Abstract

Birth certificates typically designate parents as ‘mothers’ or ‘fathers’ although some U.S. states offer non-gendered designations. We argue that gendered characterizations offer scant legal or moral value and that states should move to degender parental status on birth certificates but retain that information in registrations of birth. Registrations of birth identify the person giving birth to a child, when and where, and they report demographic and health information useful for civic and public health purposes. Birth certificates typically report a child’s name, sex, date and location of birth, and parentage so far as known. As documents establishing parents’ standing in relation to children and vice versa, as well as age and presumptive citizenship, birth certificates add no legal or moral value by gendering parents. Degendering parents on birth certificates interferes with no social roles or identities. Gendering parents on birth certificates obliges the state to rely on exclusionary criteria of ‘mother’ and ‘father.’ By contrast, degendering parental status withdraws the need for such criteria and confers benefits on people with transgender and non-binary identities, as well as undercutting any problematic presumption that parents have responsibilities to their children qua mother or qua father.