Lesbian mothers should be on birth certificates

You’ve missed the point again.

No, because as I pointed out in that exact post, planned lesbian families never take a baby from its gestational mother.

It’s not the gateway you want it to be. It’s not a gateway any more that a straight couple with a sperm donor or false paternity, which you have neglected to advocate for regulating, despite our numbering babies born to lesbians 23 to 1.

I disagree.

Children/people have the right to a birth certificate which tells the truth about who they are.

There should be legislation which insists that people who donate eggs or sperm to clinics agree to be named on the birth certificates of any offspring - and I am strongly opposed to the indignity of a child having “donor #XA42KN376” written as their genetic mother or father, just because the donors don’t want to think too much about the significance of what they are doing when they throw their gametes to the four winds and the parents don’t want to think about the elephant in the room - the fifth wheel in their family narrative - either.

They should be a named person because that is significant for the child, about who they are. They are not just some lab-grown proteins or something, they have a genuine genetic heritage, genuine people and ancestry.

Obviously, parents could go abroad or do sperm donation informally and not disclose when registering the birth, but I don’t think the expectation of dishonesty and fraud should set the bar. I’m sure that if those were the rules, the majority would continue to follow them, because it is the right thing to do.

“the bond a baby has and the natural incentive to attach to the woman who bore it is undeniable.”

“There is no doubt the baby considers its gestational mother it’s true mother.”

“we would be remiss to discount the value of gestation as women, the value of gestation for the baby, and separating a baby from its physical mother does open the door for child safeguarding issues”

I pulled out these quotes from @Triplemove ’s post because these outline the core, fundamental issue.

All the arguments which falsely claim this mother-baby bond is not particularly significant, that it doesn’t really matter who the baby attaches to, as long as there’s a secure attachment, yadda yadda yadda, when posed by lesbians to assert their equality as a couple as parents, as mothers, to the child - a claim which probably brings peace and cosiness to their own homes and relationships,…. These claims about the insignificance of gestation in terms of the meaning of the word “mother” and in terms of the importance of the bond of the baby to its mother, are a gift to pro-surrogacy activists and men with a sexual paraphelia about imagining themselves to be mothers. This is a ‘gateway’.

The gestational mother is also the biological mother. You mean genetically.

If you read the thread, you will find the many practical reasons that regulation of genetics on birth certificates is practically impossible.

She would be the genetic mother. That doesn’t make her more the mother than the person who built every cell of the baby.

For many children these would be the same people, but where they aren’t for whatever reason, then there is clarity.

If you list legal parents and genetic parents separately on the birth certificate then all these issues go away. I’d don’t understand the problem with this.

@loopsdefruit I think it’s a bit ridiculous that we are having to defend the value on a non-gestational parent on this thread at all!

i remember the process well.

and a planned lesbian family (or any woman that uses egg donation, for rather that uses sperm donation) is nothing like adoption in terms of attachment issues, which is one reason the continual insistence on the comparison is so frustrating.

I just wanted to clarify that it’s still an important factor (and a non-issue for lesbian birth certificates) I’m glad we agree :)

@Triplemove I don’t actually disagree with any of that, and obviously if the biological mother is present, doing the primary caring, and meeting the needs of the baby (so not a cold or unresponsive caregiver) then attachment is likely to be secure.

I think some of the difficulties you see for adopted children come not from either the child having been fostered and then moved to adopted parents, or from having to process the initial need for adoption which is often as a result of trauma.

I also don’t disagree that appropriate assessments should be carried out on couples adopting a child and that includes on “commissioning” parents in a surrogacy arrangement. That’s the bare minimum of safeguarding and it does worry me that it doesn’t happen.

Lesbian couples having a baby together (using a donor) already have a higher level of scrutiny on them than heterosexual couples choosing to have a baby via intercourse. Anyone using donated gametes has to have pre-treatment counselling, and anyone accessing fertility treatment must provide a declaration with support from their GP that there are no concerns about their fitness to parent. This is a very regulated process, and as the child is then planned for, and born into a loving relationship, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the initial building blocks of a healthy and secure attachment are there.

I do feel strongly that if a birth mother can’t be the primary caregiver, as long as someone is and they are responsive to the baby then the baby won’t have any detrimental effects to their wellbeing. That is an extrapolation from existing attachment research yes, but research is limited in that particular field because it’s an unusual/less common set up for the birth mother to not be the primary caregiver outside of serious trauma situations (thanks patriarchy) so we have to extrapolate.

@loopsdefruit while I 100% agree with you that attachment does not depend on genetic connection, I would be a bit wary of separating it completely from the physical bond the child forms with its gestational mother.

I have also worked in a field with children where attachment is important, and have seen first hand the gestational bond broken by the mother not properly meeting baby’s needs and caring for baby, and the affects of RAD in older children. So I know that a nurturing, properly attached environment is better than a poor but genetically close one.

However, the bond a baby has and the natural incentive to attach to the woman who bore it is undeniable.

In addition to having worked directly with adopted children, I have the benefit of having bonded with my own genetic and non-genetic children. There is no doubt the baby considers its gestational mother it’s true mother.

That is not to say the other parent doesn’t eventually create equal attachment with the child, but there is no denying the head start the gestational mother has (@excellenfish is bonkers for saying it’s genetics, no feminist analysis whatsoever)

I think with my children, preference had evened out after about a year, and then it’s like all children— they go through phases of preferring one or the other. I would actually say, anecdotally, that attachment to the non-gestational mother follows the same pattern as I see with involved fathers (that is, it takes time and patience despite the genetic relationship)

Nor do I think it matters in the debate of lesbian couples on birth certificates, because in lesbian couples the baby always stays with its gestational mothers. I think as women and feminist we would be remiss to discount the value of gestation as women, the value of gestión for the baby, and separating a baby from its physical mother does open the door for child safeguarding issues (which ARE NOT applicable to this discussion on lesbian body certificates, but would apply to a discussion on surrogacy).

I did read it, I’ve also studied attachment as a result of my work. You’ll have to specifically quote what you mean as evidently we are coming to different conclusions reading the same thing.

Like I said, separation from parents (it doesn’t specify biology in the article) without a replacement of a primary attachment figure could lead to attachment difficulties. It wouldn’t cause ADHD or ASC but giving you the benefit of the doubt it could cause behaviour that could be mistaken for learning disabilities, ASC, or ADHD. It’s why assessments for those differences require a comprehensive understanding of a child’s early life experiences.

Read through the nspcc link you attached. It disagrees with your refutation.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental difference, babies are born with ADHD it doesn’t develop as a result of trauma.

Attachment also isn’t the same as bonding (forming relationship). An attachment to a caregiver is a very specific relationship which has an impact on an infant’s future psychological well-being. A child has the ability to bond with others at any stage, but the window for forming an attachment and developing an attachment style is much shorter (believed to be around the age of 2 but we don’t know for certain).

Given babies from birth are very keen to and able to communicate their feelings, I think it would be pretty obvious if they had a preference for one attachment figure. They certainly show that preference after 6 weeks.

Babies who for whatever reason are raised by someone other than their birth mother from the very start are just as likely to develop a secure attachment, and be well-adjusted as children and adults as those raised by their birth mother (assuming no additional trauma experiences as children which would obviously impact). NICU and SCBU is of course different because it’s often loud, staff are busy, parents may not be there 24/7, the baby may be unwell etc… you can’t really compare that to a healthy term baby being cared for primarily by their second parent.

@mumarooni I dipped into the first of your two links and my first impression is that it is a highly politicised area of research, it makes sense really because the relationship of the mother to the family has a huge impact upon women’s ‘lib’, there is a lot of vested interest in finding certain outcomes.

That said, although it supported the idea that babies form multiple attachments (no shit Sherlock - babies are small people, and even adults form relationships with those they spend a lot of time with, particularly if those people are kind and caring- ‘attachments’ seems to be the jargon for ‘forming a relationship with’ but applied to children), it doesn’t suggest that there is no child’s preference for the mother, or that biological relationships are not more important to the child.

@loopsdefruit the NSPCC suggests that there is a phase where preference for a particular caregiver is not observed, but this does not mean that the child does not have preference for their mother, (it could mean that the child’s concept of time and expectation is very crude and undeveloped) in fact it also says that going into the SCBU during this phase of development and being separated from the ‘primary caregiver’ can causes attachment issues and lifelong symptoms of ADHD.

I am not denying that non-biological relationships can be important to a baby or that a baby can form a bond with a number of people, what I am strongly refuting is that any of these relationships is on a par with the importance of the mother who bore the child to the child, and strongly refuting the suggestions that it is not significantly harmful or psychologically disruptive for a child to be separated from its mother who bore it, for any extensive period.

Tangled, if you’re interested.

This is from the NSPCC. From birth to around 6 weeks of age the baby is in the “pre-attachment phase” this means they don’t show a preference to a particular attachment figure. They have the potential to attach to anyone, biology doesn’t matter, responsive caregiving matters. Most of the time a child’s primary attachment is to their mother (who gave birth to them) but this is not a biological imperative, rather it is a consequence of the way most families are set up. Just because something is common does not mean it is superior, or that a different situation cannot be equally good.

https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/child-health-development/attachment-early-years#article-top

oh no I've been sucked back in.

one fairly recent bit of research on attachment to multiple care givers:
http://www.ordagan.com/uploads/1/3/3/4/133400866/early_attachment_networks_to_multiple_caregivers_review_dagan_sagi_schwartz_2022.pdf

One (of many) resources that consider cultural variations of attachment and note the cultural peculiarity of the models that seem to have gained the most popularity in the West:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/feeding-bonding-and-the-formation-of-social-relationships/DE0E7EF30E134D4A830985259B0E0CE2

These are just the ones that happen to be on my desk at the moment for various reasons, I don't have time to compile a reading list for TangledRoots but suggest those reading don't take her word for what attachment theory is, but go do some googlescholar searches yourself.

There is a lot available on the anthropological record re milk sharing in other cultures, the importance of skin to skin with fathers in some other cultures, different ways of figuring which children belong to which families amongst cousins etc etc etc

attachment is obviously a much more complex topic

The woman who gave birth to the baby and the male from where the sperm came from. It's not about liking it or feeling offending - it's a record of where the baby has come from.

If you're a lesbian and you've had nothing to do with making the baby, then you're an adoptive parent. ie. not on the birth certificate.

Erm… No.

No, it’s not how attachment works. A baby is hardwired to attach to a primary caregiver. This is often, usually in fact, the mother who bore it. However it’s not always and doesn’t have to be.

society historically has been created on the idea that women will be the people to remain at home and often in male/female couples women earn less (because of the way society has developed) so it makes financial sense for the woman to sacrifice her salary to remain at home. But if the father earns less (say the mother is a doctor) then it may be that she chooses to return to work and the father becomes the primary caregiver, the baby will attach to the father. Attachment is an innate drive which is triggered to respond to feeling safe and secure, as a result of needs being met. If a father or second parent meets those needs then that child will develop a secure attachment to that parent. Usually because both parents meet the needs of the baby the baby attaches to both parents but the primary caregiver isn’t always the mother - and it doesn’t need to be for the baby to be ok.

A baby is not a doll or a possession.

It is a person and just like all other people who were babies before it, it is hardwired to adore and obsess over its mother (who bore it) and to hate being separated from her.

Just because I would grow and birth the baby, doesn’t mean the baby will be less attached to my wife than to me, that’s not how attachment works.

That’s exactly how attachment works.

It’s the reason why fathers can feel a bit sidelined when it is obvious that the baby is obsessively and madly in love with the woman who bore them and can see that no one else, including themselves, provokes that strength of feeling in the child.