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.
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 ...
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 ..
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 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.
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.
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?
Research proves that fatherhood really matters
Tallahassee Democrat, KNIGHT RIDDER TRIBUNE, By Roland C. Warren, April 20, 2002
The Bush administration is proposing spending $300 million in federal welfare dollars to promote healthy marriages - it is the most concrete example of the president's pledge to "help strengthen the institution of marriage and help parents rear their children in positive and healthy environments." The result has been a firestorm of pundit debate on 24-hour cable news channels and opinion pages across the country.
Clearly, the president has touched upon a national nerve. Why? Because he has struck deep into two core issues comprising what, as a society, we believe we are and how each of us views our place in this society.
First is the question of what living arrangements are best for raising kids. Second is the question of where private decisions end and public concerns begin is marriage, beyond stamping the marriage license, the business of government?
How we answer these questions will determine much of how we work to build American society over the coming decades. That is why the president's $300 million proposal deserves more serious debate than the rhetoric-laden volleys being lobbed back and forth by experts and advocates on television. What this question deserves is the hot light of cold, hard data.
At the National Fatherhood Initiative, we have done just that, as we released "Father Facts, 4th Edition," the most comprehensive collection and review of statistics and research on the extent and effects of father absence, and the presence of fathers, ever assembled.
