The article “Family, Ancestry and Self: What is the Moral Significance of Biological Ties?” by S. Haslanger is dedicated to the analysis of biological parents’ role in the process of children’s personal development. Focusing on the hypothesis by D. Velleman, according to which the contact with biological relatives is a necessary condition for healthy self-identification, she refutes it providing much evidence against Velleman’s arguments. In her opinion, although maintaining the relationship with biological parents is indeed desirable due to the “natural nuclear family” (Haslanger 21) schema existing in contemporary societies, it cannot be considered as a strict requirement for self-identification.
Secondly, she proceeds with the definition of the terms “self”, which is “the cluster of basic traits that allow an individual to function as an agent” (Haslanger 8), and “identity” – the peculiarities of an individual’s relation to the social group. The question that arises here is as follows: how can healthy selves and identities be formed? In contrast to Velleman’s opinion that it is contact with biological parents that helps to gain knowledge about oneself, Haslanger argues that it is not true. While Velleman states that looking at biological parents’ appearance and observing their behavior helps a child to understand who he or she is, and then develop according to the model demonstrated by parents, Haslanger provides a counterargument: it is not only parents who influence the development of children; their development to a great extent depends on such external factors as films, books, friends etc. (Haslanger 14); moreover, she states that before children start comparing themselves to their parents in order to find similarities and thus identify themselves, they need to have some knowledge exclusively about themselves otherwise it is impossible to see the differences and similarities (Haslanger 14). These statements sound reasonable: she looks at the situation from a more objective position than Velleman.
In addition to that, the author mentions that according to Velleman, “the construction of identity is a process of telling a story” (Haslanger 18) which means that in order to form a particular opinion of oneself, a person needs to be able to trace the origin of his or her biological family; therefore, it is necessary for a person to be brought up by biological parents who can provide such information. However, Haslanger states that a life story of a family can be reconstructed even without the participation of biological relatives: due to the information about birthparents given to adoptive parents, adoptees can form an opinion about their origin, and that would be sufficient. This evidence indeed challenges Velleman’s argument.
Haslanger uses one more concept, namely the one of “schema” which is defined as “representations of phenomena that organize our beliefs in a way that helps us form expectations” (Haslanger 20) – in other words, schemas are a kind of knowledge possessed by the members of a particular group that determines their behavior. In terms of the problem of self-identification, she describes what she calls “natural nuclear family” (Haslanger 21) schema – the belief that children must be brought up only by their biological parents. The author states that the presence of such a schema is responsible for stigmatizing adoptees since they lack the information about their family. However, her argument sounds lame: she herself has already mentioned above in the article that the access to this information does not pose a serious problem as “Adoptive parents often receive copies of long questionnaires filled out by one or both birthparents” (Haslanger 19). Thus, the author contradicts herself.
All in all, although Haslanger lacks certain consistency in expressing her opinion, she manages to achieve her purpose, namely to convince the reader that contact with biological relatives is not necessary for the development of healthy self-identification.
Works Cited
Haslanger, Sally. “Family, Ancestry and Self: What is the Moral Significance of Biological Ties?” Web. 2 April 2016.
