Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Table of cases
- Table of statutes
- Table of statutory instruments
- Table of international instruments
- Part One Theoretical perspectives and international sources
- Part Two Promoting consultation and decision-making
- Part Three Children's rights and parents' powers
- 9 Children's rights versus family privacy – physical punishment and financial support
- 10 Parents' decisions and children's health rights
- 11 Educational rights for children in minority groups
- 12 Educational rights for children with disabilities
- 13 Children's right to know their parents – the significance of the blood tie
- 14 Children's right to know and be brought up by their parents
- 15 An abused child's right to state protection
- 16 Right to protection in state care and to state accountability
- 17 The right of abused children to protection by the criminal law
- 18 Protecting the rights of young offenders
- 19 Conclusion – themes and the way ahead
- Appendix I UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
- Appendix II Human Rights Act 1998
- Index
- References
13 - Children's right to know their parents – the significance of the blood tie
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Table of cases
- Table of statutes
- Table of statutory instruments
- Table of international instruments
- Part One Theoretical perspectives and international sources
- Part Two Promoting consultation and decision-making
- Part Three Children's rights and parents' powers
- 9 Children's rights versus family privacy – physical punishment and financial support
- 10 Parents' decisions and children's health rights
- 11 Educational rights for children in minority groups
- 12 Educational rights for children with disabilities
- 13 Children's right to know their parents – the significance of the blood tie
- 14 Children's right to know and be brought up by their parents
- 15 An abused child's right to state protection
- 16 Right to protection in state care and to state accountability
- 17 The right of abused children to protection by the criminal law
- 18 Protecting the rights of young offenders
- 19 Conclusion – themes and the way ahead
- Appendix I UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
- Appendix II Human Rights Act 1998
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
It is increasingly common for children to be brought up in families differing greatly from the traditional unit formed by a married couple and their children. Today, society accepts that parent-child relationships can be created through adoption, fostering, reproductive technologies, unmarried birth, family breakdown and step-parenting. Indeed, the law accommodates the fact that adults caring for children may have a social relationship with them which is far more important to the children themselves than any link with their biological progenitors. Nevertheless, society shows great ambivalence over what significance to attach to the biological tie between a child and birth parents. Does the tie's existence, in itself, justify the creation of a social relationship between them where none existed before, or is it enough for the child to be given accurate information about the identity of an absent parent? Furthermore, where should the law stand in relation to a growing view that all children have a right to know the identity of their birth parents?
These questions have become increasingly important, given the law's response to the technological developments which undermine old assumptions about the legal linkage between parents and children. The increasing availability of accurate DNA testing and of reproductive technologies (commonly donor conception) are probably the two developments which have provoked most debate in this context. DNA testing has an obvious significance. In the past, ‘normal’ childhood involved children being brought up within nuclear families by those they assumed to be their biological parents.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Children's Rights and the Developing Law , pp. 465 - 516Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009