| Departing from Carol Gilligan's famous distinction between a masculine ethic of justice and a feminine ethic of care, this dissertation examines the roles of father and mothers in law through an examination of the normative image of the family in the family law casebooks, the American constitutional law of fatherhood, and contemporary feminist legal theories of family. In this dissertation, I argue that a more adequate feminist hermeneutic of fatherhood, is one that will draw on resources at the intersection of law and religion to arrive at a better understanding of the interrelation of biology and culture in norms of family, and especially of fatherhood. In so arguing I derive norms of a feminist hermeneutic of fatherhood from an examination of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, the liberal political tradition, and the intersection of those two traditions in papal social encyclicals on family and in the contemporary feminist thought of Martha Nussbaum and Lisa Sowle Cahill. In the end, I construct a feminist ethic of fatherhood and motherhood based on principles of justice, mutuality, equity, care, friendship, and grace. |
