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Parentage At Birth: Birthfathers And Social Fatherhood, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

Deciding who should be a child's legal parents at birth seems a simple task. Instinctively, the answer is the child's biological mother and father. Historically, the answer would have been different depending on whether the child was born within a marriage or not; marriage trumped biology, at least with respect to fathers. A husband was generally presumed to be the father of a child born to his wife, even if there was no genetic connection. A number of changes have moved parentage away from the marital/genetic/patriarchal model that valued the marital family above genes or social fatherhood. Modern principles of …