talloulou said:
hmmm well I can see trying to set things up so children aren't punished for the sins of their parents but at the same time it sure seems like you're saying a father doesn't make a father.......a father is assigned by the mother who owns the child which is more like property.
A sperm donor doesn't make a father. It is acting as a father-- fulfilling the role of fatherhood-- that makes a man a father.
Yes, I am saying that women have sole authority in choosing the father of their children, except for the right of an unmarried man to refuse. This may be less than fully equitable, but it is a natural extension of the mother's original obligation to the child.
talloulou said:
And while men are treated a little unfairly here and there so as to avoid hurting children... women are given pretty much free reign.
I agree, and I think that this must be corrected. Note that I do not make any provision for the mother
rescinding fatherhood; once a child has a father, he has a father for life unless the father is killed or stripped of this role for just cause.
Once a man is declared and known to be the father of a child, his rights and responsibilities as a parent are equal to the mother's. However, the initial choice-- just like the decision to bear the child-- must remain solely with the mother.
talloulou said:
If all mothers were the most beautiful people in the world and the majority of fathers were scum I'd understand that type of set up better but honestly I don't think either sex has truely earned the cliche.
It really doesn't have anything to do with either men or women-- fathers or mothers-- being scum or paragons of virtue. They're going to be both, and there ain't much the law can do about it either way.
It's a matter of who is first responsible for the child; biologically, this can be noone other than the mother.
After that, the only way to avoid cases of gross injustice is to allow the mother to choose the father of her child-- and to allow the named father to choose whether or not to accept this responsibility.
I mean no offense to the single parents of this forum, but this is why marriage exists and why having children within wedlock is preferable. Marriage makes such claims automatic and legally secure, so that there is no question of who a child's parents are.
It was the invention of the genetic paternity test that confused this issue in the first place; since we cannot seem to resolve the issues created by these tests, I think we would be best served by learning to ignore them.