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To understand how subjects are constructed socially and historically in terms of power, and how they act through power on others and on themselves, but not to see this as a purely random process or activity where ‘anything goes’, or conversely, portray ethical actions in terms of fixed universal rules or specified teleological ends, constitutes the objective of this book. What a normative Foucault can offer us, I claim, is a critical ethics of the present that is well and truly beyond Kant, Hegel. and Marx, and which can guide action and conduct for the twenty-first century.

Is parents’ power over their children legitimate? And what role do both theoretical analysis and practical judgement play when we make such normative evaluations? While this book adds to the growing literature on parents, children, families, and the State, it does so by focusing on one issue, the legitimacy of parents’ power. It also takes seriously the challenge posed by moral pluralism, and considers the role of both theoretical rationality and practical judgement in resolving moral dilemmas associated with parental power. This book makes a number of conceptual and methodological innovations. While parental power is usually conceptualised as form of paternalism, this book shows that non-paternalistic parental power can be legitimate as well. While parental power is often assumed to involve interference with children’s liberty, in fact there is a plurality of forms of parental power. And while political theorists offer general rules to resolve dilemmas arising between competing moral claims, it is demonstrated here that, in the evaluation of parental power, practical judgements are required in specific cases. A number of such cases of parental power are explored here at length, including parental licenses, children’s informed consent, and civic education. The primary intended market for this book is advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and established academics, in particular those with an interest in practical and applied ethics, contemporary political theory, moral theory, social theory, the sociology of childhood, political sociology, social work, and social policy.