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'll concede they way I phrased that "sparing feelings" wasn't the best way of expressing my point.

What I was aiming at was people who seek to lie to a DC about their genetic and/or gestational beginnings- brought on by the example someone else have about a married couple not being legally required to disclose to a DC that they had used donor sperm.

The law in the UK in this whole spree may be fairly robust but these issues are international. DCs in this country are affected by laws elsewhere, as is the case with df.

Devora, I think that birth certificates are a very important part of rights for birth mothers, children and adoptive parents so not a separate issue.

I think the confusion lies in that we have strict ethical guidelines around surrogacy in the UK, and it is confusing to have a thread that flips between the situation in the UK and in other countries (including myself in creating that confusion).

And David Furnish's baby wasn't born in the UK, so not much relevance to our laws!

I'll concede they way I phrased that "sparing feelings" wasn't the best way of expressing my point

That's big of you because it was truly fucking offensive. Are we meant to presume that half arsed statement was an apology?

What I was aiming at was people who seek to lie to a DC about their genetic and/or gestational beginnings- brought on by the example someone else have about a married couple not being legally required to disclose to a DC that they had used donor sperm

Then why make the point about sparing adoptive parents feelings if that isn't what you meant?

DCs in this country are affected by laws elsewhere, as is the case with df. they are but vanishingly rarely. My DS is affected by the law in the country of his birth in a way that affects a total of about 30 children over the past 15 years in the UK. I can't imagine the situation DF is in is any more common either.

Are you really trying to extrapolate a pretty rare situation to the population in general in the UK or are you just objecting to this case in particular. Are you actually even sure that DF is really "mother" on the BC or are you taking Germain Greer's word for it and that in fact his name appears in the section that would normally say "mother"?

What I was aiming at was people who seek to lie to a DC about their genetic and/or gestational beginnings- brought on by the example someone else have about a married couple not being legally required to disclose to a DC that they had used donor sperm

And if thats your bag then you'd do way better to make it legally required to be honest about who really fathered your child as that would affect more children's "genetic and/or gestational beginnings" than surrogacy or DI would - why only a law for those and how the hell would you enforce it?

No-one contests the fact that countless adoptive parents do an amazing job, or that birth/gestational parents aren't always nurturing and loving. Or indeed that families with only one parent can be perfectly happy and successful. But all these issues are just a red herring wrt the original point of the thread.

The facts that gestation and nurturing aren't done necessarily by the same person, or that families can be different configurations, doesn't mean a man can be a 'mother'. He can't. Because he's a man. He can be a parent, sure, or a father. Just not a mother.

Birth records are not a record of who will live the baby/child the very very most and take it to the park every weekend. It is supposed to be a factual record of biological mother and biological father. IME birth certificates are used to prove your nationality and records for tracing people

Sure, make up some other kind of recording system based upon emotional investment and care giving of adults involved, if it makes you feel better about ypurselves. To what end, I'm not sure

My apologies, I didn't realise there was more than 1 page to this thread

Well, Manatee, I agree the central core of this thread is about 'can a man be a mother'? And there was some discussion about whether there is radical potential in decoupling 'mother' from 'woman', but it has got very lost in other points about the rights of birth mothers, about the role of birth certificates, and the appropriation of reproduction. Hence much heat and not a lot of light.

Personally, I believe that:

• there is more to lose than to gain in calling men 'mothers'. I believe the term should be reserved for women.

• the term 'mother' should be used by both biological and social mothers. I do not accept that birth mothers have more claim on the term than social mothers.

• the appropriation of reproduction is a complex issue, and I don't think it has been served well on this thread. The adoption of poor women's babies by middle class women is not an issue best served by simplistic generalisations across cultures.

• implying that adoptive parents routinely erase their children's origins to serve their own needs is not only offensive, but ignorant. The modern mantra in adoption is to tell children everything, in an age appropriate way (which is a lot easier said than done - if you find adoptive parents bristly on this, consider that we are tasked with helping traumatised children resolve some really shit stuff, usually with no support from anyone, and that is an experience most parents are blissfully unexposed to). I would guess that there are many more bio parents who lie to their children about their origins than there are adoptive parents.

I don't like linking to the daily fail but this shows a picture of the birth certificate in question.

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2265463/Elton-John-paid-20-000-surrogate-mother-giving-birth-second-son-Elijah.html

It lists elton as father/parent and David as mother/parent.

It was done in California, under U.S. / Californian law.

The birth mother's name is absent.

Which leaves me wondering if this legal difference is why they did it in the U.S. Rather than the UK where her name would have been there.

*Birth records are not a record of who will live the baby/child the very very most and take it to the park every weekend. It is supposed to be a factual record of biological mother and biological father. IME birth certificates are used to prove your nationality and records for tracing people

Sure, make up some other kind of recording system based upon emotional investment and care giving of adults involved, if it makes you feel better about ypurselves. To what end, I'm not sure.*

If you read the thread, Harvey, you will see that all adopted children have a birth certificate that is a factual record of their biological parentage. They are also issued with a new birth certificate that records their new name. The reason for this is NOT to make adoptive parents feel better about ourselves. It is so that our children can travel through their lives without constantly having to explain why they have a new name, new parents etc. It is also about security: many of our children are in real danger should their original identities leak out unguarded.

For example, I need my child's birth certificate to register her at school. If I only have her original birth certificate, it may be seen by somebody (a member of her extended birth family, perhaps) who could cause her harm. Her original name may also be notorious - perhaps the child of a convicted murderer - and she would need to be protected from that information leaking out.

None of this has got anything to do with me making myself feel better, or pretending that my 'emotional investment and caregiving' makes me a mother. I am her mother, and stunned by how clearly, for some people on this thread, 'mothers' rights' don't extend to me. Perhaps you could think this through before being so gratuitously rude and offensive again.

Devora I agree with you - and for me I think it boils down to the fact that we do need a word to indicate 'female parent'. That's what it should mean. Not 'fount of wonderful giving and nurturing' not 'sacrifical lamb' not anything but 'female parent' - which in itself, as we've seen on this thread, has a spectrum of variation in meaning.

We do not need to start calling men mothers. There is no gain, aside from a theoretical one to those men that involves saying 'mothers are special' but then opens a massive can of worms about why a man would want to be called a mother rather than a father, men wanting the 'good bits' of motherhood, all the things very well covered on this thread.

That all said, if (IF) outside of needing to fill a badly written form, or it just not being true, a specific man wants to be called 'mother' by his children (which, I reiterate, I highly doubt is the case here) I personally don't really feel it's any of my business - and, unless he were a celebrity, I would of course never even know.

Yes devora I apologised and i apologise again. I posted after reading only the first page of the threw (not realising there was more) where the tone, very much was emotional...rather than about practicalities, such as identity/record keeping/traceability

According to this www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/05/feminist-history-surrogacy-how-much-right-should-pregnancy-give-woman-over-baby (which I've just seen but actually covers a lot of the same ground as this thread)

95% of UK surrogate babies are born abroad which suggests that the vast majority of UK residents who want surrogate babies are for whatever reason avoiding UK law.

Thank you shaska, voice of reason

Thank you for the apology Harvey. If you read the threads just above yours, you'll see why I reacted so strongly. I took the 'you' as a direct personal message.

devora

For what its worth I agree totally with your post at 1808hr

I'll get my coat...

No need, we've kissed and made up

So in fact David Furnish is not described as "mother" his name appears in the mother/parent box rather than the father/parent box which some dimwit had taken to interpret as him/the state describing himself as "mother" when it's patently obvious to any fool that he's being entered under the "/parent" bit as a same sex couple.

In order to get a birth certificate without the surrogates name on it you need to apply for a pre-birth order from the court so there will be a perfectly adequate paper trail naming the birth mother. Without such an order the surrogates name goes on the birth certificate.

They didn't just wander down to the registry office and put their names down as parents pretending that David Furnish gave birth. And it's not his fault that the box says mother/parent... I have no doubt he'd prefer to be in a box that just says parent.

In order to get a birth certificate without the surrogates name on it you need to apply for a pre-birth order from the court so there will be a perfectly adequate paper trail naming the birth mother. Without such an order the surrogates name goes on the birth certificate. to be clear that is the law in California where their child was born.

Devora, the core of this thread is can a man be named as mother on a birth certificate, is the word mother meaningless and is it legal. That is the title of the thread and the wording of the OP.

What is recorded on birth certificates and what motherhood means in law are central to this thread.

It feels distasteful to me that Greer is raking over a family's life to try to support her not very well-informed argument, when a simple Google search can tell you in seconds that Furnish is not named as "mother" on the birth certificate. There is space for 2 parents on the birth certificate - "father/parent" and "mother/parent". It seems clear to me that, for same sex couples, the second option in each section applies. The real issue is that language hasn't caught up with the advances of fertility treatment.

It could be another thread entirely, but I also strongly object to the vast majority of Greer's argument on this - e.g. her thoughts on eggs and what they mean to women. She maybe needs to speak to some women who have actually donated eggs, and some who have created their families through egg donation, and not just assume that her own thoughts on the matter are gospel.

And Elizabeth in order to be named on a birth certificate rather than the birth mother in California, the same sex couple have to get a court order prior to the birth. The court order will perfectly adequately document the identity of the surrogate mother. Without the court order or if the order isn;t obtained before the birth then the birth mother will be named.

It's all a storm in a very small tea-cup IMO.

As for genetic parenthood - well there is no way of establishing that without DNA testing. Perhaps we should be insisting on testing every child and confirming the actual genetic parents and having a genetic birth certificate too?

And it seems that men are not in fact named as mothers on those certificates, almondcakes. Germaine Greer was apparently using a real family (albeit a celebrity one) to get some media attention for your views on the fertility industry. Which I think is low - I hope those boys don't get teased at school as a result of this.

Imo it is a feminist issue with potentially wide implications that in California mothers are an optional add on to birth certificates.

I wouldn't be happy with that being the case in the UK.

So are fathers. Thats the nature of same sex parents

But as your OP is misinformed in so very many ways, I'll leave the thread for others who might care about your happiness on the subject as it matters to me not one jot.