By Elizabeth Marquardt, The
New York Times
Op-Ed Page, July 16, 2007
SOMETIMES when the earth shudders it doesn’t make a sound.
That’s what happened in Harrisburg, Pa., recently.
Related Reading
The
Revolution in Parenthood:
The Emerging Global Clash between Adult Rights and Children's
Needs On April 30, a state Superior Court panel ruled
that a child can have three legal parents. The case, Jacob v.
Shultz-Jacob, involved two lesbians who were the legal co-parents
of two children conceived with sperm donated by a friend. The
panel held that the sperm donor and both women were all liable
for child support. Arthur S. Leonard, a professor at New York
Law School, observed, “I’m unaware of any other
state appellate court that has found that a child has, simultaneously,
three adults who are financially obligated to the child’s
support and are also entitled to visitation.”
The case follows a similar decision handed down by a provincial
court in Ontario in January. In what appeared to be the first
such ruling in any Western nation, the court ruled that a boy
can legally have three parents. In that case the biological
mother and father had parental rights and wished for the biological
mother’s lesbian partner, who functions as the boy’s
second mother, to have such rights as well.
The idea of assigning children three legal parents is not limited
to North America. In 2005, expert commissions in Australia and
New Zealand proposed that sperm or egg donors be allowed to
“opt in” as a child’s third parent. That same
year, scientists in Britain received state permission to create
an embryo from the DNA of three adults, raising the real possibility
that they all could be granted equal legal claims to the child
if the embryo developed to term.
Astonishingly, few legal experts, politicians or social commentators
have considered the enormous risks these rulings and proposals
pose for children. Those who have noticed tend to say they are
nothing new, because many children already grow up with several
parent figures. But this fails to recognize that stepchildren
and adopted children still have only two legal parents.
Supporters of the rulings argue that if two parents are good
for children, aren’t three better? True, some three-parent
petitions are brought by adults who appear deeply committed
to the child in question. In the Ontario case, the two women
and the father all seem devoted to the boy. But in Pennsylvania,
the sperm donor, whom the children called “Papa,”
was ordered to pay child support over his objections, and the
lesbian co-mothers have already ended their relationship.
What is the harm if other American courts follow Pennsylvania’s
example? For one thing, three-parent situations typically involve
a couple and a third person living separately, meaning the child
will get shuffled between homes, and this raises problems.
A few years ago, along with Norval Glenn, a sociologist at
the University of Texas, I compiled the first nationwide study
of children who grow up in so-called “good” divorces
— that is, families in which both divorced parents stay
involved in the child’s life and control their own conflict.
We found that even these children must grow up traveling between
two worlds, having to make sense on their own of the different
values, beliefs and ways of living they find in each home. They
have to grow up too soon. When a court assigns a child several
parents, some of whom never intend to share a home, they consign
that child, at best, to a “good” divorce situation.
Of course, sometimes the three adults might want to live together,
which leads to a different set of concerns. As one advocate
of polygamy argued in Newsweek, “If Heather can have two
mommies, she should also be able to have two mommies and a daddy.”
If more children are granted three legal parents, what is our
rationale for denying these families the rights and protections
of marriage? America, get ready for the group-marriage debate.
And these are merely the worries if the three parents cooperate.
But, as the Pennsylvania case shows, they may not. Conflicts
will undoubtedly arise when three parents confront the sticky,
conflict-ridden reality of child-raising, often leading to a
nasty, three-way custody battle. Even if they part amicably,
they may still want to live in three different homes. In that
case, how many homes should children travel between to satisfy
the parenting needs of many adults?
Finally, why should courts stop at assigning children only
three parents? Some situations involve a couple who wants the
child, the sperm donor, the egg donor and the gestational surrogate
who carries the pregnancy. If we allow three legal parents,
why not five?
Fortunate children have many people who love them as much as
their parents do. But in the best interests of children, no
court should break open the rule of two when assigning legal
parenthood.
Elizabeth Marquardt, a vice president of the Institute
for American Values, is the author of the forthcoming “My
Daddy’s Name Is Donor.”
The Complex Parenting Network (6 Letters)
Published: July 23, 2007
To the Editor:
“When 3 Really Is a Crowd,” by Elizabeth Marquardt
(Op-Ed, July 16), raises alarms about the well-being of children
who have more than two parents, while the think tank for which
she works, the Institute for American Values, also warns of
the dangers of single-parent households.
Evidently a child needs to be loved by at least, but no more
than, two adults to grow up healthy.
Ms. Marquardt assumes that more than two adults in a child’s
life will be like a “good” divorce situation at
best. The comparison is wrong because children can be raised
by more than two adults without the damaging family strife that
characterizes most divorces.
Whether a child spends summers at Grandma’s house, afternoons
with Aunt Sue or weekends with her biological father, the issue
is whether these adults are working together to provide structure,
stability and love.
There are many kinds of healthy families, and trying to force
all of them to be one version of ideal does nothing to provide
the loving community that every child deserves.
Eric Ettlinger
Berkeley, Calif., July 16, 2007
•
To the Editor:
The traditional two-parent paradigm no longer works in an era
of assisted reproductive technologies, or ART.
An increasing number of children have more than two parents,
and parent can now mean a genetic parent, a social parent or
both. Often, social parents who use ART fear the interference
of genetic parents and seek to ensure that only the social parents
have legal recognition.
Recognition of multiple parentage isn’t the problem,
but management of the relationships is. To make multiple parentage
workable, courts should recognize different types of parents,
such as those who intend to assume full child-rearing responsibility
and those who will have a secondary parenting or limited genetic
role.
To further reduce conflict, custodial and visitation rights
should be conferred on a basis of relative rights, and in accordance
with the parentage designation.
Legal recognition of multiple parents that clarifies the roles
and rights of parents early on offers children the best protection
of their interests.
Melanie B. Jacobs
East Lansing, Mich., July 16, 2007
The writer is an associate professor at Michigan State University
College of Law.
•
To the Editor:
In holding forth against three-parent families, Elizabeth Marquardt
does not mention that she fears not only too many parents, but
also too few.
In her work for the Institute for American Values, Ms. Marquardt
takes the position that children do best when raised in one
household headed by their happily married biological parents.
This position is by no means novel. It is a reaction to what
was called “the divorce culture” in the 1990s, and
is known as “the marriage problem” today.
It is constantly being repackaged in efforts to grant heterosexual
married couples exclusive access to assisted reproduction, an
edge in adoption, and to combat same-sex marriage. These efforts
push single women and gay and lesbian couples who want to form
families of their own to the margins.
The terms of Ms. Marquardt’s argument are all too familiar:
married biological parents are altruistic, selfless good citizens
while unmarried parents are pursuing selfish aims that harm
children.
We need to be aware of the larger objectives of commentators
who find it so easy to draw bright lines between good families
and bad.
Richard F. Storrow
University Park, Pa., July 17, 2007
The writer is a professor of law at Pennsylvania State University.
•
To the Editor:
As a lesbian parent, it is not my life’s work to make
the earth shudder. As a working mother, I don’t have extra
time to ponder ways in which to destroy or diminish the institute
of marriage or the definitions of family. I just want to love
my partner and child.
I would never want to deny the truth of our family. The fact
is that we went to a sperm bank and used a donor, who, by the
way, is not my child’s “Daddy.” I have spent
too many years in therapy and I understand the repercussions
of denial.
I plan on sharing our process, which included numerous consultations
with lawyers, medical professionals, financial planners, educators,
spiritual leaders, not to mention family and friends.
I plan to share with our son the lessons and knowledge my partner
and I have gained through education, work, travel and our family
histories, that there are many types of families and ways to
parent.
Lastly, I will share that there will always be people who want
to tell him who he is or isn’t, and what he needs and
doesn’t. But what is most important is for him to trust
what he knows and holds in his heart.
Mary W. Foulk
Portland, Ore., July 16, 2007
•
To the Editor:
I am a dad whose son has two mothers, so I read “When
3 Really Is a Crowd” with particular interest.
Elizabeth Marquardt compares our situation to a “ ‘good’
divorce.” But our son did not go from living in a single
household to living in two, and any child would be affected
by a troubled marriage, even one in which the husband and wife
“control their own conflicts.” That is, to compare
my family to an unsuccessful union is wrong.
Children are raised in all kinds of ways, by extended families
of all kinds. If it takes a village to raise a child, must the
village share the same address?
I laughed out loud when I read the conclusion of Ms. Marquardt’s
nationwide study: “that these children must grow up traveling
between two worlds, having to make sense on their own of the
different values, beliefs and ways of living they find in each
home. They have to grow up too soon.”
These qualities of flexibility and understanding are exactly
the ones I wish for my son, and for the rest of the world, including
Ms. Marquardt. It is never too early to acquire them.
Robert Gluck
New York, July 16, 2007
•
To the Editor:
If one problem is forcing children to travel from parent-to-parent-to-parent
in a complex parenting network, one simple solution is to make
the parents do the traveling.
If a judge were to declare the child’s home the place
where the parenting will take place, regardless of how many
parents are involved, the parents would have to work out their
own traveling and living arrangements with minimal disruption
to the child’s life.
When you bring children into the world, you need to make their
needs your top priority.
Alan Zipkin
Westport, Conn., July 16, 2007
|
