The Right to a Father's Name: A Historical Perspective on State Efforts to Combat the Stigma of Illegitimate Birth in Brazil

Abstract

Over the past decade, state agencies throughout Brazil have launched initiatives that aim to defend children's rights to their father's name. These initiatives take the form of discrete programs in different states, all of which seek to identify children who lack a paternal last name—an estimated 10–25 percent of all Brazilian children —in hopes of finding their fathers and encouraging or obligating them to legally recognize their paternity and inscribe their names on the children's birth registries. Project staff also sometimes formalize child support arrangements, although this is not the primary objective. Instead, Responsible Paternity projects (as most of them are known) seek to free children from the social stigma of illegitimate birth, thus protecting their constitutional right to equality and human dignity.

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