In English Law, sperm donors may be held to be 'the real fathers' of children born through artificial insemination. Is that an unproblematic assumption? Compare notions of what makes a 'father' from two or more societies known to you.

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In English Law, sperm donors may be held to be 'the real fathers' of children born through artificial insemination. Is that an unproblematic assumption? Compare notions of what makes a 'father' from two or more societies known to you.

What it means to be a 'father' varies among different societies and cultures. Legal implications from this label of fatherhood arise in obligations towards children and rights of paternity. In Britain today, the mother and father of a child is generally perceived to be the parents because they had sexual intercourse and equally contributed to the biological make-up of the child -a principle now seen as invested in science, although this assertion appeared in British society even before it was justified by scientific fact1. The legal implications of this are that both biological parents can be seen to hold equal claim to the parenthood of a child2. In contrast the Nuer and Ashanti hold very different views on the role of 'fathers' in their society and what composes a father, thus highlighting the problematic assumption that 'biological' fathers should carry out a paternal function.

Fortes3 asserts that "Ashanti beliefs about the physiology of conception reflect the social values attached