Law and the complexities of parenting: parental status and parental function

The Symbolic Power of Legal Kinship Terminology

“…In the light of what we have so far argued, we can get back to the legal category of parent in Belgium and the Netherlands. Based on the establishment of filiation vis-à-vis maximum two parents, parenthood or 'parental status' (Lind and Hewitt, 2009: 392) automatically generates an indivisible bundle of family rights and obligations, among which parental responsibility and maintenance obligations are the most relevant, as they are constitutive of lifelong (and beyond, through inheritance law) kinship with a child. This bundle of rights and obligations as such is accessible only for parents, adopters being equalled with parents.…”

Donor-Conception as a ‘Dangerous Supplement’ to the Nuclear Family

“…In such conditions, a concern about the 'reality' of parenthood that seeks to exclude exterior elements seems an old-fashioned essentialist preoccupation with the traditional nuclear family model which should not be 'addressed' so much as simply left behind (Boyd 2007: 71). However, recent legal confl icts between, for example, lesbian parents and their sperm donors, make it clear that for some social parents there are still reasons to fall back onto the idea of the nuclear family in order to assert the legitimacy of the family that either cannot or chooses not to reproduce heterosexually (Lind and Hewitt 2009;Polikoff 2001-2;Kelly 2004-5;Kelly 2008-9;Dempsey 2004;Boyd 2007: 402). The new confi gurations of the relationship of opposition between the nuclear family and what lies outside of it, as well as more traditional examples, open up opportunities for deconstructive critique and this is the concern of this chapter.…”