There are long-acknowledged tensions between the autonomy of the family and equality of opportunity. Typically those tensions are framed synchronically. Ensuring that children have equal life chances is in conflict with the protection of parents’ rights to substantially influence the development of those children. Of course, viewed diachronically, this conflict is multiplied. The children of the least advantaged will tend to inherit the disadvantages characterizing the lives of their parents, in large part because of parental autonomy. Mostly this inheritance is couched in distributive terms. Yet as the work of sociologists such as Annette Lareau shows, those children are disadvantaged as much in terms of what they can do, e.g. in their working lives, as what they get. This paper will argue that intergenerational inequality provides a prime instance of (adapting Paul Gomberg’s term) contributive injustice: an unfair distribution of what people may contribute in terms of meaningful work.
