Contents: Introduction, Stephen Gilmore. Part I Who or What is a Parent? Underlying Rationales: The origin of parental rights, Barbara Hall; What does it mean to be a ‘parent’? The claims of biology as the basis for parental rights, John Lawrence Hill; The intention to be a parent and the making of mothers, Gillian Douglas; Toward a pluralistic account of parenthood, Tim Bayne and Avery Kolers; Procreation and parental responsibility, Jeffrey Blustein; The moral basis of children’s relational rights, James G. Dwyer; The changing face of adoption - the gift/donation model versus the contract/services model, N.V. Lowe. Part II Legal Concepts of ‘Parent’ and their Linkage: Parentage, parenthood and parental responsibility: subtle, elusive, yet important distinctions, Andrew Bainham; Rethinking parental responsibility, John Eekelaar. Part III The Legal Parent - Accommodating Complexity: Law and the complexities of parenting: parental status and parental function, Craig Lind and Tom Hewitt; What is a parent?, E. Jackson; Arguments about parentage, Andrew Bainham; Tangling the web of legal parenthood: legal responses to the use of known donors in lesbian parenting arrangements, Leanne Smith; Challenging presumptions: legal parenthood and surrogacy arrangements, Kirsty Horsey. Part IV The Nature and Scope of Parental Rights: The myth of parental rights, Phillip Montague; Conceptions of parental autonomy, Colin M. MacLeod; Is anything now left of parental rights?, Andrew Bainham; The welfare principle and the rights of parents, Jonathan Herring; Taking the rights of parents and children seriously: confronting the welfare principle under the Human Rights Act, S. Choudhry and H. Fenwick. Part V Shared Parental Responsibility: The meaning and allocation of parental responsibility - a common lawyer’s perspective, N.V. Lowe; The degradation of parental responsibility, H. Reece; Legislating for shared time parenting after separation: a research review, Belinda Fehlberg, Bruce Smyth, Mavis Maclean and Ceridwen Roberts. Part VI Parental Rights and the State: Licensing parents revisited, Hugh LaFollette; Child abuse: parental rights and the interests of the child, David Archard; Making and breaking family life: adoption, the state, and human rights, Sonia Harris-Short. Index.