Two mothers should be allowed on birth document, judge says
Found in breach of Charter, Ontario told to alter rules to include lesbian parents
Globe and Mail, KIRK MAKIN, Wednesday June 7, 2006
An Ontario judge struck down a birth registry provision yesterday that prevents lesbian couples from being registered as parents of babies conceived through artificial insemination, saying that the regulation causes them unjustified "pain and hardship."
Mr. Justice Paul Rivard of the Ontario Superior Court ruled that the province violated the litigants' right to equality by stopping them from adding their names to the Statement of Live Births after their babies are born.
Lesbian mothers live in an atmosphere of homophobia that only is exacerbated when rules and conventions leave an impression that "there is something wrong or unnatural about their families,'' Judge Rivard said.
"Likewise, for children of lesbian mothers -- who are even more vulnerable than their parents to the lack of symbols of their families in popular culture -- exclusion of their parents from birth registration furthers this vulnerability."
Lawyers Martha McCarthy and Joanna Radbord, who represented the applicants, said yesterday that the case held enormous symbolic value for the gay and lesbian community.
"Although the case addresses one of the very last issues of discrimination against gays and lesbians in Ontario law, it is also probably the most important of all to lesbian mothers," Ms. McCarthy said in an interview.
"Indeed, I venture to say that our applicant couples would have traded all of their employment benefits, spousal support rights -- even marriage rights -- in exchange for the basic recognition that they are parents to their children. It is, in many ways, like we left the most important issue to the last."
The legal clash stemmed from the fact that the province's Vital Statistics Act specifies the terms "father" and "mother" when it comes to filling out a Statement of Live Birth.
The government insisted that the "father" has to be a biological father, and that it would be illegal to include both members of a lesbian couple on a Statement of Live Birth, since that would be tantamount to including two mothers.
About 4,500 non-biological parents are listed in Ontario each year. Judge Rivard noted in his judgment that non-biological fathers are not impeded when they attempt to register their names, yet efforts are routinely made to "target lesbian co-mothers."
Evidently moved by many of the litigants' accounts of suffering
discrimination and being made to feel that their relationships and
families could not measure up to those of heterosexual families,
Judge Rivard said this amounted to unacceptably unequal treatment.
He noted that in the case of one couple, the birth mother was
diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after having her child.
The couple feared that if the mother were to die before they could get a proper declaration of parentage, the child "would be left without any certainty as to parentage."
Judge Rivard suspended the effect of his ruling for one year to allow the province time to legislate a solution to the Charter breach.
Study denouncing fathers sends danger signals
By Kathleen Parker, The Orlando Sentinel, USA, on July 18, 1999
Now is the time for all good fathers to come to the aid of the family.
But you'd better hurry; your days are numbered. In fact, if you happen to be a heterosexual male (further doomed by Caucasian pigmentation), your days are already over, according to a cover article in the June issue of American Psychologist, published by the American Psychological Association.
In their article, "Deconstructing the Essential Father," researchers Louise B. Silverstein and Carl F. Auerbach challenge one of the core institutions of our culture -- fatherhood. Read More .. less, fathers, as we've known and loved them, are obsolete.
The article makes numerous breathtaking assertions, but basically the researchers state that fathers aren't essential to the well-being of children Read More ...
REPORT: Children Need Dads Too: Children with fathers in prison
Quakers United Nations Office
July 2009
Children are heavily impacted by parental imprisonment and greater attention should be given to their rights, needs and welfare in criminal justice policy and practice. Due to a variety of reasons such as mothers often being the primary or sole carer of children, complicated care arrangements, the likelihood of women prisoners being greater distances from home and a host of factors explored in detail in other QUNO publications, maternal imprisonment can be more damaging for children than paternal imprisonment. However, it is important not to underestimate the damage that paternal imprisonment can have on children.
Children with incarcerated fathers experience many of the same problems as those with incarcerated mothers, including coping with loss, environmental disruption, poverty, stigmatisation, health problems and all of the difficulties involved in visiting a parent in prison. It appears that there are also some difficulties specifically associated with paternal imprisonment, such as a higher risk of juvenile delinquency and strained relationships between the mother and child.
The numbers of children separated from their fathers due to imprisonment is far higher than those separated from their mothers due to the vast majority of prisoners being men (globally over 90 per cent of prisoners are male. To ignore this group would, therefore, be to neglect the vast majority of children affected by parental imprisonment. Read More ..
Hammering it home: Daughters need dads
USA TODAY, June 10, 2003
It's widely recognized that boys benefit from having dads around as role models and teachers about manhood.
But does having a father at home make much difference for girls?
But even in affluent families, girls become sexually active and pregnant earlier if they don't live with fathers, according to the largest and longest-term study on the problem. It was released in May.
Compared with daughters from two-parent homes, a girl is about five times more likely to have had sex by age 16 if her dad left before she was 6 and twice as likely if she stops living with her dad at 6 or older.
The study of 762 girls for 13 years took into account many factors that could lead to early sex, says Duke University psychologist Kenneth Dodge, the study's co-author. Still, there was an independent link between teenage sex and girls not living with their biological fathers.
Divorced Dads:
Shattering the Myths
Dr. Sandford L. Braver and Diane O'Connell
This is the result of the largest federally funded 8 year study of the issues confronting parents and their children in the United States.
Shattering the Myths. The surprising truth about fathers, children and divorce.
Children seeing more of their fathers after divorce
The Sydney Morning Herald
February 3, 2005
Divorced fathers are Read More ..volved in their children's lives than conventional wisdom would have it, a new study shows.
It shows surprisingly varied and flexible care patterns among separated families, with "every other Saturday" contact giving way to Read More ..ild-focused arrangements.
Australian Institute of Family Studies research fellow Bruce Smyth has produced the first detailed snapshot of parent-child contact after divorce anywhere in the world. Published today in the institute's journal Family Matters, the analysis has implications for children's emotional and financial wellbeing.
Other research indicates children of separated families do best when they have multifaceted relationships, including sleepovers, sharing meals and doing schoolwork, with both parents.
Fathers 'have key role with children' after families split
The Telegraph, London, U.K.
Researchers say they found a direct relationship between children's behavioural problems and the amount of contact they had with their natural father.
The effect was more pronounced in single-parent families, particularly where the mother was a teenager. In such cases, children were especially vulnerable emotionally if they had no contact with their father.
Where's Daddy?
The Mythologies behind Custody-Access-Support
When 50 percent of marriages end in divorce and 43 percent of children are left with one parent, everyone is affected: uncles, aunts, grandparents, and friends, but mostly, the children. The devastation from our divorce practices is our most public secret scandal. Everyone whispers it, the whispers never acknowledged. It seems that as long as a villain can be created, society is content.
After three decades of research universally pointing to more productive options, why does Custody-Access-Support remain?
