A Thanksgiving Family

I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday weekend.   This is just a quick post between errands and eating. 

Yesterday my local paper (the Seattle Times) featured this story as a part of their holiday fundraising series.   It seems to me it is a tribute to the resilience of children and the capacity of people to love and care for children.   Sharon Cormier is an admirable parent–to the child she is biologically related to, to the children she has chosen to embrace through adoption, and to the children she raised and is raising as a foster parent.   Her’s is in many ways an extraordinary family and reminder to us, I think, that families come in all sorts of shapes and forms.     Somehow the law has to be flexible enough to recognize and support that diversity.

Two Pending Lesbian Mother Cases Worth Watching

There’s an excellent blog run by the people at Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality.    It’s had a couple of recent postings on pending cases involving claims by lesbian mothers.   One is in New York, the other Puerto Rico.  In both cases the Center has filed amicus briefs.  

The New York case arises in a situation that is all too familiar:  two women decide to raise a child together.    One gives birth.  Both parent the child.  At some point the women break up.  The woman who gave birth has a clear legal right to be recognized as a parent.   The woman who did not give birth does not have such a clear right.  The legal mother asserts that the non-legal mother is not a parent and attempts to cut off all contact between the non-legal mother and the child.  I’ve written about  a number of these cases from various states. 

DNA and the Power of An Idea

One of the most interesting stories in today’s NYT magazine feature on DNA (see yesterday’s post, too) is the tale of Denny Ogden and D’Arcy Griggs.   I’ll summarize it here.  

D’Arcy Griggs was 34 years old when she called Denny Ogden and said he was her father.   Ogden knew that a woman he had had a summer romance with in college had become pregnant and given the child up for adoption.  He’d never traced that child.   He had married and had three more children.   He was 54 when D”Arcy Griggs called. 

She said she had tracked him down after her birth mother died of cancer.   He checked her background to make sure it wasn’t some swindle and then they began exchanging e-mails.  He began to think of her as his daughter.   They reveled in the little things they had in common.   After a few months, they decided to meet and he came to Seattle where she lived.  

Foster Parents to Adoptive Parents

I know I’ve got an ongoing thread to work on and that the NYT magazine has a big story on DNA tests and fatherhood coming out tomorrow, but I feel compelled to take a couple of little detours here.   First, here’s a story from today’s Seattle Times.   It celebrates the transition of 175 foster kids in Washington to adoptive kids. 

It’s just worth stopping to note why this is so important.   Foster parents are great, but they are not full legal parents.  As the article makes clear, they do not have full and permanent legal rights.  Adoptive parents do.   Thus, in order to truly secure a legal relationship to a child, a person must move from foster parent to adoptive parent.   And for the kids who are the subject of this article, that’s what happened yesterday.

A quick run through some news on lesbian and gay parents

Again, my apologies for the lengthy silence.  First I was travelling and in my travels, I managed to contract the H1N1 flu.  I’m prepared to affirm that it is a nasty bug.   I am not yet out of quarantine, but at least I am feeling human again.  

A couple of recent items on lesbian and gay parents.  (I actually think there were more than two, but I’ve lost track.) 

First, here’s a current item from France.   France permits single people to adopt, including single lesbians and gay men, does not permit lesbian and gay couples to adopt.   The rationale?   The absence of a different sex role model in a lesbian or gay couple.  

Men as Parents and the Power of Public Appreciation

There was a story in yesterday’s New York Times that I thought worth a little discussion.  The story was in the science section and is about fathers and parenthood.  (I am not sure the NYT headline really suits the article, but that’s really beside the point.)   It made me think about some of the recent discussion here. 

One thing the article notes is detrimental effect of social messaging that excludes men/fathers.   These paragraphs caught my attention: 

Uninvolved fathers have long been accused of lacking motivation. But research shows that many societal obstacles conspire against them. Even as more fathers are changing diapers, dropping the children off at school and coaching soccer, they are often pushed aside in ways large and small.

Adoptive Parents and the Genetic Link

There’s been ongoing discussion here  (that link is just one example) about the importance of a genetic connection between parent and child.  As I have made clear, I am not persuaded that a person who can claim a genetic link with a child should therefore been recognized as a legal parent.   Hence, I think a man who provides sperm to a woman need not be the father of that child.   Others have strongly disagreed.  We’ve had long discussions about it. 

Arguably, this isn’t simply a matter of opinion.  This is a question where there might be useful evidence to consider and occasional reference has been made to one or another study of some of the questions raised.     I read a paper the other day which makes an interesting contribution here.   It’s from the American Sociological Review, February 2007 and is by Laura Hamilton, Simon Cheng Brian Powell.  (I’ve linked you to the table of contents the article is not on-line.  If anyone wants a copy, you can e-mail me.)  

The authors wanted to examine the importance of biological ties for parental investment.  

What Does It Mean That A Child is “Yours?”: Thinking About ART Mistakes

Here’s a thought-provoking piece from The Guardian, UK.   It ties back to some of my earlier thoughts about ART mistakes. (The most recent string was occasioned by the “wrong embryo” case featured on the Today show not so long ago.)  

As the article notes, while uncertainty about paternity has been around forever, uncertainty about maternity is a new problem.   Time was a woman gave birth and we knew she was the mother.   Now?  She may not be legally recognized as the mother of the child (because in a jurisdiction that enforces surrogacy agreements a woman who gives birth is not necessarily a mother).   And she may be legally recognized, but she may not be genetically related to the child.   In this brave new world, women as well as men may now need to ask ”Is this child mine?”   

This question–is the child mine-is a fascinating one.   To say that this thing or that thing is mine is to claim possession.   Children, of course, are not possessions, nor can they be possessed.   As it is used in this article (and in the Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean) the question is really one about genetic lineage–was my genetic material used to create this child

News from the UK: Gay Fathers Reflect

I seem to have allowed myself a de facto sabbatical from my blog last week.   My apologies to you all, but I suppose I needed the time away.   Anyway, I’ll gear myself back up now. 

Here’s a story about gay fathers in the UK.  It isn’t really a story, though. It’s six gay men/couples talking about their experiences adopting in the UK.   Not the sort of thing you see in the mainstream press all that often, really.  

I’ve been thinking a good deal about gay men and parenthood recently, though I haven’t had occasion to write about it for a while.   One so often lumps together “gay and lesbian” parents.  Yet parenthood is deeply gendered (surely I’ve said this thirty times?) and so lumping lesbian and gay parents together misses as much as it captures.   

The Hierarchy of Parenthood, II

Yesterday I began to consider whether there needs to be some consistent hierarchy among the various tests for who gets to be a legal parent.   It will be a good deal easier for you to follow this discussion of you read yesterday’s post first.    While some of what I have to say here today is repetitive, it’s a bit more organized and also expanded.  

Yesterday I laid out six possible tests for legal parentage, each of which is used at least some of the time in some places.   I’ve been thinking about the thought-process that has to accompany trying to develop an answer to the “do we need a hierarchy” question.  

Perhaps the first thing to do is to examine each test and consider the arguments for an against it.  I think for the most part I’ve done this in various posts over the last nearly-two years, so for the moment I’ll skip it.  (If you are interested, do feel free to poke around in the archives.  You can try using the relevant tags, which should be helpful.)