To think it's wrong to refuse to put a father on the birth certificate

[HorsePeopleAreStablePeople]

I often see people on here tell the OP to refuse to put the father on the birth certificate. AIBU to think it's fundamentally wrong to deny parental rights to a child's parent and it's wrong for a baby to have a blank space on their birth certificate where their father should be unless the father is unknown because it's their birth and heritage information?

I know that women often do it to make sure the father has no say over the child because they think they know best and want to make all the decisions but I just don't think it's fair to deny parental rights to fathers.

If a father could refuse rights to the mother there would be uproar and rightly so, so why isn't it the same when women deny fathers their rights?

Obviously not. I said I would report him. I am perfectly capable of protecting my daughter.

I'm not embarrassed at all. There have been some very informative posts where people have civil and have been interested to read and given insight into why people say "don't let him go on the birth certificate" when it turns out they can't stop him anyway.

Most people have just shouted childish things and menz and wimminz and embarrassed themselves.

My friend's daughter, who has returned from visitation with nasty bruises from her father, has had the police turn up at her door to ensure that she still hands her over for weekend contact.

It's destroying my friend that she can't protect her daughter. You have a very rosy view of what 'reporting' someone with parental responsibility of a child can achieve.

Oh, and if she withholds contact, her ex takes her back to court and has her marked as being obstructive. She's never been able to take the child on holiday out of the country because if she books anything, he immediately takes her to court to prevent it. She can't get the child therapy, because he threatens the providers if they see the child without his permission, he's done the same to the brownie leader.

Now, he's malicious enough that even if he wasn't on the birth certificate he'd have got himself added, but this idea that you can protect your child from a determined abusive parent is just not the reality.

You wouldn't be if your ex was abusive and he had PR, there are women who have had to hand their kids over to abusers or get arrested and the ex would get to be the RP.

These men will use whatever power they are given, but they often don't bother to do anything that isn't handed to them in a plate.

You can't protect her from someone who has parental responsibility for her.

I think it’s worse to put the wrong father on the birth certificate for medical reasons

From a parent with PR? Let's hope you never have to test that claim out.

No. This is your assessment. It's worth no more than anyone elses. And neither is your opinion. No one is making you hang around here in outrage, you can just leave you know.

OP, "reporting" someone with PR doesn't then make it easy to prevent contact. When I found out extent of XH's issues, I reported it: to the police (how he treated me, his DUI etc), SS (I wanted to do all I could to ensure that DC were safe and I wanted input from them to see that I was doing all I could) and to the DC's schools. The ONLY thing that helped me was PSO (for XH to have just supervised contact). Even then, the PSO lasted a year (had XH not sorted himself out, I could have applied to have it extended). Luckily the Judge also ordered a CAO which gave my DC some more protection (they were to reside with me only, and no overnight stays with XH, even after PSO finished).

The PSO cost me thousands (solicitor fees, Court etc). Not everyone has that sort of money. I needed the solicitor as I was also working FT, parenting the DC on my own, going through a nasty divorce, grieving the death of my parents (and the end of my marriage*).

*I couldn't have predicted that XH would turn out like he did. Not when I met him, not when I agreed to marry him and not when we TTC and had a DC together. As I said in a previous post, he did sort himself out and behave better, but that PSO meant that I didn't have to risk handing DC over to him when he wasn't in any fit state to parent DC.

Whilst I understand your viewpoint, presumably having him named as father would have made not a jot to how he behaved towards you.

It would have given him parental responsibility for her.

You should be.

Your obsession with 'rights', particularly men's rights is excruciating.

All whilst avoiding any mention of the word that really matters 'responsibility'.

Oh yes let me rethink how I feel about myself and how I view the world because some cantankerous women on Mumsnet tells me to!

Not sure why everyone on here is so against mens rights that it's shocking that a woman thinks men should have any. Equality is for everyone not just women. The misandry a lot of people demonstrate is excruciating. I hope none of you show this much contempt to your husbands and sons.

Do you think we live in a world where men as a group face structural disadvantages and inequalities?

It's interesting that OP hasn't engaged with any of the posts explaining to her that she's wrong to blithely assume she could protect her DC from an abusive father with PR.

A birth certificate should be a factual record of who the parents are of a baby, plus when and where the baby was born. Id go so far as to suggest that an DNA test should be carried out to ensure the father IS the father. Obviously there are times when the mother will not have the details of the father, so his details would remain blank.
Having one’s name on a BC should not automatically give a father PR against the wishes of the mother, but neither should the wishes of the mother to not put his details on the BC be an automatic right.
The thing is, we see a BC as more than what it really is - a record of birth.
I also believe any baby who is created as a result of surrogacy (which is tantamount to child trafficking IMO) should have the details of it’s mother and father on the BC, as should babies who are adopted at birth. Keeping secrets and hiding information which is often discovered later in life never ends well for the person who holds the BC.

If the baby came from consensual sex, I think the father should be on the birth certificate. If they are useless or awful that needs managing, but it's a legal document, and I do think he should be there.

Id go so far as to suggest that an DNA test should be carried out to ensure the father IS the father.

How do you think this would be paid for, and what if the man/men the mother names don't want to cooperate? It sounds very impractical.

It's not that I don't care about men's rights.

It's just that I think men's rights are a lower priority than women's rights and children's rights.

This would only normalise abuse of mothers if I stayed with him. Thereby showing her that it's ok to tolerate abuse.

If we were I'm teaching my daughter not to take abuse from a husband, but then if he was a good dad to her then I'm not teaching her any bad examples. I certainly wouldn't teach her that if I fall out with your dad over something you have to too.

The only thing that teaches children it's okay for dads to abuse mums is staying with the man who is abusing you and tolerating it. In which case the birth certificate is irrelevant because you all live together!

How do you propose to manage that then?

Its almost funny.

These boards are full of women, desperate for the Fathers of their children to take responsibility. - Emotional/practical/financial.

What if he doesn't come to the registry office?

Oh yes, we all know rape convictions are almost guaranteed so that would definitely work 🤔