Childhood ordinarily entails numerous personal relationships. We do not often recognize it, but the fact is that the state determines, to a large extent, what those relationships are. In some ways, it does this directly, most crucially by deciding who each newborn child's legal parents will be. The state also influences children's relational lives indirectly by conferring on legal parents some measure of control over children's associations with third parties. This book aims to develop a general theory of what principles should guide the state in making decisions about children's personal relationships, whether the issue is paternity or custody after divorce or termination of parental rights or grandparent visitation.

This topic is of profound importance for the well-being of individual children and for the health of society. The state's decisions as to who will raise and associate with a child are largely determinative of whether the child's life proceeds positively or poorly, and the aggregate result of good or bad state decision making is a citizenry that is happy and flourishing, mired in dysfunction and conflict, or something in between. And there is good reason for examining rigorously the appropriateness of current practices, because on many occasions in many contexts, the state in western society and elsewhere today makes decisions about children's relationships that are injurious to the children involved.