A Reflection on Three Verbs: To Father, To Mother, To Parent

A Reflection on Three Verbs: To Father, To Mother, To Parent

Files

Description

Law is a telling aspect of a culture. It can teach us where we collectively stand with respect to any number of issues—what standards of conduct we expect, how we sort out competing interests, whom we protect, and whom we blame. Seeing this, legal scholars, who at one time thought of law only in narrowly instrumental terms (What can I learn from this rule that will further a client's interests or alert a client to risk of liability?), are also reading law as a sign of the culture—asking what a statute or judicial opinion teaches about the context in which clients, and all the rest of us, move. It is in this new spirit of legal scholarship that I approach the subject of parenting.

Source Publication

Mother Troubles: Rethinking Contemporary Maternal Dilemmas

Source Editors/Authors

Julia E. Hanigsberg, Sara Ruddick

Publication Date

1999

A Reflection on Three Verbs: To Father, To Mother, To Parent

Share

COinS