Fathers and Feminism: The Case Against Genetic Entitlement

This Article makes the case against a nascent consensus among feminist and other progressive scholars about men\u27s 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\u27s existing parental rights and transfer too much power from women to men. Although they directly affect only a particular class of legal disputes about genetic fathers and adoption, their implications stretch not only to other kinds of custody disputes but also to the law\u27s treatment of sex and gender differences in reproduction more broadly The principle of genetic entitlement that underlies these proposals is male-centered and therefore an undesirable basis for the law of reproduction and parentage