Post by REALITY on Jun 6, 2007 20:56:09 GMT -5
Single mother stereotype perpetuated by the courts
Treating one kind of family differently than another deprives a parent of her rights and the right to decide for her child
Gerald Chipeur, Lauren Lackie and Stephanie Chipeur
Special to the Sun
Saturday, June 02, 2007
With the announcement of a spinoff from the popular television program Grey's Anatomy, television audiences may soon be exposed to a new Hollywood perspective on the life of a single professional mother. In a recent episode, Dr. Addison Montgomery (played by Kate Walsh in Grey's Anatomy and in the spinoff, Private Practice), fed up with waiting around for the "perfect" man to father her child, unsuccessfully attempted to have a child using an anonymous sperm donor.
This episode may reflect the reality that an increasing number of single women, fearing the tick of their biological clocks, are turning to this option.
It is unlikely that Dr. Montgomery will attract the same level of controversy and criticism today that Murphy Brown famously endured from U.S. vice-president Dan Quayle almost two decades ago. This may be progress. No longer is it universally accepted that a woman must forgo parenthood simply because she has been unlucky in love.
But what if she is not? Are being a single mother and having romantic relationships mutually exclusive? Recently the Alberta Court of Appeal suggested that legally this might be the case.
In Doe v. Alberta, the plaintiff, Jane Doe, had already found her ideal man, with whom she lived happily. She just did not want him to be the father of her child and neither did he. So she became pregnant through artificial insemination by an anonymous donor. To legally protect her decision to maintain her single-parent status, she asked the court to enforce an agreement between her and her live-in partner, John Doe.
The phenomenon of "single mothers by choice" is now contributing to a growing segment of the 1.3 million single-parent families in Canada. Anne-Marie Ambert, a leading Canadian family sociologist, argues in a report on one-parent families that "these women are generally financially secure, have a support group, and their children are at a relatively lower risk of developing problems."
The question before the courts in Doe was how the law should respond to this alternative family structure. Could a professional woman legally be a single mother while engaging in a domestic romantic relationship with a man?
The Alberta Courts flatly rejected Jane Doe's attempt to create or preserve her single-parent family. The Court of Appeal held that John Doe was a parent by law, simply because he had been living with Jane Doe and her child since its birth. In the opinion of the Court of Appeal, forcing a man to become the legal parent to a child against his and the mother's wishes is in the best interest of the child.
The court held that Alberta's Family Law Act established an extremely low threshold for what it takes to be considered a parent under the law. Just living with the child's mother seemed to be enough for the court to justify its decision. By this reasoning, a single mother might lose her exclusive parenting rights to her roommate or a live-in nanny.
Yet this is probably not what the legislators had in mind when they passed the Family Law Act. More likely, the legislative assembly intended to assign parenting rights only to a man in a conjugal relationship with the mother, which brings to mind the stereotypes about single mothers that continue to permeate our society. A fairly recent and public reminder of how single mothers are sometimes perceived was offered by the chair of Via Rail, Jean Pelletier, who referred to whistle-blower Myriam Bedard during the sponsorship scandal as a "pitiful" single mother.
The stereotype of single mothers as emotionally and economically dependent on the men they come to live with certainly informs much of family law and, at times, for good reason. These mothers and their children may need the economic support, and the men may not want to provide it. So, the law steps in to protect the economically vulnerable.
But these stereotypes of economic dependency simply do not apply to the Jane Does of Canada. Rather, bringing these assumptions of economic vulnerability to the courtroom deprives these women of the liberty to decide what or who is best for their child.
While claiming to protect the well-being of the child, the court failed to consider that imposing such extreme options on a single mother may also deprive a child of the male role model the courts and legislatures value so highly. Knowing that simply moving in with a woman and her child will automatically create the legal obligations of fatherhood could, for many men, be an absolute barrier to forming relationships with a single mother.
From a constitutional law perspective, there are other important considerations. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees Canadians, including single mothers, the right to life, liberty and security of the person. It also guarantees the right to equality. All of these rights are violated when the courts and legislatures treat single mothers differently than married two-parent families.
No court and no government official would dare to interfere with the rights and responsibilities of a married couple with respect to their children in the absence of harm or potential harm to the children.
In Doe, the courts failed to recognize this inequality. Furthermore, the courts failed to recognize that the privacy and liberty interests of the single parent are just as important under the Charter as the privacy and liberty interests of married parents.
Jane Doe is seeking leave to appeal the Alberta Court's decision to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has not yet addressed the right of a single parent to maintain and protect her single-parent family. By hearing this case, it will have the opportunity to take an important stand on the liberty of single mothers.
The Supreme Court will have the opportunity to acknowledge and declare that not all single mothers need or want society's pity.
Gerald Chipeur is a constitutional lawyer who has litigated the question of parental rights in the Supreme Court of Canada on numerous occasions. Lauren Lackie and Stephanie Chipeur are students at the University of Toronto's faculty of law.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
Treating one kind of family differently than another deprives a parent of her rights and the right to decide for her child
Gerald Chipeur, Lauren Lackie and Stephanie Chipeur
Special to the Sun
Saturday, June 02, 2007
With the announcement of a spinoff from the popular television program Grey's Anatomy, television audiences may soon be exposed to a new Hollywood perspective on the life of a single professional mother. In a recent episode, Dr. Addison Montgomery (played by Kate Walsh in Grey's Anatomy and in the spinoff, Private Practice), fed up with waiting around for the "perfect" man to father her child, unsuccessfully attempted to have a child using an anonymous sperm donor.
This episode may reflect the reality that an increasing number of single women, fearing the tick of their biological clocks, are turning to this option.
It is unlikely that Dr. Montgomery will attract the same level of controversy and criticism today that Murphy Brown famously endured from U.S. vice-president Dan Quayle almost two decades ago. This may be progress. No longer is it universally accepted that a woman must forgo parenthood simply because she has been unlucky in love.
But what if she is not? Are being a single mother and having romantic relationships mutually exclusive? Recently the Alberta Court of Appeal suggested that legally this might be the case.
In Doe v. Alberta, the plaintiff, Jane Doe, had already found her ideal man, with whom she lived happily. She just did not want him to be the father of her child and neither did he. So she became pregnant through artificial insemination by an anonymous donor. To legally protect her decision to maintain her single-parent status, she asked the court to enforce an agreement between her and her live-in partner, John Doe.
The phenomenon of "single mothers by choice" is now contributing to a growing segment of the 1.3 million single-parent families in Canada. Anne-Marie Ambert, a leading Canadian family sociologist, argues in a report on one-parent families that "these women are generally financially secure, have a support group, and their children are at a relatively lower risk of developing problems."
The question before the courts in Doe was how the law should respond to this alternative family structure. Could a professional woman legally be a single mother while engaging in a domestic romantic relationship with a man?
The Alberta Courts flatly rejected Jane Doe's attempt to create or preserve her single-parent family. The Court of Appeal held that John Doe was a parent by law, simply because he had been living with Jane Doe and her child since its birth. In the opinion of the Court of Appeal, forcing a man to become the legal parent to a child against his and the mother's wishes is in the best interest of the child.
The court held that Alberta's Family Law Act established an extremely low threshold for what it takes to be considered a parent under the law. Just living with the child's mother seemed to be enough for the court to justify its decision. By this reasoning, a single mother might lose her exclusive parenting rights to her roommate or a live-in nanny.
Yet this is probably not what the legislators had in mind when they passed the Family Law Act. More likely, the legislative assembly intended to assign parenting rights only to a man in a conjugal relationship with the mother, which brings to mind the stereotypes about single mothers that continue to permeate our society. A fairly recent and public reminder of how single mothers are sometimes perceived was offered by the chair of Via Rail, Jean Pelletier, who referred to whistle-blower Myriam Bedard during the sponsorship scandal as a "pitiful" single mother.
The stereotype of single mothers as emotionally and economically dependent on the men they come to live with certainly informs much of family law and, at times, for good reason. These mothers and their children may need the economic support, and the men may not want to provide it. So, the law steps in to protect the economically vulnerable.
But these stereotypes of economic dependency simply do not apply to the Jane Does of Canada. Rather, bringing these assumptions of economic vulnerability to the courtroom deprives these women of the liberty to decide what or who is best for their child.
While claiming to protect the well-being of the child, the court failed to consider that imposing such extreme options on a single mother may also deprive a child of the male role model the courts and legislatures value so highly. Knowing that simply moving in with a woman and her child will automatically create the legal obligations of fatherhood could, for many men, be an absolute barrier to forming relationships with a single mother.
From a constitutional law perspective, there are other important considerations. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees Canadians, including single mothers, the right to life, liberty and security of the person. It also guarantees the right to equality. All of these rights are violated when the courts and legislatures treat single mothers differently than married two-parent families.
No court and no government official would dare to interfere with the rights and responsibilities of a married couple with respect to their children in the absence of harm or potential harm to the children.
In Doe, the courts failed to recognize this inequality. Furthermore, the courts failed to recognize that the privacy and liberty interests of the single parent are just as important under the Charter as the privacy and liberty interests of married parents.
Jane Doe is seeking leave to appeal the Alberta Court's decision to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has not yet addressed the right of a single parent to maintain and protect her single-parent family. By hearing this case, it will have the opportunity to take an important stand on the liberty of single mothers.
The Supreme Court will have the opportunity to acknowledge and declare that not all single mothers need or want society's pity.
Gerald Chipeur is a constitutional lawyer who has litigated the question of parental rights in the Supreme Court of Canada on numerous occasions. Lauren Lackie and Stephanie Chipeur are students at the University of Toronto's faculty of law.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007