I’m going to disagree sorry on privacy grounds, BCs get shown to banks, employers, government officials and schools.
They didn’t need to know everyone’s biological business. Married parents, or mother who isn’t married and the man she consents to name on BC, or Morher and second parent (if she’s part of a lesbian couple who used a fertility clinic for a donor) gives a perfectly accepted official story and that’s plenty for outsiders to the child to be getting on with.
Because parenting is an action at the time of birth registration.. that includes where everyone knows the baby will be given up for adoption or in a surrogacy arrangement soon. It’s an official origin story for the rest of the world. Obviously there will often ben an unofficial story too but that’s fine.
I don’t think biological status is good to have on a BC and I think present day arrangements are the most common sense way we can make it for the child.
The BC tells them who was around and involved socially (if not always genetically) at the time of their birth.
Also apparently the non paternity rate is about 10% in the population. It would not be physically or economically safe for women and babies to always be DNA tested and implies a presumption of infidelity way in excess of its likelihood and would cause many more break ups of whole families and disadvantage to pre existing kids, if we all have to DNA tested our babies before registering them and whose biological baby they are.
It would be hugely intrusive to the new baby bubble and alter our parenting lves and our sex lives if we had to live in that mistrustful way to have to dna test at birth registration. It would cause a rise in termination of wanted pregnancies to start with.
having to DNA tested your baby for official purpose and wait for results before you register them and would cause parenting already here babies to become very conditional on genetics. That is not at all good for new babies and new mothers. There would be more violence and more abandonment by men of babies and families. The move to cultural prioritisation of genetics as the main most important thing about a child over and above social parenting and the wishes of the mother, also does nothing to help stepfamilies, families made through adoption, anyone else who’s unrelated but helping to raise a child. It says that kind of parenting is lesser because it is without a genetic connection, which is not helpful to anyone’s
I am absolutely not an advocate of lying to kids about their own stories at all. I would say tell them what you know about their origins as soon as they are able to sit and listen to you tell them a story so they can’t remember ever not knowing how they came about. That goes however they weee made including if that involved aperm and or egg donors, the fertility clinic, or a woman being a surrogate and carrying the pregnancy for you. Later let your kids ask you all about it at any time and always tell them they can always do that. And mean it. That already isn’t done by a lot of families having sperm and egg donation for example because they already fear revealing there isn’t a genetic connection and they also don’t want to talk about infertility and don’t know much about a donor to want to introduce them to a child later down the track. But as a society of adults we should be able to support families in these situations to take the risks and stings out of those conversations so that it’s easier to tell the truth. (I don’t think legally forcing them to tell the truth via genetic BCs is the right way to help though)
The BC is a public document not a sensitive and nuanced family conversation and people reading it don’t need to know all the facts or the name of the sperm donor or surrogate or egg donor. Just birth mother and father or Birth mother and second parent (partner of that woman in lesbian couple) is fine.
Or Birth mother (who is the surrogate mother)
and one of the two dads in a two dad gay couple, or birth mother solo dad on the BC if solo dad family. Leave everything as is for adoption BCs as well.
It’s on balance better for there to be a protective official face around a child’s origin story IMO and it has positive wider social effects that would be dismantled if we began factually geneticising BCs.
(Lying about adults between adults on GRCs and legally restricting who can even ask about the evidence in front of their eyes is a very different matter btw, and should not be allowed, but that’s for a different thread.)