Heterosexuality as a Prenatal Social Problem: Why Parents and Courts Have a Taste for Heterosexuality
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Excerpt
This chapter proceeds in three parts. First, I describe the heterosexuality offspring preference, show how it is a corollary of much critical theory, and argue that it is the socially constructed symbolic value accorded to heterosexuality that drives much of the demand for it, prenatally and elsewhere. To show how law subsidizes heterosexual reproduction, I discuss some recent state court decisions that provide so-called price support for it, despite judicial findings that heterosexual reproduction often involves disordered thinking and poor planning. Obviously, a more critical rethinking of the microeconomics of the parent-child relationship is in order, not only to protect sexual minority children from parental underinvestment, but also, more generally, to understand the role of projective preferences of would-be parents on demands for children.
ISBN
9780521513739
Publication Date
2010
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
City
Cambridge ; New York
Keywords
Adoption, Child welfare, Family planning - Evaluation, Family policy, Human reproduction - Political aspects, Law and legislation, United States, Human reproductive technology, Moral and ethical aspects, Intercountry adoption
Disciplines
Family Law | Law | Legislation
Recommended Citation
José M. Gabilondo, Heterosexuality as a Prenatal Social Problem: Why Parents and Courts Have a Taste for Heterosexuality, in BABY MARKETS: MONEY AND THE NEW POLITICS OF CREATING FAMILIES, (Michele Bratcher Goodwin ed., 2010).
