The natural father of a two-year-old boy living with his lesbian mother and her partner won a legal battle in the UK today against a ruling that he should have only a “limited relationship” with the child. More...
One of the reasons why I wouldnt like to have a child this way This issue should be seriously talked about before bringing a child into the world.
I read the article earlier and according to the mother the father agreed to give up his rights as a father and just have enough contact so that the child would recognize him as his father since he is technically married to the mother (well thats what it says in the article) shouldnt he get automatic rights everything should be documented on paper otherwise it gets messy and i think if a man wants to father a child then he should be allowed be part of the childs life, the 'traditional' family is not set in stone anymore
Ya but I just think that if he agreed then he should stand by it.... That's the only reason I said things like this should be SERIOUSLY talked about beforehand.... You just know one of those lesbians feels less of a mother already :/ Isn't that like if a couple (hetrosexual or homesexual) adopted a child and then the biological mother/father wanted rights all of sudden, should they be allowed to suddenly go back on what they agreed
Yes the agreement should always take second place to the best interests of the child. If through the evidence of experts the court is satisfied that a person should be included or excluded from a child's life if that evidce shows its best for the child. While I feel for the mothers and the father in this case, I feel most for the child, and of course he should have as much imput as possible from all involved in his life.
Myself and my partner were discussing this yesterday, and were pretty unhappy about it. An agreement was made with respect to what the role of the 'biological' father was, and he then reneged on it against the wishes of the parents. It simply makes a mockery of having an agreement made in the first place! If and when we go about trying to have children ourselves, we need to know where we stand and if the courts refuse to respect agreements that all parties entered into in good faith then that makes things far more complicated than they need to be.
But what about the child, the court has to look at what it believes is in the child's best interest. It seems to me that there is a very important person who has had no part in the agreement that your logic ignores that being the child he or she has no input into the agreement yet he or she has to live with it no matter what is in that child's best interest. I think to exclude any of the persons involved in the decision to bring a child into this world is from the off wrong.
I couldn't agree more. Of course I think same-sex couples perfectly capable of raising a child, as well as any other couple, but to exclude a willing role model of a different gender from any child's life, let alone one with a blood tie, is just downright selfish.
But I don't think anyone excluded him originally..... He agreed to what was said at the start..., to go back and change his mind is just wrong in my mind Of course the child is right but the biological father was still not very responsible in the whole thing
Agreeing to something like that before any child is born is a very abstract, distant and unemotional statement. But when your baby is born a whole new set of impulses kick in. And, with all the will the in world, they can become impossible to resist. I do not blame the father for changing his mind once he saw his baby. I can see where the two lesbians are coming from; they're thinking 'this baby is ours and no-one is gonna get in the way'. But surely a willing (and blood) participant in the baby's upbringing shouldn't be shunned? This is the price homosexuals pay for being the way we are. Being parents is not straight forward.
But isn't that setting up a whole new idea that a biological father/mother can suddenly gain rights to a child after they give them up for adoption?? I'm talking about heterosexuals here now too.. If you adopt a child that has been given up, go through all the paper work, all the tests, all the trauma of wishing and hoping for a child, finally getting a child, living happily with the child until one day the biological mother or father decide to take it all back and change their mind, is that really fair?
This is already happening to a certain degree. More and more biological parents are searching for their natural children who were given up for adoption years before. Is this because of some form of guilt and/or remorse for giving the child up in the first instance? Who can say. Who here can say with 100% certainty that if they put a child up for adoption, or entered into an agreement as the father in this article did, that they would not have second thoughts at some later stage and not look to have more of an input into that childs life? Personally i wouldn't be able to give that 100% guarantee no matter what agreement i had entered into. Human nature and the urge to nurture are extraordinary emotions that rise from the depths when you least expect them to.
It's not a new idea, there have been many cases in the past in Ireland and other countries where the natural parent changed their mind. Again the courts must look at the best interests of the child. In the case "in the matter of DG an infant 1991 1 IR 491", the natural mother was given custody after the child had been placed with adoptive parents. There are many more such cases in a search I did on my justis.com account for "adoption mother changed mind" I got a total of over a thousand cases in Ireland and the UK. You don't hear much about the adoption cases because the media are not very interested, but mention lesbian couple and father or gay couple and mother and it's front page news.
I haaaaate that case I had to do a case note on it last year. I hate the decision, and the facts are so messed up. That poor child must have been traumatised for years.
I'm inclined to agree with Deano's point of view here (and it's fairly rare that we agree on anything!! ) but I can see both sides. It's cases like this that make me really glad that I never want children. It's one less headache for me to deal with in the future.
