Reconsidering the Criteria for Legal Fatherhood

For more than two decades scholars have advocated that adults who function as children's parents and develop emotional bonds with them be recognized as the children's legal parents, at least for purposes of custodial and related rights.' These proposals are based on the belief that a child's greatest need is for a close, stable relationship with an adult committed to the child's welfare, a position that is not particularly controversial today. With some exceptions, however, the law of parent-child relationships has not followed these recommendations. Instead, parental rights continue to be based mostly on biological parenthood or maxiage to one already recognized as a child's parent. Indeed, the current call for a return to "traditional family values" tends to connote a rejectioh of nontraditional families, including those consisting of children and unrelated adults, and recognition of only married couples and their biological children as families.