Aren’t four legal parents too much of a good thing?
by Andrea Mrozek, MercatorNet:
You may not be aware of Bill 28, but you should be. Ontario’s government is about to airbrush out the terms “mother” and “father” from provincial laws, while also raising the number of legal parents to four. That’s right – four.
Supporters of the bill say this is about equality for gay and lesbian families, who by default, when they conceive children, must involve another person of the opposite sex. Adopting their own children would be something akin to what heterosexual step-parents needed to do: paperwork and forms when a family comes together. Though this is a real difficulty, it’s one that might be better facilitated by reducing obstacles to adoption rather than Bill 28’s sweeping approach. Here’s the thing: equality for adults is not the only factor to consider. We need to ask whether facilitating up to four legal parents is fair to children.
Anyone raised by two parents today will know we already do poorly enough at maintaining stability for the sake of children. Sociologists studying family change (movement from single to married to cohabiting, or the reverse) have found that family transitions can result in poorer outcomes for children: lower graduation rates, early sexual initiation and behavioural problems, among other outcomes. This is true for two parents, not four. There are so many stresses and strains for families today where only two people attempt to make decisions for children. The move toward four legal parents increases the likelihood of complexity in the contract.
More to the point, it moves care of children into the domain of contract, and out of the realm of relationship. As such, Bill 28 codifies the commodification of children. We have been moving in this direction for a while, with the separation of having children from the sexual act, the introduction of a third party’s parts and the use of surrogates (whether or not they are paid). When parents had children in a relationship, and cared for them, too, the children knew where they came from. Bill 28 does not provide for a registration of who the biological parents actually are, leaving children with an existential crisis of never knowing where they came from as a matter of routine.
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