92
O'Connor, J., dissenting
with the laws of Spain and France." To Revise and Codify the Nationality Laws of the United States, Hearings on H. R. 6127 before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., 431 (1945) (reprinting Message from the President, Nationality Laws of the United States (1938)) (emphasis added and internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
Section 1409(a)(4) is thus paradigmatic of a historic regime that left women with responsibility, and freed men from responsibility, for nonmarital children. Under this law, as one advocate explained to Congress in a 1932 plea for a sex-neutral citizenship law, "when it comes to the illegitimate child, which is a great burden, then the mother is the only recognized parent, and the father is put safely in the background." Naturalization and Citizenship Status of Certain Children of Mothers Who Are Citizens of the United States, Hearing on H. R. 5489 before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 72d Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (testimony of Burnita Shelton Matthews); see also id., at 5 (citizenship law "permit[s] [the father] to escape the burdens incident to illegitimate parenthood"). Unlike § 1409(a)(4), our States' child custody and support laws no longer assume that mothers alone are "bound" to serve as "natural guardians" of nonmarital children. See, e. g., Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 25-501 (1999) (equal duties of support); cf. Cal. Civ. Code Ann. § 4600 (West 1972) (abolishing "tender years" doctrine). The majority, however, rather than confronting the stereotypical notion that mothers must care for these children and fathers may ignore them, quietly condones the "very stereotype the law condemns," J. E. B., 511 U. S., at 138 (internal quotation marks omitted).
Punctuating the disparity between the majority's and the INS' accounts of the governmental interests at stake is the majority's failure even to address the INS' second asserted rationale: that § 1409 prevents certain children from being stateless. Brief for Respondent 11; see also id., at 17-18
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