on the Edge of Time (New York: Faw-cett 1976).Google Scholar

21 See especially Held, VirginiaRights and Goods, chapter 5.Google Scholar

22 In some societies, social pressures to conform with the norms of reciprocal care - of children by parents and later of parents by children - can be very great. But these societies are usually of a kind which are thought to be at a stage of development antecedent to that of contractual society.

23 The gerontologist Elaine Brody says about old people that ‘what we hear over and over again - and I’m talking gross numbers of 80 to 90 percent in survey after survey - is “I don’t want to be a burden on my children.’” Interview by Lindsy Van Gelder, Ms. Magazine (January 1986), 48.

24 For a different view see Cohen, HowardEqual Rights for Children (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams 1980)Google Scholar

25 See Held, VirginiaRights and Goods.Google Scholar

26 For related discussions, see Hartsock, NancyMoney, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism (New York: Longmans 1983);Google Scholar and Ruddick, Sara ‘Maternal Thinking,’ in Trebilcot, Mothering.Google Scholar

27 For examples of the view that women are more deficient than men in understanding morality and acting morally, see e.g. Mahowald, Mary ed., Philosophy of Woman: Classical to Current Concepts (Indianapolis: Hackett 1978).Google Scholar See also Kohlberg, LawrenceThe Philosophy of Moral Development (San Francisco: Harper and Row 1981),Google Scholar and Kohlberg, L. and Kramer, R. ‘Continuities and Discontinuities in Child and Adult Moral Development,’ Human Development 12 (1969) 93-120.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

28 For further discussion, see Held, Virginia ‘Feminism and Moral Theory,’ in Women and Moral Theory, Kittay, Eva and Meyers, Diana eds. (Totowa, NJ: Row-man & Littlefield 1987)Google Scholar

29 Held, Virginia ‘Marx, Sex, and the Transformation of Society,’ The Philosophical Forum 5, 1-2 (Fall-Winter 1973-74)Google Scholar