Abstract:
\"Recent social, scientific, and legal developments -- including the higher prevalence of nonmarital births, the ability to determine parentage through genetic testing, new techniques for assisted reproduction, and the visibility of same-sex couples who are or want to be parents -- have forced legislators and courts to reexamine how the law determines whether an individual is the parent of a child and what legal rights and obligations arise as a result of the parent-child relationship.\" Saxon describes how North Carolina law addresses parentage in light of these new developments and compares these laws with the recently revised Uniform Parentage Act of 1973.