Germaine Greer doesn't agree with David Furnish being named as 'mother' on birth certificate

[Athenaviolet]

And neither do I!

www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/germaine-greer-slams-elton-john-5758530?ICID=FB_mirror_main

Is the word 'mother' just meaningless now?

I didn't even realise this was legally possible.

I love lurcio's 2 part birth certificate. Birth certificates need to keep pace with reproductive technologies so that no man is listed as 'mother'.

I also wonder if this story is cobblers.

An egg is just a blank canvas.

I'm still wondering what this means

Well it clearly isn't a blank canvas. It has half the genetic material for the child. Which is why the "blank canvas" of my son's face has my, his maternal grandmother's and maternal great - grandfather's nose on it. (And he has our flare up, scream and shout about it and forget it 5 minutes later tempers as opposed to his father's fester and hold a grudge temper)

Was anyone else a bit surprised at the "they love the surrogate mother like a sister" comment?

What does that mean in the context of 2 very young children who have no experience of having a sister?

I don't much about this case - I am assuming from what has been said that David furness has no genetic link to this child at all?
I think we do need to look to the future, I think a birth certificate or some record needs to be maintained as a register of genetic heritage as much as possible -(obviously women in the past can lie or be unsure etc...)
If we have a system where 'anyone' can claim parentage - imagine problems with infertility a surrogate and anonymous donor egg and sperm /embryo used - none of the child's real biological parents are on the certificate....no record kept.
Now imagine a baby was snatched or a tragic accident or murder etc - the only way to truly identify them or whatever remains are found are through their DNA - but we have no record of their genetic identity...
Or as the OP said - even with one genetic parent the child/adult goes on to develop (possibly a novel) disease caused by a mutation - we can't study that, warn anyone, screen anyone. (Thinking of things like eg Tay Sachs found predominantly in one sector of society and where screening can take place to reduce the incidence)
I think we do need two certificates...a private and public one - actually like a birth certificate and an adoption certificate.

I think that a person's birth cert should be a factual record of the child's biological make up. Mother is an integral part of that information. And should not be messed with.

Lass I took that to mean that david & elton love her like a sister

I would take with a pinch of salt any assertions by Germaine Greer without checking them out.

For me, David Furnish is a dad and thinking of men calling themselves mothers sets my teeth on edge. Maybe it does have radically disruptive potential, but not like this...

But I have to say, OP, that your second post did also set my teeth on edge rather. Because it does seem to be privileging biological parenthood.

Adopted children do get issued with a new short birth certificate, because they can't be expected to travel through life with a birth certificate that 'outs' them and gives a different name from the one they now use. But I can't remember if there is anything on it that indicates there is another, original birth certificate. There is also a separate adoption certificate.

As if genealogy wasn't hard enough...

Surely if abusive parents get access because of the belief in the fundamental right of the child to know its parents, then a record of genetic history is important by extension?

The article in the Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3095268/Germaine-Greer-slams-Elton-John-husband-David-Furnish-named-mother-birth-certificates-two-sons.html) has an interesting comment from Germaine . Probably a thread on its own.
'The whole discourse has been distorted from the beginning by the fertility industry. I've been thinking about this lately, and I've got a suspicion, which I need to investigate properly, that we got legalised abortion precisely because the fertility industry needed it.
'It wasn't us. It certainly wasn't us. We could have marched until our feet fell off and they wouldn't have bothered to give us access to abortion. They were the ones who wanted to be able to terminate pregnancies and manipulate the products of conception at will.'

I love her. She is the Queen of the Overton Window. I have a feeling that she may not be full of fact on this one, though.

No, UK adoption certs. Arsenic

Sir Elton and his husband have sons Zachary, four, and Elijah, two, together - both born to the same surrogate mother, who the singer says they love "like a sister",

Thanks galaxy I see your point. It could be either? If it doesn't refer to the children I wonder what their relationship is/will be to the surrogate. Aunt?

Dunno but I definitely read it that way. Reading it again, it's not punctuated / phrased very well is it!

An egg is clearly not a blank canvas and a man clearly cannot be a mother. An adoptive mother can stand in the shoes of a mother by virtue of being a female parent. An adoptive father can stand in the shoes of the father by virtue of being a male parent. It makes sense to say a gay couple are two dads even though that's biologically impossible. It doesn't make sense to say one of them is the mother. Biologically it's untrue and socially it's meaningless. They are both male parents therefore both fathers.

But there is a privilege of being a biological parent - that of passing down one's genetic heritage to a child. It might not be the same as actively parenting that child on a day to day basis - it might indeed be a hell of a lot easier to just provide the dna than the cuddles and guidance and discipline and love that social parents provide. But to a child, it's incredibly important. As a child who was denied knowledge of my dead biological mother because my stepmother was jealous of her existence I know just how important that lack of a genetic heritage is. I have no problem whatsoever with children being brought up in single parent, same sex parent or polygamous families - love comes in all sorts of different forms. But I do have a problem with children being brought up without knowing about the DNA that helped to form them - it's why adoptive parents nowadays are encouraged to tell a child about their origins, and why adults who were adopted have a right to know details of their biological parents - I do worry that private surrogacy arrangements can sometimes be structured to give the adults who want the child their rights to a child, but not to give the child their rights to their genetic history

Agree with devora.

I feel annoyed on several levels.

One is the idea that a man who looks after children should imagine what he is doing is so inconsistent with his gender, that he sees it as being a 'mother'. I know plenty of brilliant, loving male parents and it's insulting to imply that there is something lacking, or different, in their capacity to parent.

I also feel angry for the reasons outs and orlando give, that this ignores the biological and social context in which many (not all, as they acknowledge) women are mothers - which includes physical issues like breastfeeding and social ones like discrimination.

And I don't think an egg is a blank canvas. Not because of genetics (surely any newborn is a fairly blank canvas?), but because it ignores how difficult and dangerous it is for women to donate eggs.

After a child is born (to the "birthing parent" ?) is there any reason for having the terms mother and father at all?

Egg -most definitely not a blank canvas. You actually get more 'genetic information' from your mother....
Basically in every cell of your body (more or less) you have mitochondria ... 'the powerhouse(s) of the cell' they generate the energy your cells can use for everything your body does - and they contain their own DNA. And you only get your mitochondrial DNA from the egg (not from the sperm) so from your mother....all your mitochondria originated from those in the egg.
(we can trace male evolution and origins on the paternal line by looking at Y chromosomes - but we can trace both sexes and their maternal origins by looking at their mitochondrial DNA)

lass - in absolute terms yes, but only in that breast milk is quite good for babies. It's a weak reason.

In relative terms (ie., in the society we're coping with today), yes, strong reason, because women are face different, and negative, expectations for parenting.

Me and my DS talk about when he was an egg. I had a really strong sense, when he was born, of him being with me forever, like I'd known him all my life. See this is me in romantic delusion mode, not really adding owt to the Elton and David discussion. But with the talk about eggs... My little girl is 2 and her eggs are (all being straightforward) already there, lying in the bed, next to me. Marvellous. I feel quite attached to my eggs, having hatched a couple

Jeanne but if your second sentence is true isn't keeping terms which distinguish the sex of the parents perpetuating the gendered differences?

I don't necessarily agree there should be a unisex "child raiser " but beyond the issue of breastfeeding is there a need to distinguish the roles?

Having said that if Furnish really has said he is the mother it's bloody ridiculous.

"Hatching eggs" is a lovely expression isn't it?

And seeing eggs hatch or newly hatched birds is wonderful. If you've never seen it happen you've missed out.

lass - yes, of course.

It is one of those situations where you have to keep making a compromise between recognising that people socialised female need support because they're currently penalised for that socialisation/the expectations that result from it, and trying to destroy the underlying system that requires that socialisation.

There isn't an easy answer. But agree with you, whatever it might be, the answer isn't this.

Flessan, I totally agree with your post 23:20.

I've thought on a few threads recently that the negative attitudes to liberal feminism might reduce our knowledge and understanding of various women's issues.

I think 'liberal feminism' has come to mean sex positivity, pro porn etc, and people who call themselves liberal feminists often mean that, but liberal feminism used to mean using legal means to protect the rights of women.

Women globally have the right to have maternity recognised as a social function. It is in the same article of CEDAW as ending sex stereotypes, that placement of the two together surely makes it pretty clear that being pregnant and being the birth mother of a child is not meant to be seen as some sort of stereotype, but as recognition of something unique to women to be respected alongside ending of stereotypes.

Women have successfully won court cases, including court cases against governments over violation of maternal identity, on such issues as 'missing' children and acts which target mothers having or being with their children safely. The human right cited in those cases is from article 5 - recognition of maternity as a social function. Countries that have used that have made it quite clear it is not to be used to prevent mothers or women from doing things other than having kids, but to protect the unique situation of being pregnant and then a birth mother.

I see in a lot of places online discussions of feminism (from all sorts of feminism) a kind of disconnect from the way women's rights are advanced globally through human rights specific to women and the law in general.

In the main, I also agree with you flessan. But I think there is also a fetishising of genetic parentage which is evident in some of the more, erm, fussy surrogacy arrangements (mixing sperm from different fathers, eggs from one surrogate implanted in another etc). Although I couldn't be more positive about same sex parenting, I am very troubled by surrogacy.

Where children's social/legal parents are not their biological parents, I think we have a strong duty to listen and not to lead too strongly on their feelings about that. My job is to identify as my adopted daughter's mum as fiercely as I do with my birth child. I owe that to her. I do not and will not accept that the genetic bond transforms the experience of parenting because, frankly, that is not my experience in parenting both bio and adopted children.

But that doesn't mean that I am denying or diminishing the role of my dd's birth mother. My daughter doesn't owe it to me to think and feel about her birth mother, or about me, only in ways that make me feel comfortable. And that is one of my objections to Furnish calling himself 'mother': I think it steps very squarely into a space that should be about his sons making their own sense of their family situation.

I completely agree with you, OP.

I find it extremely bizarre.