Letter: Children: how many rights?

Sir: Rosalind Miles's Charter for the Child (22 June) intrigues me. Are all children to have 'the right to a father' for reasons of income or of child care? Or is it something else?

What of wealthy potential mothers (such as the recently declared Martina Navratilova) who may wish to bear children without a male partner? What of my straight friend, a single New York law professor, who adopted her Paraguayan child and also employs a Paraguayan nanny? What of the millions of British adults on low incomes?

If, as Ms Miles argues, young married couples should be asked 'emotionally, financially, are you willing to pay?', perhaps all potential parents should be means tested. And psychoanalysed. And if those heterosexual couples passed for reproduction ever desire to part, let's outlaw divorce too. All in the interests of the children, you understand, despite substantial evidence that growing up with unhappily married parents may also be 'a form of child abuse'.

Yours sincerely,

MANDY MERCK

London, N16

22 June