This came up in another thread so rather than derailing that thread any further I thought I’d start a new thread for the discussion.
A lot of the impetus for the evolution of birth certificates came from registration of a birth for the purpose of taxation, property rights and inheritance rights. Oh and military conscription. You can see this with the classical definition of a bastard, the father could be known but not on the official record therefore meaning the bastard could not make a claim on their father nor on his estate after he died but the birth would still be registered. (But if you could raise a big army you could make a strong argument that you should inherit- looking at you Mr Tudor!)
Even further back Romans were quite blasé about the actual biological parentage, if a bloke said a kid was his that was enough and by law it became his kid. (Noting of course that a Roman woman couldn’t do the same...)
So yes birth certificate and what is recorded on them are very much a societal creation.
I could see these days reviewing what is the important information required and how we label it.
In terms of labels I’d say it doesn’t matter if my father was labelled as “Y DNA provided by” or some such label as it doesn’t alter anything.
Personally I don’t think it matters having mother or father (or other labels) on a birth certificate, it is after all meant to be a record that officially establishes me as a citizen with rights.
Perhaps we should deal with parentage separately to birth certificates, it is what we do after all in adoptions.
One of the reasons sometimes given for including mother and father is that the knowledge of father and mother is needed for medical reasons especially inheritable diseases and conditions but there is a degree of uncertainty in that, it seems to be agreed that between 1 in 25 and 1 in 50 fathers in the UK are not who appears on the birth certificate and the fathers do not know this. (There will also be a number of fathers who know they aren’t the biological father but for many different reasons agree to be recorded as the father on a birth certificate.) So as Lithrael said we don’t require actual proof that the correct parents are recorded so at best it is a “probable” parent.
I’d also say that given our ever improving understanding of disease and conditions and how they relate to our genetic code it probably these days makes more sense to rely on the persons actual DNA rather than the “hearsay” of a birth certificate.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Lithrael (Post 13298688)
Yeah, seems to me the parentage listed on the birth certificate has long been one of the things that’s more about a social role and often not about a biological reality. Factors like “genetic testing isn’t done” and “fertility donors aren’t listed” means the birth certificate has always been more of ‘a lead to follow up when trying to discover,’ than ‘a document of,’ genetic parentage for the kid on it.
But we do need a strong public understanding that you need to be bringing genetic facts with you when you rock up at the genetic disease test doctors. |
Even further back Romans were quite blasé about the actual biological parentage, if a bloke said a kid was his that was enough and by law it became his kid. (Noting of course that a Roman woman couldn’t do the same...)
So yes birth certificate and what is recorded on them are very much a societal creation.
I could see these days reviewing what is the important information required and how we label it.
In terms of labels I’d say it doesn’t matter if my father was labelled as “Y DNA provided by” or some such label as it doesn’t alter anything.
Personally I don’t think it matters having mother or father (or other labels) on a birth certificate, it is after all meant to be a record that officially establishes me as a citizen with rights.
Perhaps we should deal with parentage separately to birth certificates, it is what we do after all in adoptions.
One of the reasons sometimes given for including mother and father is that the knowledge of father and mother is needed for medical reasons especially inheritable diseases and conditions but there is a degree of uncertainty in that, it seems to be agreed that between 1 in 25 and 1 in 50 fathers in the UK are not who appears on the birth certificate and the fathers do not know this. (There will also be a number of fathers who know they aren’t the biological father but for many different reasons agree to be recorded as the father on a birth certificate.) So as Lithrael said we don’t require actual proof that the correct parents are recorded so at best it is a “probable” parent.
I’d also say that given our ever improving understanding of disease and conditions and how they relate to our genetic code it probably these days makes more sense to rely on the persons actual DNA rather than the “hearsay” of a birth certificate.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/32WtKoE
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