At the movies: Mamma Mia

I might be one of the last people who will see this movie in a first-run theater, but I’ve finally seen it.  I imagine the DVD will be coming soon.   Anyway, it has moved me to create a new category (“at the movies”) and to offer a few thoughts.

I suspect most folks know the basic plot, but just in case, here’s a very brief outline.   Sophie is getting married on the idyllic Greek island where she lives with her mother, Donna.  (And I just have to say, Meryl Streep is terrific in that role.)   Sophie has never known who her father is.  Or one could say (alright, I would say) she has no father.   It all depends on how you give meaning to that term–”father.”   Anyway, she learns that her mother slept with three different men around the critical time twenty years earlier and, unbeknownst to her mother, she invites all three men to the wedding.  Of course, they all come.   Before arriving, none of the three men even know that Donna has a daughter.

Well, you can just see why there is much here would interest me.   For Sophie the question is which of the three men is her father.  But in some essential way, it’s really clear than none of them are a parent to her. 

A Bit More About Ending Parenthood

I’m still thinking about the topic I started last time.   The real question is whether and when you can choose to stop being a legal parent.  Given that I’ve mostly been writing/thinking about becoming/being a parent, it seems like there could be some insights gained from looking at the other end of the process.

At the outset I think I need to reiterate a critical point.   I’m talking about legal parentage–that whole array of legal rights and obligations that come with being recognize by the law as a parent.   Legal parentage is not necessarily the same as social parentage.   stances, the legal parent of a child is also a child’s social parent, but it isn’t always so.  There are folks who you may have seen at your kid’s soccer game who look and act like parents, but turn out not to have legal rights.   And vice versa.   So if you’re thinking something like “parenthood doesn’t end” that is true in some ways, but it isn’t necessarily true of legal parenthood.   Parental rights can and sometimes are terminated, after which a person is no longer a legal parent to a child.   One place this happens regularly is in adoption–where one person’s rights are terminated and another steps into her/his shoes.  And of course, the state sometimes terminates the parental rights of people who are deemed to be unfit to continue as parents.

But the recent events in Nebraska, where a father of nine left his kids in a hospital emergency room, raise a slightly different question.  When can you quit your job as legal parent, even though there isn’t a person standing next to you ready to take up the challenge? 

News in Brief: How Parentage Ends in Nebraska

There’s a story in the news today about a father who left nine children, ages 1 to 17, at a hospital in Nebraska.   (I have linked to an early version of the story but my guess is that it will be updated during the day.)  His wife had died earlier in the year, shortly after the birth of the one-year-old, and not surprisingly, he felt overwhelmed.  I’m not at all unsympathetic to him, but the case raises some interesting questions I haven’t touched on yet.

The vast majority of what I’ve been writing here is about becoming a parent, gaining legal recognition.   But of course, as legal parental rights can be given, so they can be taken away.   Termination of parental rights, as it is often called, is a whole other questions.

Now in general, people can have their rights terminated after legal process, but they cannot just walk away from the job.  Abandoning or neglecting your children is can be a crime.   But there are some laws that recognize exceptional circumstances.   They are sometimes called “baby Moses” laws, sometimes “safe haven” laws.

The idea behind these laws is fairly simple, really.   Here’s the general case people think of:   A young unmarried woman gives birth to a child.  She has no real social support system that will allow her to parent the child, or at least she doesn’t think she does.  So she abandons the newborn.   You’ve likely all read news stories about this happening and it’s even the taking off point for some classic novels. 

Marriage and Parenthood

I suppose the last post naturally leads me to consider marriage and parenthood more generally.   Or at least in more detail.

The linkages between marriage and parenthood (and parenting) are intricate.  But for starters, I want to separate out two different kinds of linkages.

Sometimes being married (or being not-married) has an effect on your legal status as a parent.   So, for example, the husband of a woman who gives birth to a child is presumed to be the father.  This presumption can trump a genetic test which shows DNA from someone else.

For those who are curious, in MA and CA, the wife of a woman who gives birth is similarly presumed to be a parent.  But here there is a MAJOR CAVEAT:  Since many other states will not recognize the CA or MA marriage of two women, the parenthood of the spouse may not be recognized in those other states.   Thus, the spouse needs to adopt her own child in order to effectively protect her rights.  (And in case you think this makes the presumption gender neutral, you might need to think again.   Neither the wife nor the husband of a man who provides the genetic material to create a child is deemed to be a parent by virtue of their marriage to the DNA provider.)  

A Parting Thought on the Kentucky Second-Parent Adoption Case

I’ve been considering this Kentucky case for some days now.   In the last post I used it as a jumping off point for some more general thoughts about adoption.   I’m going to continue in that vein here.

One thing is both obvious and striking about the Kentucky case–if the parties (known as S and T) had been married, then the outcome would be different.   Step-parent adoptions are routinely available.    The question I want to examine is why marriage should make such a big difference.

First off, note that marriage often makes a big difference in ability to adopt generally, not just in step-parent adoptions either.   In some places single people and unmarried couples are barred from adoption.   (Among other things, this can pull lesbian and gay parenting into the same-sex marriage debate and vice versa.  That’s worthy of a much more extended discussion, but note that right now Arkansas voters are considering a ballot measure to prohibit unmarried couples from adopting or becoming foster parents.  This would necessarily have the effect of prohibiting lesbian and gay couples from becoming adoptive or foster parents because, of course, Arkansas will not recognize them as a married couple, even if they travel to MA or CA and get married.   While there is reason to think this is the main point of the initiative, it is couched in terms of married/unmarried, presumably because that is more politically appealing.)   

Kentucky Second-Parent Adoptions As A Taking-Off Point

For a couple of entries now I’ve been talking about a recent Kentucky Court of Appeals decision.   Though I think it is worth going back to read the other posts (I would, wouldn’t I?), what I want to do now is use the case as a taking-off point to consider two general questions that I came to think about along the way.

First I’ve been thinking about adoption.  Adoption is a formal process that creates a legally-recognized parent/child relationship.  One of the more basic characteristics of adoption, at least as it is generally practiced in the US (and I suspect much more broadly) is that it requires termination of the existing legal relationship with the pre-adoption parent(s).  In other words the new (adoptive) parents take the place of the preceding (natural?) parents.

I want to actually stop and think about this for a moment.  Why does it have to be that way?   I can easily see why in some instances you would want it that way, but should it generally be assumed that this is the way you should want it?   This is an important point because step-parent and second-parent adoptions (when the latter are allowed) are significant exceptions to the general rule.  Because they are exceptions, they need to be carefully justified.

News In Brief–No Second-Parent Adoptions in Kentucky, II

This picks up from the last post, so you’ll need to read that first.   The case in question is a Kentucky opinion in which the Kentucky Court of Appeals determines that there is no support for second-parent adoptions in Kentucky.

There is much to think about and comment on in the case.   But at the outset I should note that I am no expert on Kentucky law.  Thus, I’m not going to take the position that the court applied Kentucky law incorrectly.

So what is there to say?   Well, looking at the actual opinion, it seems pretty clear that the court was annoyed, to put it mildly, with the actions of the lawyer and the judge in the lower court at the time the adoption was finalized.  The court here is stuck with the adoption, because it was completed more than one year before it was challenged.   (That’s why you could really say that T wins here.  She remains a legal parent of the child.)

Anyway, the court is unusually harsh in its discussion of the conduct of the lawyer and the judge.  (It’s lawyer (singular) because at the time of the adoption S and T were not represented by separate counsel.)   In fact, the court even disapproves of S, who is now challenging the adoption, because S went along with it originally.  

News In Brief–No Second Parent Adoptions in Kentucky

I’m interrupting my thread about lesbian and gay parentage (broadly considered) to discuss a recent case that just so happens to deal with an issue of lesbian and gay parentage.  The case is from the Kentucky Court of Appeals.  You can read a news story version of it or you can have the whole full-text opinion.

S and T were a lesbian couple.  They decided to have a child.   S got pregnant via insemination, using an unknown donor chosen by T.

When the child was born, S was automatically considered to be a legal parent of the child.   That’s because she gave birth to the child and she was genetically related to it.   T was not a legal parent.

If S and T had been married, T would have been a parent– That’s parenthood by marriage.   This works for different-sex married couples and for same-sex couples in CA and MA.  Some places extend the same recognition to same-sex domestic partners or those in a civil union.  But not Kentucky.   Definitely not Kentucky.     

Further Thoughts on Lesbian and Gay Parentage

I wanted to pick up from my last post, now several days ago, and discuss the questions around lesbian and gay parentage a bit more.   It’s curious to me to note that I haven’t really written about this topic in broad strokes so far.  (I’ve noted any number of cases that have come along, but that is really a quite different thing.)   Curious because I’ve written about this quite a bit in more academic settings.   (You can go here, if you register, and have a look.)

I think what I might start with here is a quick overview.    You could use the tags on the side to look at some of these topics more generally.

First off, it’s worth noting that there have always been lesbian and gay parents.  Perhaps they didn’t know (or didn’t say) that they were lesbians and gay men at the time they had children, but they had and raised children (at least up to a point) in the context of conventional different-sex marriages.   Later on they discovered or acknowledged that they were lesbians and gay men.

In these cases the conventional legal doctrines of parentage affirmed the parentage of lesbians and gay men.  No one suggested they were not parents.   A woman who gives birth to a child who is genetically related to her is a mother.   If she is married to a man who is the source of the other half of the genetic material, so much the better.    A man whose wife gives birth to a child to whom he is genetically related is the father.   No questions about either of these propositions.  

News in Brief: Florida’s Lesbian and Gay Adoption Ban

Thirty one years ago, in 1977, prodded by Anita Bryant, Florida enacted a law that prevented lesbians and gay men from becoming adoptive parents.  It’s been challenged several times in court, never with lasting success.   But just the other day a Florida judge found the ban to be unconstitutional and allowed a gay man to adopt a boy who has been in his care since 2001.  (He could properly be a foster parent or a guardian in Florida, but not an adoptive parent.)   You can read a press account of the case here and a somewhat more legalistic account here.

This ties back to the last post I  wrote about gender, parenting and same-sex couples as it highlights the question of what might be wrong with lesbian and gay parents.

From the reports of the judge’s opinion in this case it seems quite clear that the man in question was the functional parent of the child in question.   The 13-year-old boy has lived in the man’s household for seven or so years.   The man became the boy’s guardian two years ago.   Now the idea is to make the man a full legal parent–or in the words of the boy concerned “a forever father.”