Birth father links
I’m behind on some work so I’m just going to list a lot of links. I’ve thought about this in light of having a son, too (as hombiblio mentions in her comments), but I still think that Madison’s right to dictate her own mothering destiny trumps Noah’s right to dictate his own fathering destiny. I feel this in my gut but am less sure why I think this way (it’ll take more pondering than I have time for right now). I do know that it’s a pro-choice issue for me but I am less sure at what point the legal rights of the father should kick in. For example, I like putative father registries in theory (I’ll link to an article below about the trouble with them in practice) much more than I like the idea of women having to submit to an investigation (as Katie speaks about in her comment) before she can make an adoption plan. I do think that registries should be easier to find and that their existence should be common knowledge. I also think the process for registering should be fantastically simple.
I’m really not sure if there can ever be adoption laws that share the rights and responsibilities fairly and equally between mother and father and so I guess that in my mind, the mother’s rights should always come first since the responsibilities seem to lay more heavily on her shoulders, too.
Ok, on to the links:
–from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, The Rights of Presumed (Putative) Fathers
–More on registries
–Birth Fathers Often Left Our of Process
–Trying to register for the Ohio Putatative Father Registry (the author, Erik Smith, is also a birthfather who contested his daughter’s adoption, resulting in visitation rights)
–His article for fathers on disallowing an adoption without consent
–A very heated (and biased — it’s published on an adoption agencies site) article about birth fathers (I don’t like Lifetime Adoptions anyway because they write coercive crap like this.)
–Erik Smith talks back to the heated/biased article with his own heat and bias
–From Here to Paternity (birth fathers in the UK)
–An Australian birthfather’s story (warning: no paragraph breaks so it’s hard to read) (also Australia is much more progressive in adoption reform than the States)
–Gary Clapton, a UK social worker and birth father, has researched and written about birth fathers
–The Rights of Unwed Fathers
–Stigmatizing Fathers
–Birthfathers: The Forgotten Half of the Story
–Stepping Out of the Shadows
–an iFeminist weighs in and she says, in part:
[The courts] should acknowledge at the very beginning of an adoption proceeding that both responsible parents have an equal voice. Each parent must be presumed responsible until shown otherwise. And no adoption placement should occur if either parent wants custody.
But she doesn’t tell us how, exactly, we should measure responsibility? And I think that’s the crux of this.
I haven’t read any of the links yet.
I believe a man becomes a father via the relationship he develops with the child’s mother (or other parent), and with the child once it is here, regardless of genetics. We can raise our sons to be good fathers by teaching them to be open, honest and to listen well, and these skills will help them to make good choices in partners.
We need to remind all young people that sex isn’t just for recreation–Rule no. 1: if you are seeing someone who you would not want to raise a child with, get out.
A man who has only a casual relationship with a woman, if that relationship creates a child, should never be allowed to make choices about that pregnancy or the child’s future that supersede the choices of the child’s mother.
I’m the mom of two college-age sons.
Cathy, I completely and totally agree. And I have three sons. It can never be 100% “fair”, that is just not the biological nature of pregnancy and childbearing.
I wanted to add that part of the reason I feel that way is that I don’t place a very high value on biological ties. The reason I value the tie between a mother and child has nothing to do with DNA but the fact that they shared a body for 9 months. I know it probably seems terribly unfair toward the birth fathers who are or want to be concerned and involved in the lives of their babies, but there is no way to give them rights without taking away the rights of the birth mother, and she’s got to bear the brunt of whatever decision she makes.
I don’t agree that fatherhood is derived through a relationship to the mother. I don’t agree with that from the point of view of the father, and I don’t agree with that from the point of view of the child.
Cathy, what about a man in a serious relationship that results in pregnancy, and in which the woman [still] wishes to choose adoption? Would he have some standing before the court to gain custody of the child that a man in a casual relationship would not? Why? And who gets to decide what serious means?
Unfortunately, being the ones to endure pregnancy and childbirth and the post-partum hormonal storm isn’t enough for women to gain the power to choose their child’s biological paternity after birth. Never mind the father’s rights, there are the interests of the child to consider, too. Generally speaking, isn’t it a consensus now that children have a right to know their biological origins, maternal and paternal?
I know the whole thing is really a mess. I’m not interested in backing pregnant women into corners. I believe 100% in reproductive rights. But if I lived in Ohio, I would be at least a little interested in making sure that no adoption plan could be made without the consent of both parents, and a good-faith effort to locate the birth father, if he wasn’t immediately available.
Also, there’s something about the whole “don’t have sex with someone you don’t envision parenting your child” conversation that makes me uncomfortable. On the one hand, yes, it’s definitely a message I plan to share with my children. On the other hand, it seems…unfortunate…in the context of actual adoption stories. And it also strikes me as a pretty unrealistic guideline: when I became sexually active, I wasn’t evaluating my partners (oh, alright, partner) in terms of his futher parenting skills.*
I’ve always suspected that what sets people in crisis pregnancies apart from people who don’t experience them is bad luck, not their level of sexual activity, or its casual nature, per se. Am I mistaken in those assumptions?
* I think he does a damn fine job, though, for what that’s worth. Just wish he’d wake up early with the kids more often.
One last question: Meaghan, doesn’t the _child_ bear the brunt of the decision? Or at least a pretty significant chunk of it?
This is what raised my eyebrows: Dawn’s explanation that, in Ohio, “The mother has no legal obligation to notify the father that she is terminating her (and thus his) parental rights.”
That’s just a problem for me. Whatever legal standing the father does or doesn’t deserve in terms of an adoption plan, he at least deserves to _know_ about it. And I believe it’s in the best interests of the child (if not the child’s actual right) for the father to know, too.
That just seems like an inevitable conclusion to make, based on everything Dawn’s written about why it’s so fundamentally important for Madison to know J and J’s family. It’s not J’s pregnancy that Dawn keeps writing about as creating the bond that she and Brett value, and work so hard to maintain and celebrate for and with their daughter.
Isn’t there some chance that a birth father’s parents might feel the same about their biological grandchild that J’s father feels about Madison? Shouldn’t they have the same opportunities that Dawn and Brett have given to J’s family? And if not, why not?
Of course, I never forget that J’s family has no _right_ to anything that Dawn and Brett have given them. But Dawn makes pretty powerful arguments for why it’s the right thing to do, anyway. And I’m trying to figure out why it would be different for a biological father (or his family) who wanted to be as involved and present as J and her family do. Never mind this imaginary father’s needs: what about the child’s needs? Are they just not the same when it comes to the biological father?
I’m genuinely curious, and not writing in a spirit of hostility. But I also worry that I’m crossing some lines. If I have, please tell me, and I’ll retreat with as much embarrassed haste as I can muster.
Jody, I wasn’t talking so much about the long-term effects on the child’s life, but the immediate decision the mother has to make–to continue the pregnancy or not? At what cost to her life, socially, professionally, educationally, etc should she choose to or not to? And no matter what she chooses, she will be the one *physically* affected by it far more so than the father. And if she chooses to go through with the pregnancy and place the baby for adoption, it will in most situations be her making the majority of the arrangements (as well as dealing with the physical effects of pregnancy, birth postpartum etc). And if she decides not to place the baby for adoption, in most (though I understand, not all) circumstances she’ll be doing the bulk of the parenting.
I absolutely agree that it is the right thing to do to allow a child to know, or at least know about, his/her biological father. The problem is that giving the father more legal standing could the birth mother less. If she knows that the father has to agree to an adoption plan, how might that affect her choice? In the absence of abuse or coercion or some special circumstance, then yes, it’s probably the right thing for the birth mother to do to inform the father, but then again, it’s also the right thing to do for birth fathers to step up and take responsibility for their children, and they often don’t. It’s not a perfect world or a perfect system and there’s no possible way to make it fair for everybody involved. I guess I would just be wary of a law that makes it hard for a birth mom to be able to go forward with the plans that she feels are best for herself and the baby, because in more cases than not, the responsibility falls squarely onto the mother’s shoulders.
Jody, I guess my concern is this: Say a birth mother is forced to name, locate and get permission from a bio dad. He contests the adoption. She’s now faced with a choice–parent herself, or give up rights and allow him to parent. Maybe she thinks he would suck as a parent. Maybe he really would suck as a parent. Maybe he’ll contest the adoption, then flake out later–leaving her to raise the child alone. Imagine the choice she now has to make–pnce a law is in place saying she has to obtain permission, her judgment no longer matters.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers, and I wish it could be fair for everybody involved, but it’s always going to be unfair in different ways for each party. It’s unfair that the mother is more socially and physically affected by ap pregnancy and that it’s so easy, relatively speaking, for the man to walk away without taking responsibility (sure, there are child support laws–but just ask a roomful of single moms how effective they are in most cases). It’s unfair that there is a culture of unsupport and dismissal of birth fathers that makes their opinion seem less important than the mother’s. But we can’t fix one unless we fix the other and I don’t see it getting much easier for single, pregnant women, or single mothers either. It’s a vicious cycle and I truly don’t even know where to begin fixing it.
And as for whether the child has a right to know both bio parents–this is purely my own opinion, one I hold probably for personal reasons as much as any other, but I do not value bio ties as much as I do relational ties. I think there’s no one way to say whether or not a child will benefit by knowing his/her bio father and bio father’s family–it is far too subjective and individual. You mentioned Dawn and her relationship with J and J’s family and I see that more as her honoring J’s carrying and mothering Madison in utero and her family as an extension of that relationship. I could be wrong about that, and I know that my opinion about DNA ties is not a popular one, and is shaped by my own experience, which I won’t go into here but you can feel free to e-mail me and I’ll share
oops, wanted to add one more thing. When the shoe is on the other foot–the man wants to give the baby up for adoption but the mother wants to parent–I do wish it was possible for him to not have to take on parental responsibilities, but for the child to be supported in some other way. This is another unpopular opinion I’m sure, but I DON’T feel like a disinterested or unwilling father is ‘better than no father’ and I don’t think it’s fair that anybody should be forced to parent if they don’t want to (but, neither is it fair to have to go it alone as a parent when there’s somebody else connected to the baby who COULD help). So again, a dilemma that will never be solved because it will never be fair.
Sorry I am late getting back to this discussion–
In Wisconsin, where I live, the bio dad or probable bio dad has to sign off on an adoption. There was a lawyer disbarred here several years ago for forging paperwork for fathers who were not available to sign. (I also remember a story, 20 or so years ago, when a friend’s husband’s younger sister had a child at 15. She chose an adoption plan and was required to give the name of the father. She named just about the entire male population of her rural high school, about 20 boys. In the years before DNA testing was available, all of the boys and their parents had to show up, in court, to sign off on that child’s papers. In Wisconsin, by my understanding, any one of those possible fathers could have chosen not to sign surrender papers and claimed the child to raise.)
Jody, why, in a serious relationship, would a woman choose an adoption plan, or disregard the interest in her partner to raise a child? Except in cases of mental illness, coercive manipulation by one or the other partner, or maybe terminal cluelessness, agreement that a relationship is serious has to come from both partners.
When I was dating, I did think about my partner’s possible value as a parent. Not the money, career or other financial assets of young guys who had none, but the qualities that I saw that I believed would make a boy/young man into a great dad: a positive outlook, goals and ambition, lots of energy, curiousity, playfullness, gentleness, someone who laughs easily, patience. Those same qualities also make someone a good lover & partner, so it was a good guideline. That is what I want my sons to look for when they are dating.
As a woman, I think we are traveling down a very slippery slope whenever we put sperm on an equal footing with child carrying/bearing in the legal arena. While the genetic makeup of a child comes from the genes of both parents, pregnancy belongs to a woman and control of her body MUST remain her domain. Rules that give more power to biological fathers take rights away from women–and once that starts, I’d be afraid where it could lead, including the possible control of the woman before the birth of a child.
Laws that value genetic ties above others would also give preference to fathers who conceive children through rape or coercive sex. A scary prospect.