Spotorno, Riccardo Maria2021-03-302024Spotorno R. Homophobes, racists, and the child’s right to be loved unconditionally. Crit Rev Int Soc Political Philos. 2024;27(2):109-32. DOI: 10.1080/13698230.2021.19054671369-8230http://hdl.handle.net/10230/46994This article examines the nature of the child's right to be loved. In particular, it argues that besides reasons for ensuring that children are affectively cared for by their parents, we have strong reasons for why children should be loved unconditionally -that is, loved independently of their morally irrelevant features. The article defends this claim by engaging closely with an argument recently formulated by Samantha Brennan and Colin Macleod, according to which the child's right to be loved would be violated by strongly homophobic parents. I argue that Brennan's and Macleod's argument needs to be revised because, while it generates a convincing conclusion in the case of homophobic parents, it fails to do so in other cases. This problem calls for a reconsideration of the nature of the right to be loved. Drawing on Philip Pettit's analysis of robust goods, I argue that this right is a right to be loved unconditionally and an appeal to unconditional love allows us to accommodate the conviction that strongly racist as well as homophobic parents wrong their children by failing to love them (unconditionally).application/pdfeng© This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy on 2021, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13698230.2021.1905467.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2021.1905467ChildrenThe right to be lovedThe right to parentLoveinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess