Cite as: 523 U. S. 420 (1998)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
birth by force of the Constitution itself.22 Second, it is not merely the sex of the citizen parent that determines whether the child is a citizen under the terms of the statute; rather, it is an event creating a legal relationship between parent and child—the birth itself for citizen mothers, but postbirth conduct for citizen fathers and their offspring. Nevertheless, we may assume that if the classification in § 1409 were merely the product of an outmoded stereotype, it would be invalid.
The "gender stereotypes" on which § 1409 is supposedly premised are (1) "that the American father is never anything more than the proverbial breadwinner who remains aloof from day-to-day child rearing duties," 23 and (2) "that a mother will be closer to her child born out of wedlock than a father will be to his." 24 Even disregarding the statute's separate, nonstereotypical purpose of ensuring reliable proof of a blood relationship, neither of those propositions fairly reflects the justifications for the classification actually at issue.
Section 1409(a)(4) is not concerned with either the average father or even the average father of a child born out of wedlock. It is concerned with a father (a) whose child was born in a foreign country, and (b) who is unwilling or unable to acknowledge his paternity, and whose child is unable or unwilling to obtain a court paternity adjudication. A congressional assumption that such a father and his child are especially unlikely to develop a relationship, and thus to foster the child's ties with this country, has a solid basis even if we assume that all fathers who have made some effort to become acquainted with their children are as good, if not better, parents than members of the opposite sex.
22 "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, § 1.
23 Brief for American Civil Liberties Union et al. as Amici Curiae 8.
24 96 F. 3d, at 1473 (Wald, J., concurring in judgment).
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