Changing the Meaning of Parent

Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic

CHANGING THE MEANING OF PARENT

By Stephen M. Krason

            Amidst the flood of cultural and legal changes–many, probably most, not good–that have swept over the country is a change, a broadening, of what it means to be a parent. Traditionally, of course, one became a parent upon the birth or adoption of a child and the man in a family was the father and the woman the mother. Now, people in other situations where there is a child are called “parents” and parental rights are being extended by courts to others.

            Such change is being driven by cohabiting couples who are having babies–in many cases, not wanting to bother with marriage–but it’s also the result of homosexual–especially lesbian–couples wanting to have children. While American law historically permitted only married couples to adopt, states have been changing their laws to permit unmarried male-female couples and homosexuals to adopt. The thinking has taken hold that children can get the proper rearing and turn out just as good in these arrangements as in a family with married parents. There are even some claims that homosexual couples are more interested in adopting than heterosexual couples.

            This transformed thinking about adoption is not the only reason why children are being raised in situations that are not true families. The advent of surrogacy–where often anonymous male sperm donors and sperm banks are used to impregnate women willing to carry and give birth to a child, sometimes to be raised by others–allows lesbian couples and others to have children. Surrogacy is legal in almost all states in the U.S. Of course, even though surrogacy is an affront to sound morality on sexual and reproductive matters it is commended by some as a great advance for heterosexual couples with fertility problems who can’t conceive. In all these cases, there is a convoluted notion that somehow one has a right to be a parent. Even though genuine parental rights are from natural law and attach when one becomes a parent, there is no right to be a parent–with the attendant belief that one even can use immoral means to make that possible. There is no understanding that children are a gift from God.

            What has no doubt contributed to a redefinition of “parent” in law and the opening of the door to adoption by same-sex couples has been a flood of social science studies that are held to establish that children thrive as well when raised by homosexual couples as with married, heterosexual ones. These are examples of the all-too-typical flawed and even twisted research by academics and others who look to promote an agenda instead of engaging in objective scholarship. The research of Fr. D. Paul Sullins of The Catholic University of America who is an officer of my organization, the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, has directly disputed that. He has shown that children raised by homosexual couples are more likely to suffer developmental and emotional problems, including depression in adulthood. His criticism of these studies has been seconded by scholars such as Walter Schumm of Kansas State University, who is the Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Marriage and Family Review. Of course, what Sullins and Schumm say just confirms what people who are not consumed by pro-homosexualist ideology understand intuitively: that it is obviously wrong to think that children raised by homosexuals would not be psychologically, emotionally, and morally damaged by it. In fact, until recent times virtually no one would have even conceived of the idea of homosexuals rearing children.

            Of course, allowing homosexuals to adopt–apart from all the other reasons why it is objectionable–implies that children do not need a father and a mother, that there is nothing particular and special that each parent brings to rearing a child. Such a way of thinking no doubt was influenced by the feminist movement, which has sought to emasculate the differences between the sexes.

            Further troubling legal developments are occurring with respect to parenting. Courts increasingly are holding that anyone who has played some role in raising a child, even if the biological or adoptive parents are alive and present, should have legally guaranteed visitation rights–whether or not the parents approve–and can even seek legal custody of the child. This position has also been promoted by the Uniform Parentage Act, a model law that leading lawyers and legal scholars in the family law field have put forth as a standard for states to follow in their family law legislation. So if, say, a grandparent or other relative or even a non-relative had a significant role in the child’s life at one point but circumstances later changed and even if the parents no longer want the person to be involved, he or she can make a legal claim in some states to have access to the child. While parent-grandparent conflicts might be regrettable, one thinks that such things should be informally resolved and not except in an extraordinary situation have the law enter the picture to interfere with the parents’ rights to decide about such thing–irrespective of how legitimate the parents’ reasons for their decisions are.

            The law even seems to be moving in the direction of recognizing that there can be more than two “parents” for a child. Massachusetts recently even issued a three-parent birth certificate for a child. This certainly underscores the transformation of the way parentage has been traditionally and reasonably understood. In fact, there is talk that “multiparent families” may be the wave of the future. This follows as a logical development from, again, surrogacy and same-sex couplings and also from a departure from the biological or adoptive basis of parentage. This is held by some, if one can believe it, to be a good thing for a child. The upshot of this is that if a child supposedly develops some kind of “attachment” to people who are not his or her natural or adoptive parents, such people are held to have “parental rights” that should be respected in law. Some advocates hold that multiparent families are nothing new, even claiming such things as that a child living with the biological parents but raised by other family members or friends–one wonders if this includes just watching the child while both parents work–are examples of this.

            The Uniform Parentage Act has readily endorsed and promoted many of these developments and perspectives–which can only be said to be upending what history and nature understand about parents and parenting. That includes treating same-sex parenting just like it’s normal parenting.

            As should be apparent, these developments have genuine implications for the legitimate, traditional, natural rights of parents and for the integrity of the family rightly understood. That’s even apart from one of the major assaults on parental rights that has been ongoing for fifty years: the nearly unrestrained power of the child protective system (CPS) grounded upon vague laws that can construe all kinds of parental behaviors as child abuse or neglect.

            This relativistic notion of “parent” is one of the latest assaults of the culture, the political order, and the law on the family. People need to take notice of it, learn about it, and point out to their public decisionmakers the problems and dangers it presents and raise their voices in opposition to it.

Stephen M. Krason is professor of political science and legal studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville, associate director of the University’s Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life, and lawyer, and co-founder and president of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. Over the years, he has edited or co-edited the following books on parental rights and the family: Parental Rights: Contemporary Assault on Traditional Liberties; Defending the Family: A Sourcebook;Child Abuse, Family Rights, and the Child Protective System: A Critical Analysis from Law, Ethics, and Catholic Social Teaching; and the forthcoming Parental Rights in Peril.