p. 3827. A child’s parents: parentage, parenthood, and parental responsibility
- Stephen GilmoreStephen GilmoreProfessor of Family Law, King’s College London
- , and Lisa Glennon
Abstract
This chapter examines the law on legal parenthood (including establishing paternity) and the allocation, acquisition, nature and scope of parental responsibility. The law has had to address a number of questions in light of medical advances and social change. Who is a child’s mother when a woman gives birth to a child conceived as a result of egg donation by another woman? How is the law on surrogacy to be regulated? Can a female-to-male transsexual person become a child’s father via assisted conception (or indeed a mother if he gives birth)? Is a mother’s same-sex partner to be recognised as her child’s parent too? If so, in what sense? As this last question suggests, the law’s response is also complicated by the fact that the notion of ‘being a parent’ has several different facets.
