Research framework : The aspiration of sexual minorities to gain access to a kinship from which they were once excluded, the decline in the average age of first pregnancies and the multifactorial phenomenon of a decreasing number of adoptable children all point to the need to think differently about adoption, accepting that it needs not be exclusive of maintaining ties with the parents of origin.

Objectives : The aim of this paper is to identify what adjustments could be made to enable simple adoption to realize its full potential in contemporary society.

Methodology: The study was based primarily on an analysis of French legislation and jurisprudence, as well as theoretical insights, while also making allowance for comparative law (Canada, the United States and Cuba).

Results: It appears that, despite the obvious need for greater recognition of elective filiation in a context of disconnection between biology and kinship, the idea of recognizing genuine pluriparentage remains difficult for the French legislature to accept, and that simple adoption remains devalued as a secondary source of filiation.

Conclusions : To unleash the potential of simple adoption, it would suffice to make a few simple adjustments: equivalence of rights in terms of parental authority or inheritance taxation, use in the context of child protection and extension to all situations of multiple kinship, where it is in the child’s interest to have an additive parent recognized.

Contribution : This article shows that the persistent difficulty of the French legislator to draw the consequences of recent societal evolutions, that it has nevertheless accompanied, is essentially linked to the tenacity of the myth of begetting, and that major evolutions could be achieved without much effort, for the benefit of children.

• simple adoption
• full adoption
• parentage
• paternity
• maternity
• assisted reproduction
• parenthood
• France

https://journals.openedition.org/efg/17704#article-17704