Challenges and problems of legal regulation of social and biological parenthood

ENThe relevance of this study. Today, the rights of the child are protected in many countries, and in the Lithuanian legal system, children's rights also play an important role in the implementation of the Institute of Human Rights. Custody of minor children is one of the means by which a child, as a subject of civil law, can ensure the exercise of his or her rights, be properly educated and supervised so that he or she grows up in a proper and safe environment and protect the best interests of the child. Adoption is also one of the measures that can ensure the implementation of the rights of the child. The main problem. This work examines an important and significant issue of social parenting in the child's life, the emerging social relationship between the child and social parents, which can be considered more important than the biological parenting relationship. To this day, it is recognized that the biological relationship between a child and parents is no longer the sole basis for paternity, and increasingly, courts must determine the importance of social parenting in a child’s life, taking into account the child’s legitimate interests. The following tasks were set for the defined goal: To define the concept of social and biological parenting; to reveal the importance of guardians in the implementation of the child's legal interests and to assess whether they can become social parents; to reveal the importance of adopters in the implementation of the child's legal interests and to assess whether they are social parents; to analyze the issues of intersection of social and biological parenthood in the practice of Lithuanian courts; to analyze the importance of social parenting in order to challenge parenthood.The aim of this work is to disclose problems and issues of legal regulation of biological and social parenting legal regulation. The paper concluded that biological parenting is based on scientific evidence and gives rise to a legal relationship with the child. Social paternity is when, in the absence of kinship between a child and the parents, close social ties are established and, once they are legalized by the court, legal relations are also established between the social parents and the children. Adoption is a type of social motherhood and parenthood, it is an opportunity for a child to grow up in a family that cannot grow up with biological parents or one of the parents, so the adoption institute best ensures the best interests of the child. The novelty increasingly, in the world, responsibilities arising from biological parenting are being transferred to others and artificial substitutes for the institute of parenting are being created. Biological parenting is no longer the only type of parenting, and social parents are increasingly appearing in families to act as parents in a child’s daily life. As the result biological parents cannot ensure the best interests of the child in cases where the child is threatened in the biological family, therefore the intervention of state authorities is necessary in unavoidable cases. Theused methodology is comparative analysis, document analysis, systematic analysis, linguistic. Keywords: social parenthood, biological parenthood, child, child’s interests.