Motherhood Discourse in the Law: Biological Fathers and Third Party Cases

In an effort to determine how judges define motherhood a cluster criticism analysis was employed on twenty seven court opinions. These court opinions stemmed from custody cases between biological fathers and third parties. Results indicated three major themes emerging from the discourse. The themes labeled Lie/Deception and Rejected/Thwarted indicated that mothers are held accountable when they do not live up to the dominant cultural ideology of motherhood. The theme labeled Mother\u27s Legal Status refers to the debate within law over the equality of men and women in the case of pregnancy