Contemplating Divorce

Whether you should stay or go.

by Susan Pease Gadoua

Can a Kid Have Two Too Many Moms?

Do we need a village or would that be too many cooks?

Published on October 31, 2010 by Susan Pease Gadoua, L.C.S.W. in Contemplating Divorce

We know the saying, "too many cooks in the kitchen," to mean that there are too many people trying to run the show. We've also heard, it takes a village to raise a child, which would seem to suggest that parenting is much too big a job for two people alone. But what really happens when there are more than two parents?

The recent movie, The Kids Are Alright, highlighted how complicated life can get when a third parent comes into the picture. Surely, it can be argued that too many parents can have a negative impact on kids in that it can be confusing and cause informational overload.

However, a recent article in the Boston Globe by Drake Bennett, showed that many, including Nancy Polikoff, a family-law professor at American University's Washington College of Law, feel that the family unit is changing and that laws need to change with the times.

The traditional family unit is changing. It's not unusual for kids to have three or four parents these days given the number of times people marry as well as with gay marriage coming into the legal picture. Ms. Polikoff states, "The law needs to adapt to the reality of children's lives, and if children are being raised by three parents, the law should not arbitrarily select two of them and say these are the legal parents, this other person is a stranger,"

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Melanie Jacobs, a law professor at Michigan State University, believes that, rather than granting the same legal rights to adults who have an interest in a child but who clearly have different relationships with the child, there should be levels or gradations of legal rights. For example, she argues, a known sperm donor should perhaps have certain parental rights and responsibilities - visitation and the obligation to pay some child support - but not the right to demand custody.

Yet, critics of this idea fear that, if the courts begin to experiment with different levels of parenting, there will be more room for those who are truly irresponsible to skip out and that it will cause too much chaos.

There are those, too, who fear that the more parents that are involved in making decisions for their children, the more disagreements and possibility for contention there might be.

While I can see arguments for both sides, I think it's important for us as a society to recognize that, indeed, family demographics are changing. It would stand to reason that laws would change to accommodate the contemporary family.