There’s an excellent and fascinating article in the New York Times magazine (publication date tomorrow, but on-line now.) It’s a look at a problem that has arisen with comparatively easy DNA testing. What happens when men learn that the children they are raising are not genetically related to them.
I’ve written about this a bit before, but the article offers far more extended consideration than I’ve managed in a short post. It also raises a number of different issues, primarily using individual stories to make its points and raise its questions.
There are a few things that stand out for me. First, as Ruth Padawer (the author) notes, in the cases discussed when a man finds out that the child he has been raising is not genetically related to him he also learns that the woman who gave birth to the child (in these cases his wife) has lied to him. He learns she has been unfaithful to him. Keep reading →
Categories: parentage
Tagged: ART, DNA, father, genetic link, marriage
November 21, 2009 · 1 Comment
There’s a case that has literally been dragging on for years that I’ve talked about repeatedly. (The link will lead you to the last most recent post and you can follow it backwards from there.) A new development is worthy of mention.
Janet Jenkins and Lisa Miller were in a lesbian relationship. They had a child together–Isabella. She is now seven.
Jenkins and Miller split up in 2003 and fought over parentage of the child. Miller, who had given birth to Isabella, insisted that Jenkins was not a legal parent. She went to court in Virginia, a state notably hostile to lesbian and gay couples. Jenkins went to court in Vermont, a state far more supportive of lesbian and gay relationships. Keep reading →
Categories: parentage
Tagged: lesbian mother, second-parent, Vermont, Virginia
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.
Categories: parentage
Tagged: adoption, foster parent
(This is a continuation of the discussion begun in my last post. You might want to go and read that first.)
In my last post I argued that it’s misleading to criticize some people’s choices to become parents as selfish, because all people’s choices to become parents are equally selfish. However, I didn’t mean to suggest that no criticism of individual decision-making was possible. I suggested that the better question was whether the decision to become a parent was responsible.
Before I go further down that road, a bit of discussion is necessary. There’s at least an argument that the decision to become a parent is personal and hence, shielded from public examination of the sort I am suggesting.
To the extent this is true, it seems to me it ought to be equally true for all people. Thus, it is as true for a single woman as it is for a married couple. Keep reading →
Categories: parentage
Tagged: gay father, lesbian mother, marriage, single-mother, single-parent, sperm donor
Recently I’ve been thinking about the assertion that some people’s decisions to become a parent are selfish. Of course, being selfish is never a good thing, so asserting that someone’s choice is selfish is one way, and perhaps an effective way, of suggesting that their choice to become a parent is not a legitimate or worthy choice.
You see this argument deployed in many different contexts. Some assert that the decision of the fifty-ish couple to become a parents via surrogacy (the topic of a recent post) was selfish. In comments on posts about sperm donors I’ve seen the assertion that using gametes from an unknown provider/donor is selfish. I’ve seen similar assertions of selfishness leveled at single parents (perhaps most typically single mothers), lesbian and gay parents, and other not-quite-typical parents. Though I haven’t gone back to reread all my old posts, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that I’d made that point myself in the case of Nadya Keep reading →
Categories: parentage
Tagged: ART, lesbian mother, single-mother, single-parent, sperm donor
Lesbian couples who wish to have children born to one of the women use donor sperm. Instead of the general discussion about sperm donors (or sperm providers–it is true that since most men are paid “donor” is perhaps misleading) that has predominated on the blog recently, I wanted to focus a bit on this one specific circumstance.
While some lesbian couples may wish to co-parent with a donor/provider (and perhaps his partner), I’m going to exclude them from consideration for the moment. Instead I’ll focus on what I believe to be a substantially larger group: lesbian couples who wish to raise a child with only two legal/social parents–the members of the couple.
For these lesbian couples, the role of the donor/provider can be a source of some concern. Most obviously, they want to avoid his recognition as a legal parent of the child. Keep reading →
Categories: parentage
Tagged: assisted insemination, lesbian mother, sperm donor
I came across this story on the web this AM. It seems to me to illustrate surrogacy at its finest. Because I’ve gone at length about surrogacy at a number of different times in the past, and because I am deeply skeptical of much about surrogacy, I thought it might be worth lingering here for a few moments.
Jamie Underwood Collins is 8 1/2 months pregnant with a baby that is intended for a New York couple. She’s married and has four kids of her own. While she’s being paid something around $25,000 it doesn’t seem that the need for money was her primary motivation. Rather, this was something Collins wanted to do for someone. There’s nothing shameful about being a surrogate, at least as Collins sees it. (She wears a T-shirt that says “This is not my husband’s baby” on the front and “But it’s not mine either. I’m a proud surrogate” on the back. Keep reading →
Categories: parentage
Tagged: altruistic surrogacy, ART, binding surrogacy, commercial surrogacy, gestational surrogacy, surrogacy
November 14, 2009 · 1 Comment
Not long ago I wrote about Kulstad v. Maniaci, an opinion from the Montana Supreme Court involving separated lesbian mothers. As a result of the case, Michelle Kulstad gained a form of legal recognition as a parent in her struggle with her former partner, Barbara Maniaci.
The same court has now decided a second case, Filpula v. Ankney, arising from a somewhat similar situation. This one doesn’t break new ground, as does the last one. It simply makes it more clear how the law in Montana will operate. That’s worth noting because having a clear understanding of how the law in Montana will operate ought to eliminate the need for (some) litigation.
Filpula arises in a familiar context. Linda Filpula and Dustine Ankney were in a relationship for twelve years. Keep reading →
Categories: parentage
Tagged: de facto parent, functional parent, lesbian mother, Montana, second-parent
This story appeared in what was once our local paper and is now internet only. (And it looks like they picked it up from Redbook.) It’s a fine account of one’s man discovery that he and his wife needed to use a sperm donor and his thoughts about that process.
I don’t suppose I have all that much to add to it, though it ties back to lengthy discussions on this blog about sperm donors (anonymous and otherwise.) Like many people who have written here, Gary Blitt wasn’t sure how he’d feel about a child conceived with donor sperm. But as time passes, there’s no question that he is his daughter’s father. He’ll be the one to teach her to read box scores and change the diapers.
Perhaps it is true, as he says, that his sperm wouldn’t even have been as good as the donor’s was. But what is more important to me, at least, as that every day in real life he is the father of this child. Keep reading →
Categories: parentage
Tagged: assisted insemination, genetic link, marriage, sperm donor
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. Keep reading →
Categories: parentage
Tagged: adoption, gay father, gender, lesbian mother, single-parent, unmarried parents
