What are fathers for?

The announcement that unmarried mothers must declare a father's name on a birth certificate has been extended with the provision that soon for IVF births the father can be anyone, - even a woman, and not necessarily in any way the the biological father. In the last case a female "father", she will be called "second parent".

There seem to be two motives for such official deception:

1) to make a second person financially responsible for the child, that is that child support officials will have a second person from whom to demand money to save the state paying maintenance for the child. Given the recent requirement for a father's name to be recorded for all births, this would seem to be a major motive.

2) to remove any stigma attaching to non-families over the parenthood issue, and to pretend that all "family" units are of equal value, even if both parents are of the same sex, and even if a second parent never again has any contact with the child.

Apart from the damage this does in reducing the significance of the family which ALL studies have shown to be the best for nurturing all aspects of developing children, there is the added problem that if the actual biological father is not identified there is the perennial problem that eventually two people who have the same father will mate, with unpredictable results. (Incest is frowned upon in most civilisations because of the possible side effects.)