In London, England stands the new Foundling Museum, established to remember that hospital of old where poor pregnant girls would give birth and leave their children, unable to care for them. They did not leave them empty-handed, however. Mothers would tuck some small token into their baby’s crib—a chipped piece of pottery, even a cracked almond shell—in hopes that one day they may be able to return and identify their child.
Why such an urge to hold on? After all, they weren’t going to raise that baby. Yet the love was profound. This was flesh of my flesh, and it mattered.
Our law, however, has decided that such sentimentality is archaic. Instead, people can deliberately create a child that is not related to them at all—or only partially related.
This idea that biology doesn’t matter is a little odd, seeing as it is often spouted by those very parents—whether infertile or same sex—who spend wads of cash and go through all sorts of horrible infertility treatments to create a child that is at least half theirs. They want that biological connection. But the child’s connection to the sperm or egg donor? It’s irrelevant. This differs profoundly from adoption, where parents try to give a child who is already created a better life. Here, a child who will never know at least half his or her parentage is being deliberately created, no matter what that child may later feel. My needs, not yours.
But that’s not the only trend taking place that is radically changing the family. Earlier this month, the Court of Appeals for Ontario decided a child could legally have three parents—in this case, the lesbian couple raising him and the sperm donor. I’m sure all three adults love this boy, and at least those who are biologically connected are involved. But one case can too easily make bad law. And with this case, and others like it, we are turning the whole notion of family on its head. Being a parent is now about asserting “my rights”, rather than “my responsibilities”. Where do the best interests of the child enter the equation? Courts are redefining family based on what adults want, without children really being considered. As long as they’re loved, the thought goes, what’s the big deal?
Love is a noble word, and we think it papers over everything. But what millennia of human practice and decades of social research has shown is that children do best when raised by two biological, married, committed parents. When that order breaks down, it brings with it great hardship on the children and to society at large. Just look at what the last few decades have done to children, and it is not hard to see.
Perhaps surprisingly, France is taking a very different route to social change. There, a parliamentary report from 2006 advised against same sex marriage and such changes to the family structure, citing the “precautionary principle”. They said, “when children’s lives are at issue, legislators must act very cautiously and calmly seek social consensus….” And so there are no surrogate mothers, or three parent families in France.
Our home and native land, though, is saying that there is nothing inherently important in being raised by both a man and a woman. We’re saying that there is nothing particularly important about being raised in a home with two people committed to each other for life, and having children out of that commitment. We’re saying that mothers and fathers are completely interchangeable. And the louder the courts say it, the more the culture is likely to believe it. Why stay together for the sake of the child? They don’t need both of us. If I get someone pregnant, why stick around? That child doesn’t need a dad. Anyone will do.
What if we’re wrong? What if kids actually do need a mom and a dad? What if they need the stability that comes from a two-parent family? What if biology does matter? By the time we figure out what our grandparents and great-grandparents have always known, it may be too late for our children.
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