I really enjoyed reading Thomas Laqueur's article "The Facts of Fatherhood," as I felt it examined the issues of what it actually means to be a parent from and interesting and pertinent perspective, including issues facing surrogate mothers, gay families, and sperm donors in his discussion. The idea of paternal rights was particularly interesting to me and brought up many other questions about the extent to which fathers or other non birth giving parents should legally have a say in what happens to the child. I have heard the argument that fathers should have to give their consent before an abortion takes place, and I find this to be an interesting and risky debate. What do you all think?

Nicholson, pg28: "Whether a type of family provides economic and emotional sustenance to its members, with special attention to children......should constitute the primary criteria by which it is evaluated. The distinction between 'traditional' and 'alternative' families gets in the way of our being able to make such considered evaluations." One example of such an alternative family is homosexual couples which have an obstacle in that, "the same gender of adult partners makes gay and lesbian households appear different from heterosexual ones in visual terms" (pg36). How can we overcome such visual discrimination that hinders our overall evaluation of a family's functional ability? Is it possible?
I also found it refreshing to read an article by a man about the family and fatherhood (Laqueur).

The Facts of Fatherhood

Lacquer suggests that we "abandon the notion that biology--facts--will somehow provide the resolution," and, for the most part, I agree; after all, if biology were never ignored, then perhaps people who had given up their children for adoption would, somewhere down the line, be able to reclaim ownership of that child, despite the lack of any emotional connection. What, then is a parent? Because if we ignore biology, then how can child support be enforced in a case in which a struggling single mother cannot get the "father" or "man who impregnated her" to pay child support? If the notion of biology is abandoned, could this deadbeat get away with not paying child support, since he never acted as or felt like the father?

The chapters from Arlie Hochschild's The Second Shift were fascinating.  Reading the justifications of Carmen and Frank intrigued me:

"By discrediting cultural models of female assertion, by strictly confining her tendency to dominate to the 'female' sphere... by raising Frank above her--putting him on a pedestal--Carmen pursued submission as part of a traditional strategy.  She squelched her assertion outside the home; she actively magnified any feelings of dependence; these were the psychological moves that kept her soul in line with her strategy" (72-73).

It boggles my mind that Carmen would "actively [magnify] any feelings of dependence" in order uphold her ideals of what family life should be.  It makes sense, obviously, but it still fascinates me, and frustrates me that people are forced to go so far as to manipulate behavior in order to keep their familial ideals in tact.  With Carmen and Frank's situations, especially, the primary reason for their having to manipulate their behavior is economic.  How do we reconcile economic issues and familial ideals?  Is manipulating behavior in the manner Carmen did the only way? 

It was refreshing to me to read Laqueur's article. I think that it is important not only with respect to fatherhood and alternative motherhoods (lesbian non-birthmothers), but even to the parents of adopted children and to non-parent caregivers (grandparents who raise their grandchildren, etc.). My question is: why do you think people generally see mothers as more legitimate parents than fathers? Is it solely a societal idea, instilled into us by the patriarchal "father works, mother stays home and raises the children" 1950s normative family structure, out of which we still haven't been able to fully escape? Or is there something within our biology that is set to recognize the mother as the most important caregiver?

The Laqueur article brought into question many ideas about parenthood that Western society ften views as fact. For example, the concept of a mother's bond with her child being stronger than that of the father. He points out that even while this may be true, it is only so because of the labor the mother has to go through in order to give birth to a child. Additionally, he seems indignant that there is no recorded "history of fatherhood" and that there is no male equivalent of feminism to "spur the study of men." I take issue with this stance because as he even admits, men are those who have been responsible for the recording of history for so long. Therefore, if this is a complaint against women for stealing the historical spotlight from men, then it is completely out of place. Likewise, the complaint that women's bond with children is seen as stronger than a father's bond is also misappropriated because in both of these cases, the power to change this historical phenomenon is in the hands of men themselves.

Laqueur's article complicates the concepts of motherhood and fatherhood. I found it interesting that he considers fathers to be "ideas" and mothers to be "fact" (Laqueur 207) - yet in his article he discusses the case of Mary K. vs. Jhordan C. in which fatherhood is legally imposed upon a lesbian couple - despite the obvious construction of a two-parent family unit, the law insisted upon inserting the biological father into the equation. On one hand one could argue that the authorities probably preferred to have Jhordan pay for childcare rather than partition welfare funds to the couple. On the other hand it appears that fatherhood is far more concrete and "factual" than Laqueur presents (where a male is not already existing in the picture, which further complicates matters taking in gender and sexuality biases [Laqueur 215-6]). Although not explicitly addressed in this article, it seems to indicate that motherhood and fatherhood are no longer (never were?) set structures, but rather fluid social constructs that are influenced by politics, culture and economic class; this suspicion is confirmed in Nicholson's article as she evaluates different types of "alternative families" (Nicholson 35-37). It seems again to return to the concept of "self" and "other" - a need for possession (in this case of the child) and the distinction of male/female roles by the heterosexual majority. Since the family structure is the elemental unit from which society presumably developed, it is interesting to see that the "relationship" of family as the "parent" and society as the "child" is reversed and society is now shaping the families...