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The family configurations we observe in our societies today are still organized based on the major elements essential to a system of family relations : alliance, filiation and sib. However, their mode of arrangement has changed and these three elements, crisscrossing one another, have now become autonomous. This change of model results in a change of position for all persons included in the construction of a family relation. Starting from the works of David Schneider, showing the importance of law in declaring “the good” family relation and Godelier’s remark to the effect that a man and a woman are never enough to make a child, I will study the reports published recently on assisted procreation and adoption in Québec and in France in reflecting on these two ways of entering into a family relation. These reports show us the particular place the woman holds in the Western model of family relations involving only one father and only one mother. This place is changing, and the mother is no longer all that “certain” ; other maternal figures are appearing, testified to by the very existence the child.