But in as far as anything is clear it is this: that honesty is the best policy, and that what matters more than anything is being able to put the children’s needs genuinely first, however hard that almost inevitably will be. ‘What counts is the life we share’ – Walter Merricks, 59 Mr Merricks has three children, but he’s not genetically related to any of them. “A child can react in one way for many years and then change tack to have entirely the opposite point of view.” And at various points in a child’s life – adolescence, especially – dissatisfaction with the status quo may lead a young person to think of who might be a “better” parent or person to have around, giving more prominence to a parenting figure who’s been on the sidelines.No two families are the same. Easy to say; not always so easy to achieve.What, though, of the child in all this? According to clinical psychologist Kathleen Cox, who works in private practice in Sheffield, there’s a huge range of reactions to the phenomenon of having two or more fathers, and no two children ever react in precisely the same way.”Where a child has no contact or little contact with a biological father there may be a huge thirst for knowledge about that person, or there may be virtually no interest at all,” she says.
Where different fathers have what might be termed competing roles to play, what matters is that each can claim his particular role and then be helped and allowed to play it in as positive a way as possible in a child’s life. According to psychologists, where a non-biological father accepts a role as a social father in a child’s life early on, he is likely to stand by that decision. The relationship between the two fathers, for example, may very often be acrimonious. Or the mother’s relationship with one of the two may be difficult.
Too often, the children can end up a bargaining chip in the biological parents’ declining relationship, rather than their needs being given centre-stage in the relationships that now matter most, ie those between them and their parents and other adults who have a role to play in their upbringing.The challenge is to be honest and open from the start, and to keep communication as good as possible between each of the adults involved in the parenting process. But the cracks, say psychologists, would begin to show: lies, suspicions, even a feeling of not quite “fitting in” would wear down the fabric, over time, of family life. So what looked like a simple solution would probably end up a botch-up, with a lot of unhappy and discontented individuals in its wake.But can multiple fathering really work? Certainly the practicalities often conspire against it. There is no doubt that the simplest path in a situation may be to leave things unsaid, to keep things neat and tidy; a couple like Kimberly and Stephen Quinn could go on living with their children looking to all the world like two parents happily raising offspring biologically related to both of them.
We’re very aware that, while it needs to be very carefully handled, a child does have the right to know his or her biological parentage.”This knowledge, though, complicates matters. “There used to be this idea that if a child was adopted, or born as a result of sperm donation, it could all be covered up and the child never need know But we don’t buy into that any more. According to psychologists, the evidence is clear that complete honesty from the earliest possible moment is always best as far as a child is concerned.”Everything points to the fact that, in order to work out who we are in life, we need to know where we come from,” says Gill Loughran, deputy chief executive of Parentline Plus, an advice charity. Historically, too, women were more likely to die in childbirth, leaving their baby to be reared by a new mother from within the extended family or by a father’s new partner.But in Britain at the start of the 21st century it is the fathering role that is under the spotlight, and, in particular, the division of that role where there are two or more possible claimants to be a child’s dad. It’s unusual for a child to have multiple mothers, but, interestingly, this has been more common at various points and in various communities through history: babies have sometimes been wet-nursed, for example, by women who were not their mothers but who then assumed part of the mothering role; and nannies have sometimes taken on responsibilities that in other times and places have been the province of mothers. A couple split up, and a mother finds a new partner who becomes the child’s stepdad; or perhaps a father dies and a mother remarries.Whatever the reasons, the fact is clear: in our society, an increasing number of children have multiple fathers – a biological father, who may or may not be known to them, and one or more social fathers, who play a greater or lesser role in their upbringing. Perhaps the baby has been conceived using donated sperm, with the full involvement of the man who is about to take on the fathering role.
Perhaps the relationship in which the child was conceived has foundered, and the mother has a new partner who is about to embark on co-parenting his predecessor’s child.Beyond babyhood, there are yet more reasons why a man genetically unrelated to a child may come to have a fathering role. Sometimes, of course, this is mere genetic shake-up; other times it’s because the newborn actually shares no genes with the man who’s about to become his or her dad. Perhaps the baby has been conceived as the result of an affair, in which case the “father” may or may not suspect his child’s true biological parentage. “No chance he’s the milkman’s, then.”
Presumably early identification with a genetic father played its part in our evolution; after all, a mother and her young need protection, and recognising a child as his own may historically have provided an extra ingredient to ensure that the father extended that protection.But not all babies emerge from the womb looking the spitting image of the man who’s about to father them. “No chance he’s the milkman’s, then.”
A newborn very often looks like his father: he’s got dad’s nose or dad’s eyes, dad’s chin or dad’s ears. The resemblance tends to be much commented on in the early days and weeks “He’s so like you,” the relatives chorus. You can’t build a relationship in two minutes.”You have to be in it for the long haul I couldn’t do this every month It takes a long time to build a business relationship.”.