Epigenetics, Parenthood and Responsibility for Children

This chapter analyses the implications of findings in epigenetics for the ascription of moral responsibility for children. It contrasts shared understandings of procreative responsibility and discusses its extension to include all (individual or collective) actors who influence a child’s gene expression. It also problematizes the focus on biology in this process, using the example of epigenetics as a crossover between social and biological factors that contribute to a child’s life. Epigenetics blurs the boundary between biology and the environment, and thus allows an analysis of contributions to children’s lives that goes beyond classical dualistic categories such as genetic versus environmental or biological versus social. The analysis is undertaken against the broader background of the determination of moral responsibility for children.