Law Commons^™

Unsex Mothering: Toward A New Culture Of Parenting, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, I observe that “mothering” and “fathering” have been inappropriately tethered to biosex. “Mothering” should be unsexed as the primary parental relationship. “Fathering,” correspondingly, should be unsexed from its breadwinner status. In an ideal world, people now considered “mothers” and “fathers” would be “parents” first, a category that includes all forms of caretaking. One could even imagine an androgynous world in which parenting has no sexed subcategories, whether attached to biosex or not. I doubt our world is anywhere near that; I also wonder whether universal androgyny is a utopian ideal worth pursuing. I instead focus in this …