Parenthood as a Family Law Phenomenon: A Theoretical Look at the Current Normative Origins

Abstract

There is no holistic and full-scale theory of parenthood that would include integrated knowledge about recognition of persons by parents and parental rights and obligations arising from such recognition, in the science of family law. There are segments of scientific knowledge about the origin of children and largely distanced from them knowledge about parental rights and responsibilities. This perception of parenthood has become one of the reasons for the «barrier-free», uncritical introduction of sociobiological and other evolutionary approaches promoted beyond the law into the legal discourse. This not only distorts the body of legal knowledge about parenthood, but also does not ensure their heuristic development. The lag of jurisprudence in the scientific description of parenthood and the promotion of the basic ideas on which it is based in law is becoming more and more noticeable. The purpose of the paper is in the scientific desire of the author to formulate the theoretical construction of parenthood in law and give it a legally qualified scientific description. The author’s judgments are subordinated to a legal-dogmatic approach that allows to study law in the form of an internally consistent system of logical categories and legal constructions, ensuring unification of theoretical conclusions with the current legislation. Leading methods are the method of formal logical analysis and the method of deduction, which allows to direct the scientific thought of the author from the general to the particular. The results of the study are expressed in the following author’s conclusions. The absence of the doctrine of parenthood in law is a serious obstacle to the improvement of family legislation. The legal problem of parenthood is twofold. It includes the norms on parental recognition and the norms on legal obligation of persons with legal parental status. The emphasis on this excludes attribution of parental status to persons performing parental functions, but who have not passed the regulatory procedures of parental recognition. It is methodologically correct to structure child-parent relations and give them a scientific description around the normative framework that embodies the legitimate rules of parental recognition.