Who's Your Daddy (San 19b)

There's a great discussion in todays daf about who is considered the real father (or mother) of a child. As it turns out it's not always the sole place of a biological parent to claim parenthood. Rather, the Talmud brings three cases where a third party gets the right to call a child their own:

1. One who raises a child whether an orphan or a child whose parents are in the picture can call themselves the child's parents. It is as if they bore the child!
2. On who sustains another (through food or money) gains the right to be called a parent.
3. One who teaches another Torah gains the title of parent

I am most interested by number two because it seems the most out the ordinary. The Talmud arrives at this example through a text from Psalms "With a powerful arm You redeemed Your people, the progeny of Jacob and Joseph, selah" (Ps. 77:15). Looking at this text the Talmud asks "now did Joseph father the twelves sons from whom the people of Israel descended? Rather it was Jacob who fathered them." The Talmud answers that because it was Joseph who gave them food and sustenance during the famine, he deserved to also be identified as his brother's father!

What I like about this text is that we all have the right and obligation to act as parents to others. We read in Tractate Kiddushin about the special job of parents (or at least fathers):

Our Rabbis taught: The father is bound in respect of his son, to circumcise, redeem, teach him Torah, take a wife for him, and teach him a craft. Some say, to teach him to swim too, R. Judah said: He who does not teach his son a craft, teaches him brigandage. (29a)

I wonder if the Rabbis would agree that any of these things help us to be parents to others. If that is the case our children have many parents: teachers, swim instructors, camp counselors (even j date?). This gives a whole new meaning to the idea that it takes a village to raise a child!

With that said, I wonder when we cross the line from acting like parents to actually being parents for a child?