Anglo-Welsh law requires parents to register their child’s birth within 42 days.[232] Where the child’s parents are unmarried, the onus lies solely on the mother.[233] However, as Bainham[234] has noted, there is no requirement that the mother register the father’s name. The current statutory provisions relating to the circumstances which permit unmarried fathers’ registration are contained in s 10(1)(a)-(d), s 10(1A) and s 10A(1A) Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, as amended. A child’s birth certificate is a shortened version of the details provided in the birth register, including the place and date of birth, and the names of the child’s registered parent(s). Consequently the registration of the child’s birth provides a ‘historical’ (legal) claim of parental status (or ‘parentage’).[235] In the context of assisted reproduction where donor gametes are used, this ‘historical’ status simultaneously excludes others, who may be bio-genetically related to the child, from making this claim. This is particularly significant, as being named on the child’s birth certificate provides an almost inalienable link between parent and donor-conceived child. Parental status can be terminated only by a successful application for an adoption order,[236] or a parental order.[237]
However, parental status is also crucially important because of the legal effects attached to being a parent, which non-parents, who may nevertheless perform a
parental role in a particular child’s life, can neither exercise nor claim as of right.[238] I focus on two of these effects, namely the allocation of parental responsibility and the membership in a family.[239]
Parental responsibility is automatically accorded to married fathers[240] irrespective of whether or not they have a bio-genetic tie to the child.[241] Adoption and Children Act 2002 s 111, amending s 4 Children Act 1989, provides that, upon joint registration with the mother, unmarried fathers also have parental responsibility for their children.[242] Hence, the ascription of parental status arguably provides the simplest way of allocating parental responsibility (although it remains possible for unmarried fathers to seek a ‘parental responsibility agreement’ with the child’s mother,[243] to apply to the court for a parental responsibility order,[244] or to be awarded parental responsibility attached to a residence order).[245] While it is possible for non-parents, including lesbian co-mothers, to be allocated parental responsibility by being granted a joint residence order,[246] this is limited to the duration of the residence order and will, in any event, terminate when the child reaches majority.[247] In contrast, being a parent is a lifelong status and concurrently determines which family a child is legally considered to be a member of, an issue which, as Andrew Bainham[248] points out, has often been overlooked. However, in the Court of Appeal decision in Re R (a child), Hale LJ (as she then was) drew attention to this very issue, stating:
[S]ection 28(3) [HFEA 1990] is an unusual provision, conferring the relationship of parent and child on people who are related neither by blood nor by marriage. Conferring such relationships is a serious matter, involving as it does not only the relationship between father and child but also between the whole of the father’s family
and the child. The rule should only apply to those cases which clearly fall within the footprint of the statutory language (para 20).[249]
This judgment clearly acknowledges that the ‘historical’ claim to parental status goes far beyond determining the legal recognition of a particular parent-child relationship; it also determines one’s kinship status in and to that parent’s wider family. For the registration of the birth of a donor-conceived child, where different persons may make competing claims of ‘parenthood’, it is particularly significant to determine who is considered to be the legal mother or father.