Family law scholars are reconsidering traditional parenthood laws, favoring functional definitions that recognize individuals’ relationships with children if they perform a parental function and nurture a parent-child bond. Advocates, primarily focused on middle-class LGBTQ families, view this as a normative good for diverse family structures. This Article offers a different perspective through an in- depth study of Kentucky’s laws governing parents who share childrearing with their kin amidst substance abuse, incarceration, and poverty. It reveals complex interactions between functional parenthood law and child protection law. Contrary to the depoliticized view that functional parenthood law simply recognizes existing family relationships, these relationships often result from care and household strategies developed in the shadow of the law or as a direct result of state intervention and coordination. The Article argues that functional parenthood law has unrecognized costs, including potentially severe and negative impacts on parent-child relationships in poor and racialized communities, among others.

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