Nobody's Child, Everybody's Children:

The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging Global Clash Between Adult Rights and Children’s Needs - An International Appeal from the Commission on Parenthood’s Future

This report examines the emerging global clash between adult rights and children’s needs in the new meaning of parenthood. It documents new proposals and practices in the areas of family law and reproductive technology around the world and features some of the voices of the first generation of young adults conceived with use of donor sperm. Their concerns, and the large body of social science evidence showing that children, on average, do best when raised by their own married mother and father, suggest that in the global rush to redefine parenthood we need to call a time out. Do mothers and fathers matter to children? Are children commodities to be produced by the marketplace? What role should the state have in defining parenthood? These are the questions raised by this report. Our societies will either answer these questions as a result of intellectually and morally serious reflection and public debate, or we will find, very soon, that these questions have been answered for us. At stake are the most elemental features of children’s well-being: their social and physical health and their moral and spiritual wholeness.

The full report was published by four think tanks, two in the U.S. and two in Canada, and is available in English and French at http://www.americanvalues.org/parenthood/parenthood.htm