Motherhood and the Law

Who is a child’s legal mother? Must a child have exactly one mother, can it have two or three, or can it have two fathers, but no mother? Or has the concept of motherhood become obsolete and should we just talk of parenthood in a gender neutral way? Questions such as these would have appeared esoteric only a few decades ago, but as a result of new social developments (such as frequent family reconstitutions, gay and lesbian emancipation or surrogacy) and of technological innovations (such as egg and embryo donations) they have become issues in a vehement debate. The interdisciplinary contributions to this book focus on the legal definition of motherhood, on the way in which legal conceptions structure the social discourse on motherhood (and vice versa), and on the influence of legal rules on power relations between mothers, fathers, children and the state. Among the issues addressed are - the challenges to our understanding of the legal regulation of motherhood by developments in reproductive medicine; - the challenges to our understanding of the legal regulation of motherhood by parental constellations deviating from the mother-father-model (single motherhood by choice, same-gender parenthood, multiple parenthood); - the exercise of parental rights in case of parental separation and the impact of legal rules on the bargaining positions of mothers and fathers

Couples, Parents, Children and the State: Defining Family Obligations in Germany

Who should support whom financially? Who is obliged to care for others-a partner, children or family members-under different circumstances? And how are obligations and rights distributed between the state and families? These are central issues of welfare state and family regulation. Relevant German legal institutions in the areas of family law, social security and welfare regulations, tax law and some service provisions are scrutinized in depth in this paper. Major relationships, which may create rights or legal obligations, are investigated: marriage and cohabitation, parents and their dependent children, public support for the costs of children and public care, access to divorce and financial obligations after divorce, adult children and their dependent parents, as well as disruptions to independence (e.g. unemployment and illness). This paper is a revised version of the German contribution to the international research project 'Defining Family Obligations in Europe', directed by Jane Millar, University of Bath/UK

Männerzeiten und Frauenzeiten im Recht : Normative Modelle von Zeit im Arbeits-, Sozial- und Familienrecht und ihre Auswirkungen auf die geschlechtsspezifische Arbeitsteilung

Defence date: 21 November 1991Supervisor: B. BercussonFirst made available online 3 September 201