In this book, Adam Perkins, neurobiologist of personality, makes a powerful claim: namely, that social policy structure can influence personality function: especially in those people whose dysfunctional personalities mean that they operate in antisocial ways. He specifically argues that high levels of child benefit encourage people with antisocial personality disorders (ASPD) to have more children; children that they cannot afford to care for, and who are at increased risk of neglect and abuse. These neglected and uncared for offspring are at increased risk of becoming the next generation of adults with personality dysfunction, who rarely engage in paid work, may commit more crime than those without such dysfunction, and who generally may be (as Perkins puts it) ‘a drain on the public purse’.
Perkins perfectly understands the political implications of what he is saying, and how his book will be used by political theorists who favour a smaller role for the state. He offers little evidence against his position, and I suspect he is not unhappy with the positive reviews of his book in the Spectator and other right-of-centre publications. But it is true that there is good-quality evidence for the transmission of dysfunctional personality traits by epigenetic means across generations, and also evidence that parental personality dysfunction negatively impacts on parenting sensitivity and attunement. If we really wanted to decrease future crime rates and the incidence of child maltreatment in the years to come, we would discourage people with ASPD from having children. This would not be a complete or sufficient response; but in terms of utilitarian philosophy, it would be a start.
The key word here is ‘utilitarian’; and Perkins' books suffers from a lack of any ethical critique of his claims. There are of course many counter-arguments to his position, too numerous to discuss in detail in a short book review. The main argument is that we could offer therapy to people with personality dysfunction, including people with ASPD. A national treatment trial is underway, which focuses on reduction of aggression; similar interventions are being offered that focus on parenting. Perkins presumably would argue that it's cheaper just to stop child benefit; which reminds me of the evidence that some researchers have found for a linear relationship between a tendency to utilitarian reasoning and scores for psychopathy.
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