Baker believes that "family law as a discipline is shifting from a set of rules designed primarily to regulate sexual relationships between adults to a set of rules designed to regulate parental relationships between adults and children." Decreased emphasis on marriage has created a "desperate need of a system to determine parenthood." The role played by social arrangements like marriage can now, she suggests, be played by biology. The values of parental "bionormativity" are that it should be private ("meaning that the state has no legitimate interest in regulating, but also no requirement to finance, parenthood") and binary ("there are at least two and only two parents"), and discourages functional parents (those who, while lacking a biological tie to the child, invest time, love and money). While the author claims that a bionormative regime does not "necessarily follow conventional political lines" -- in other words, that this is not fancy theoretical dress for fundamental conservative social policies -- it is difficult to take that assertion seriously. Pointing out the possibility that in that environment "someone eager to legitimize families with gay parents may be enthusiastic about a binary requirement for parenthood because a binary rule makes it more likely that a non-biological related partner will retain legal status," it seems more likely that it will disfavor such partners in the event of split, given the disfavor of "functional" parents.