I first met John Eekelaar in May 1991, at the 7th World Conference of the International Society of Family Law. It was in Opatija, Croatia (then still formally part of Yugoslavia), a charming place on the Adriatic Sea. This was my very first ISFL Conference, and I still vividly remember much of that event and, particularly, John presenting his paper on whether parents are morally obliged to care for their children, published later in a conference book. This was just one of John’s numerous academic writings on the parent-child relationship, and although a lot of time has passed since then, the issues related to parents and children continue to be in the spotlight of his scholarly interests.

The parent-child relationship, with the transformation of family that we are currently witnessing, takes on new shades and new angles. This chapter aims to focus on one such relatively new angle in the parent-child relationship, often described as’social parenthood ‘, as it has been raised and discussed in Russian jurisprudence, and that of the European Court on Human Rights in the context of Russian cases.

1. THE NAZARENKO CASE: WHAT WAS IT ABOUT?

The case Nazarenko v. Russia, considered by the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR) in 2015, was about termination of the legal parent status of the child’s father, after the mother successfully challenged the paternity of the father (the applicant) in the Russian court proceedings. As it was determined during the trial that he was not the child’s biological father, the judgment was made to terminate his paternity, although the Russian courts acknowledged that he had raised and cared for the girl for five years. The relevant changes were to be made to the child’s birth certificate and, in particular, the applicant’s name was to be removed from it, as he was no longer the girl’s father. As a result, the applicant lost all parental rights with respect to the child, including the right to communication. He became a legal stranger to the girl.