I was happy to see the piece on fatherhood by Thomas W. Laqueur. How can one discuss motherhood and family without discussing fatherhood as well? Laqueur points to the fact that like the notion of the traditional family, the notions of mother and father are historically and culturally constructed 'facts.' Laqueur speaks of facts as "shifting sands" upon which ideas are built and consequently, moral codes and even law. 

I am satisfied with the way that the writers wrote with deep senses of historicity this week. Laqueur is also interested in the mistaken senses of ownership that 'parents' are compelled to feel. He sites the Algonquin chief who found it so puzzling that whites could apparently only love 'their' children, i.e., that only individual ownership entailed caring and affection." (208 Laqueur is presenting this as a polemic, that much too much emphasis is placed on 'owning' chromosomes and likenesses. But how much detachment or alienation from this matter is too much? Its a thin line.