ABSTRACT
Against the background of the non-discrimination provision in Article 2 of the UNCRC, this chapter considers the legal position of children whose parents are unmarried in England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Its particular concern is parental responsibility, and the fact that all three jurisdictions treat fathers differently depending on whether or not they are married to the child’s mother. The chapter begins by suggesting that parental responsibility is a children’s rights issue, and that the CRC apparently requires it to be allocated and removed other than by reference to parental marital status per se. It then highlights that, while there are some important differences between the jurisdictions in terms of the nature and allocation of parental responsibility, none of them are clearly compliant with the Convention.
