- Image by taberandrew via Flickr
In the first two installments of this series I have gone from annoyed to tongue in cheek regarding issues about fatherhood and the manner in which our roles can be diminished by society. In this third installment, however, I’ve gone straight to angry. Almost a year after my son’s birth this issue still grates at me and in some ways I believe creates the foundation for the disrespect that fathers encounter.
Imagine, if you will, the following scene:
After 20 hours of labor and an hour of delivery a child is brought into this world to much joy. The first time mother, exhausted from giving birth, the stream of visitors and the first night of feedings, rests comfortably (well, as comfortably as she can in a hospital bed) while the first time father gently rocks his progeny who is sleeping while bundled up tight in his swaddle blanket. Despite their attempts at finding a few moments of peace doctors and nurses continue to wander in and out of the room as if it was a hotel lobby. Just when they think they are finally alone there is another knock at the door and a woman, wearing a hospital badge and carrying a load of paperwork, makes her way in to interrupt their respite yet again.
“Good morning, I’m here with your son’s birth certificate,” she announces.
Excited, I rise from the rocking chair with my son, not even 24 hours old, cradled in my arms and approach the woman to take a look at his birth certificate. After all this is what makes it official, right? A sworn statement to the state that, yes indeed, this is my son, that is his mother and I am his proud father. I reach my hand out for the paperwork she is holding, only for her to proclaim:
“No, this is for the mother,” as she hands the paperwork to my wife.
Huh? Um, what are you talking about? I’m the child’s father and I don’t get to be involved in verifying the information on my son’s birth certificate? Surely you are kidding.
“I’m not kidding, and don’t call me Shirley.”
Ok, she didn’t actually say that, but she might as well have. At that point I wasn’t listening to anything else coming out of her mouth anymore anyway. Rather, I was trying to contain my generally white-hot Irish-Italian temper that has the ability to rear its ugly head instantaneously.
As my wife reviews the paperwork, she is kind enough to let me have a look just to make sure the information is accurate and then I notice something that makes me irate: there is no line for the father to sign, only the mother. Again, what? How can this be?
“In the State of North Carolina only the mother needs to sign the birth certificate” comes her retort.
Maybe I’m just being sensitive (and I don’t think I am), but I find it preposterous that the father is not given the opportunity to attest to the paternity of his own child. I don’t know how it is in the states in which you live, but here in North Carolina the legal standing of a father of a newborn child is reduced to that of an anonymous sperm donor. Hell, they might as well have not bothered putting my name on the thing and just put “Donor #8675309” instead.
Now, I was more than comfortable with the fact that my wife wasn’t about to surprise me with the news that I was not the father of her child like a scene from some poorly acted soap opera (or any soap opera, for that matter). Still, I can clearly see the opportunity for abuse in this situation.
Let’s say I wasn’t in a loving, committed marriage and that the child that was just born wasn’t conceived intentionally. The mother in that situation could have affixed my name to a birth certificate for a child for whom I may or may not be the biological father. In this doomsday scenario, that my wildly neurotic imagination has just created, I could be on the hook for support of a child that isn’t mine. The next thing you know I have to hire some legal dream team to defend me in a paternity case that I never should have been in the middle of in the first place. And with my luck that’s when I draw some progressive judge that determines that because I can afford to pay support, and the real father can’t, that I have to continue making support payments. This whole dizzying scenario ends when, after exhausting all my legal challenges, I have to flee to a foreign country with no extradition and a temperate climate.
When did some lawmaker or bureaucrat decide that the father’s signature wasn’t a necessary element on something as important as a birth certificate? What kind of message does this policy send to fathers?
To me it basically says that I don’t matter and that offends me greatly. Here I am in the middle of the greatest moment of my life and I am not even afforded the opportunity to sign my name to a document that my child will carry with him for the rest of his life.
Want to go to school? I need your birth certificate. Want to play sports? A copy of your birth certificate, please. Want to get married? Not without that birth certificate you don’t.
While it may take two to conceive a child, it only takes one (at least in the great State of North Carolina) to determine paternity.
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About PJ Mullen
