Stay Together for the Kids

ABSTRACT Liberal political morality prizes the freedom to enter and exit intimate associations, and romantic relationships are often treated as paradigmatic sites of this freedom. Yet when romantic partners are also coparents, exit can deprive children of established caregiving structures on which their welfare, security, and developing autonomy depend. This paper argues that children hold positive associational rights to the continuity of such structures once they have been conferred. These rights generate defeasible relational obligations for coparents to sustain a joint caregiving partnership, even at significant personal cost. Crucially, the obligations defended here are not grounded in biological parenthood or in mere interests in an intact family from the outset. They arise only in cases of deprivation, where a child's life has already been organized around a shared caregiving framework, and not in cases of mere absence. By distinguishing relational obligations from other parental duties, the paper develops a liberal yet child‐centered account of romantic exit, according to which children's claims to continuity can justifiably constrain adults' freedom to disassociate.