What Is Parenthood?: Contemporary Debates about the Family

Introduction

1 Introduction Linda C. McClain and Daniel Cere Extraordinary changes in patterns of family life—and family law—have dramatically altered the boundaries of parenthood and opened up numerous questions and debates. What is parenthood and why does it matter? How should society define, regulate, and support it? Despite this uncertainty , however, the intense focus on the definition and future of marriage diverts attention from parenthood. Further, demographic reports suggesting a shift away from marriage and toward alternative family forms keep marriage in constant public view, obscuring the fact that disagreements about marriage are often grounded in deeper, conflicting convictions about parenthood. What Is Parenthood? asks bold and direct questions about how to think about, support, and regulate parenthood.1 We begin with the institutional question: Is parenthood separable from marriage—or couplehood—when society seeks to foster children’s well-being? We then turn to other issues: What is the better model of parenthood from the perspective of child outcomes ? How should the rights of adults and of children shape the law of parenthood? How do children form secure attachment to parents, and how significant is biology to that process? How do gender equality and gender difference shape the law and social practice of parenthood? Are there gender differences in parenting, and, if so, should difference make a difference? What are the implications for the meaning of parenthood and family life of immigration and its giving rise to forms of transnational parenting? Finally, given the significant changes in patterns of family life, what directions should family law and public policy concerning parenthood take? The book brings together an interdisciplinary group of distinguished scholars to investigate these questions and debates about parenthood in contemporary society. For each question, the book provides two responses from experts with different perspectives, who are, generally, from different disciplines. Law, admittedly, is the disciplinary center of gravity, but the volume brings into conversation scholars from law, anthropology, 2 Linda C. McClain and Daniel Cere globalization and immigration studies, medicine, psychology, religious ethics, and sociology. This interdisciplinary approach allows competing perspectives on critical issues pertinent to parenthood. In addressing these issues, our contributors also offer different perspectives on related questions, such as the role of empirical research and evidence in debates over parenthood and the family. As an organizing device, we use two contrasting models of parenthood: the integrative model and the diversity model. We offer them as a guiding framework subject to refinement, rather than as rigid constructs describing two polarized camps. Indeed, within this book, there are creative tensions over whether it is possible to delineate two contrasting models. There is a considerable amount of nuance and plasticity within what we call these integrative and diversity approaches, but we nonetheless believe that the models are helpful and avoid many of the available reductive dichotomies , such as for and against, liberal versus conservative, modern versus traditional. Therefore, we use the two models to elucidate the challenging tensions within academic discourse and public debate about parenthood. Generally, for each question posed, one response approaches the question from the perspective of the integrative model and the other, from that of the diversity model.2 Many collections on family issues gravitate toward the conservative, liberal, or feminist pole. By contrast, this book deliberately brings together scholars from different points along the spectrum. We offer the two models as an organizing device, and many contributors vigorously defend or criticize one or the other model. Some contributors also illuminate tensions in family life and family law between these two models. However, some contributors challenge the utility of this twomodel approach and propose alternative frameworks. The Integrative and Diversity Models and Their Usefulness The integrative model of parenthood (as elaborated by Daniel Cere in chapter 1) reflects a traditional, and still common, understanding of parenthood as a natural relation following from biological reproduction by one man and one woman within marriage (or legal adoption within marriage). We call this view integrative because it regards marriage—between one man and one woman—as the central social institution for integrating sexuality , reproduction, and parenthood so that children grow up with their two biological parents. Proponents of the integrative model describe it as a conjugal model to emphasize that it is a male-female model of parenting 3 Introduction and assumes a certain social ecology of adult pair-bonding, sex difference, and adult-child relationships. Although some appeal to religious convictions to...