Taking a fresh look at central texts and traditions, Kohlhaas cuts through 'gender theory' debates to draw the long overdue conclusion that children’s holistic welfare is the only legitimate Catholic criterion of parental fitness. Our common humanity and baptismal identity, not gender-linked personality traits, fuel our care for children.

Kohlhaas masterfully deconstructs the magisterium’s anthropology of parenthood with its focus on biology, gender complementarity, and sexual acts, and reconstructs a holistic, integrated anthropology informed by Catholic social teaching and Christian understandings of kinship, in dialogue with the social sciences and signs of the times. Beyond Biology is a nuanced and insightful contribution to Catholic parental, family, and sexual ethics to move the Church forward in its anthropological and normative perspectives on parenthood.

A Church that truly desires justice for all parents and children is in desperate need of the theological precision and inclusive spirit with which Jacob Kohlhaas invites us beyond biology, beyond sexual and gendered complementarity, and toward a richer vision of the dynamic relational care labor that characterizes the lived experiences of families. The insights here provide firm and fertile ground for new directions in the Church as a family of families.