What if we got rid of paternity altogether?
Let’s play a thought experiment game around a society where there is no such thing as paternity, there are no male lineages or sons passing on the family name, it’s all done through the mother. Most people don’t know who their biological father is and it isn’t considered something important.
Imagine a society where a “father” is just one of mother’s lovers who helped raise you at some point in your life. Maybe you have just one and he is your biological sperm donor as well, but maybe you have had many fathers as mother fell in and out of love throughout her life.
Mother is your primary caregiver, but this is a communal society, where families are large groups of people living together. You have many aunts and uncles, you have cousins to play with. You are raised by a small “village”. Mother never feels that you are a burden on her life, she chose to have you and abortion is easily accessible. Mother knew what she was getting in to with child birth and the physical sacrifice she would have to make with her body before becoming a mother, because there is a good sex education program that teaches the real medical risks of pregnancy and childbirth. She is the only one of her sisters who has decided to become a mother, which is fairly normal. Mothering is not considered something that every woman should do.
Imagine a society where men can not demand access to a woman’s life or her children just because he donated sperm. A society where no man has a legally enforceable right to invade a woman’s life if she decides she wants him gone. A society where a woman can say to a man, “you’re never speaking to me again” and there is no system in place that says the children who grew inside of and came out of her body somehow belong to his ownership.
