The Parental Gambit: Moral Luck and Lives Worth Living

In this article I aim to paint a novel picture: that parents who birth children with lives worth living are cases of moral good luck. To do this, I paint the standard picture of moral luck, and then extend this to show that childbirth is, in essence, an exercise in moral luck. I refer to this as the Parental Gambit. In reflecting about how ex ante knowledge informs our biases in evaluating the deontic status of moral luck cases, I posit the Resultant Moral Luck Asymmetry of Parenthood, which states that a parent remains blameworthy if their child turns out not to have a life worth living but is not praiseworthy if their child turns out to have a life worth living. I consider possible counterarguments against my account towards the end of the paper.