"This book investigates what obligations a parent incurs by bringing a child into being. In other words, it shares with Mary Shelley - from whose Frankenstein the book's subtitle is derived - an interest in the duties of parents as creators, or, as the author writes, "qua procreators." Toward this end, the book develops accounts both of how parental obligations are acquired and what these obligations amount to. Its basic thesis is that parents, as procreators, have obligations regarding future children that put constraints on procreative liberty. Moreover, these obligations go beyond respecting a child's rights, in particular the oft-invoked child's right to an open future. The author brings the book's account of parental obligations to bear on the ethics of adoption, child support, gamete donation, surrogacy, and prenatal genetic enhancement. A final chapter examines the question of public responsibility for children and argues that it is much greater than typically acknowledged."--Foreword.