Law Commons^™

Babies Aren't U.S., Zachary J. Devlin

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Parental leave has been an on-going issue in the political process, most recently during this presidential election. This is because upon the birth or adoption of a child, many in the United States cannot afford to take time off from work to care for and integrate children into their families. This is especially true for the contemporary family. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) was Congress’s attempt to strike equilibrium between employment and family and medical needs. The FMLA put legal emphasis on the family unit in an effort to neutralize gender discrimination while promoting gender equality …

Quacking Like A Duck? Functional Parenthood Doctrine And Same-Sex Parents, Katharine K. Baker

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This Article unpacks the relationship between the functional parenthood doctrine, constitutionally protected parental autonomy rights and intent-to-parent tests as they are applied in same-sex parenting relationships. It argues that, with the advent of same-sex marriage and second parent adoption, the functional parent doctrine is unnecessary and ultimately counterproductive to anyone interested in expanding legal recognition of non-traditional family forms. The functional parent doctrine asks courts to employ traditional understandings of parenthood (“Who acted like a parent?”) in assigning parental status.

These traditional understandings are usually, if not inevitably, dyadic, heteronormative, genetic, and gendered. In practice, the functional parent doctrine undermines …

Will Focusing On Men's Moral Calculus Make Abortion Less "About" Gender?, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Decades ago, feminist leader Gloria Steinem quipped that, “if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” As President Trump reinstates restrictions on women’s reproductive rights that the Obama Administration lifted (such as the “global gag rule”), the visual imagery of Trump signing executive orders while surrounded by an audience of white men raises – once again – the question of how gender shapes the abortion issue. In the recent unsuccessful Republican effort to repeal “Obamacare,” when Kansas Senator Pat Roberts was asked whether he supported removing the mandate that insurance companies cover “essential health benefits” such as maternity …

Fathers And Feminism: The Case Against Genetic Entitlement, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

This Article makes the case against a nascent consensus among feminist and other progressive scholars about men's parental rights. Most progressive proposals to reform parentage law focus on making it easier for men to assert parental rights, especially when they are not married to the mother of the child. These proposals may seek, for example, to require the state to make more extensive efforts to locate biological fathers, to require pregnant women to notify men of their impending paternity, or to require new mothers to give biological fathers access to infants.

These proposals disregard the mother's existing parental rights and …

The Law Of Nonmarriage, Albertina Antognini

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The meaning of marriage, and how it regulates intimate relationships, has been at the forefront of recent scholarly and public debates. Yet despite the attention paid to marriage—especially in the wake of Obergefell v. Hodges—a record number of people are not marrying. Legal scholarship has mostly neglected how the law regulates these nonmarital relationships. This Article begins to fill the gap. It does so by examining how courts distribute property at the end of a relationship that was nonmarital at some point. This inquiry provides a descriptive account to a poorly understood and largely under-theorized area of the law. …