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What was long feared by legislators and courts has now become reality: trans men give birth to their own children and request to be designated as their ‘fathers’ for the purpose of birth registration. This article sheds light on the transformative potential of such procreative scenarios and the following legal claims for fatherhood. An argument is made that they invite essential reflections on what it means to be a father today and, in so doing, they prompt a (re)construction of legal fatherhood which includes care as a relevant, paternal parameter. By focusing on ongoing cases decided by English and German courts, however, this article shows that domestic courts’ understanding of fatherhood has essentially preserved its conventionally heteronormative, biological, and mediated nature. Yet, the game is still open and an application pending before the European Court of Human Rights may breathe fresh air into the debate.

Inspired by my personal experience as a working mother during the pandemic, this contribution reflects on the urgent need, and possible ways, to rethink legal fatherhood. If the aim is to make fathers (more) active carers, making family-leave policies more assertive in encouraging fathers’ uptake is certainly an important first step towards bringing men into the care frame. Yet, to counter the multiple negative effects of the pandemic on women, legal fatherhood must undergo a structural rethinking, which extends to legal regulation more broadly. A legal venue where this rethinking is long overdue is filiation law, whose rules function as channels through which notions and arrangements of (child)care are created and can, therefore, also be recreated. Driven by the desire to promote a substantive vision of equality, this article argues for a relational rethinking of legal fatherhood, which is mindful of the interconnectedness between the lives of women, men, and children, and places care at its core.

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