Baby could become first person born in England or Wales without a legal mother

There was a similar case in Germany last year. It was decided that biological reality had to be recorded on the birth certificate.

Odd, given that biological reality had been ignored when changing the parent's birth certificate from her true, biologically real, sex to his biologically unreal personal choice of gender.

I googled and found a case where a male-born person without a GRA (but while identifying as a woman) argued unsuccessfully that it breached his human rights not to be able to put himself down as ‘parent’ or ‘father/parent’ on his (naturally conceived) kids’ birth certificates.

www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2015/990.html

So from a quick read through the judgement, if he failed to convince that his human rights were breached by not being able to be listed as something other than ‘father’, it’s not looking very hopeful for this more recent case.

Gasp0de you're right about the rareness of trans in other parts of the world. It hasn't been a feature of human history either. There's a good article on 4thwavenow.com looking at the absence of transgender as an issue for teenagers in the past.

Homosexuality, of course, has always been around both in human beings and in many other species too. One Christmas I "adopted" a pair of geese for my DF, a keen ornithologist. It was a wild success when it turned out his geese, Laurel and Hardy, were gay. DF was enchanted, and didn't stop chuckling all day. He is 80+ and has always supported gay rights.

Human psychology and society are amazingly complicated. There can surely be no other species on earth where a member could grow up feeling a mismatch between their biology and their role in life. And actually that probably goes for the great majority of the world's human population too. No possibility whatsoever of identifying out of being a female for most women, even though that often means coping with some terrible things.

I really think the state needs someone to represent the child's interests here - any social service experts around?

Yes I was just thinking how unfortunate it is that it’s always the parents campaigning or bringing legal challenges to assert their “rights”.

I can’t see anyone bringing a case on behalf of an individual infant to assert their rights to a full and accurate official record of their parentage, though.

I suspect any overhaul will need to be lobbied for and parliament-led.

I really think the state needs someone to represent the child's interests here - any social service experts around?

I still cannot get over how this person has done this amazing, overwhelming (and essentially female) thing of giving birth to a living human and seemingly their only concern is pronouns and titles and how other people see them. This does not bode well for their other parenting decisions. Poor, poor child.

Plus, as a parent of a slightly older child, I know they're not going to be able to lie forever. Children once they're old enough call you out on lies and they're not particularly forgiving. I do wonder why this person wanted a child so much. They don't seem to care much about the child on the basis of their actions.

What worries me about this case is the evident obsession of the plaintiff to deny biology. You have to feel incredibly strongly to take this to court. This woman is determined to be seen as male regardless of the effects on others. In every other context this is fine. When it comes to parenting it's not.

A child will soon be aware that although some of their friends don't have dads,
everyone (or nearly everyone) has a mum. The obvious question from an early age will be "where's my mum?" or suchlike.

Judging by this court case, the child's parent plans to lie. But such a lie won't work forever When their child discovers the truth there's no doubt the child's trust will be shattered and they will be badly hurt.

I guess the question is which ones have the legal rights; the "social" ones one would assume.

It would have to be.

The role of social parents is different from role of legal parents. Lots of kids have various social parent figures over the course of their childhood. How would you distinguish between who should go on the certificate?

Well it’s a record of birth, not childhood. So just record the situation at birth?

She is biologically my child conceived from a sperm donor and carried and given birth to by my wife. My wife and I are listed on the birth cert as the parents (which I am very pleased about) the donor is not. My daughter knows how she came into being- we have never lied to her,

The thing is that not everyone practises such honest parenting.

One of my children is not biologically related to me and in all honesty if I had the choice, I’d like them to have a factual record somewhere where it will always be accessible, just in case I’m not still around to address the way I’d like beyond the picture book and simple explanation stage.

(I’m assuming here that social parents would’ve given greater prominence on the certificate, and that shirt form certificates without parent details would still be in use.)

I didn't make an association between this case and Ted Bundy. I made a specific point about the view that not knowing where you came from is psychologically harmful to children. Learn to read. And I said you were disingenuous, not that you were trolling.

Eresh I'm sorry you feel that misrepresented your post. I didn't recall it was you that made the association. Others can read back and see if they think that's what you were getting at or not.

"Or I might think you're as disingenuous as you claim not to be"

Give it a rest will ya? We've had this conversation before. Please refer to MNHQ I'd you feel I am not who I say I am. Since you have already been very clear what you think I am there's not a lot of point me tailoring my posts to try and appease you.

Interesting Mia

Why would anyone claim your wife wasn't a mother in any sense MrsKate?

I think part of the problem is that the birth cert signifies so many different things and all are important but sometimes pull in different directions. So it's partly about naming legal parents (and all the obligations to support etc that go with that), partly about parental responsibility, partly about genetics and partly about the 'story' of the child's birth. Because there are only two spaces for parents it means that choices have to be made and sometimes it doesn't really capture the complexities of all of those aspects of parenthood.

I think one of the best examples of this is [[https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/22/section/40 this]]. So if a couple have gone for IVF with donor sperm and the man dies before the embryo is transferred then he can be put on the birth cert as a father. That's in a situation where he has no genetic connection to the child, will never meet them and might have died years before the child was even born.

Of course that's all a bit irrelevant to the case were discussing because the parent is going to be on the birth cert it's just a question of which box but I do think it's relevant to the overall issue of why we put info on the birth cert in the first place.

I'm struggling a bit with this one - especially this idea with having multiple parents on a birth certificate. I have an 8 year old daughter. She is biologically my child conceived from a sperm donor and carried and given birth to by my wife. My wife and I are listed on the birth cert as the parents (which I am very pleased about) the donor is not. My daughter knows how she came into being- we have never lied to her, we've told her age appropriate details and explained the fact that biological male and biological female ingredients are needed to create a child but that we had an extra stage in our process. She asks questions, we answer them. When she is older she can have more information about the donor as she has the right to know where she can from. In the case of the trans man I do understand why he wants to be listed as the father but also the child should know the biology behind it all when they're able to understand it. People could claim my wife is not a mother in the purest sense but she carried our child and gave birth to her so that's complete rubbish to be frank!

Battleax problem is there are few clear cut roles in parenting, who gave birth is a good example of one that’s quite an easy thing to know and record.

The role of social parents is different from role of legal parents. Lots of kids have various social parent figures over the course of their childhood. How would you distinguish between who should go on the certificate?
Also biological parents- how to classify when assisted reproduction is used- because these roles can be separated out if different treatments are used. Would you record the biological parent as the person who gave birth and carried the baby or the person who contributed their egg or sperm to make up the baby’s DNA?
Would you record the person who gave nuclear DNA or person who gave mitochondrial DNA? Etc etc. What would happen if lab-made (not made in the human testes or ova) sperm and eggs take off- who would you record as the biological parents then?

You’d need many more fields on this form for all these different role and for everyone to agree on what to put and for everyone to have the chance to constantly update the birth certificate as circumstances changed over time.

Also many people think of their genetic inheritance and genetic relationships to others as a really private thing and not a matter for legal certificates. Children are incontrovertibly less vulnerable for not having their genetic paternity and maternity listed on their birth certificate, in patriarchal societies.

I think it’s better to stick to the system that we have, despite acknowledging it’s not perfect for everyone’s needs or preferences.

What we probably need now is BCs with space for four parents; two social and two biological. Where a parent is both, they can be listed under two sections.

Not knowing the legal ins and outs I think this is fairly sensible, isn't it? I guess the question is which ones have the legal rights; the "social" ones one would assume.

(And where a gamete donor is anonymous, they can be recorded as such.)

Why do I see this ending as parent 1 and parent 2 being listed on birth certificates?

We’ve had that for almost ten years (to accommodate same sex couples).

What we probably need now is BCs with space for four parents; two social and two biological. Where a parent is both, they can be listed under two sections.

I think that’s the only way out of this jumble.

Woman's hour referred to this briefly in the introduction to a segment:
"What does a 21st century family look like? Melanie Carew,
Head of Cafcass Legal and Professor Susan Golombok, author "Modern Families" discuss and Jane invites listeners to share their stories about what it means to grow up in or be a parent in a non-traditional family unit."

It would be worthwhile listening to on catch up as there was discussion as to how Cafcass worked closely with Stonewall etc to ensure inclusion and recognise the changing structures of the family

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b4z09w]][[

speculating on how the kid's life will be fucked up to a degreee that makes it worthy of comparison to Ted Grundy.

Don't misrepresent my point, which was that it is not a fringe opinion that not telling children the truth about their parentage is likely to be psychologically damaging. Or I might think you're as disingenuous as you claim not to be.

I am adopted. I have a very visceral response to state-sponsored lies about recording the birth of children. And yet we seem to be going back there ...

YY pallisers I'm also an adoptee and I feel the same way.

Mia85 thank you! gives me great relief! Could those both not be applied to this current situation too though?

A PP asked about cases that could be made by a MTF father. There has already been a case like that here but it would not be possible for the father to be re-registered as the mother in any case, just 'female parent' because mother is very clearly the woman who gave birth here

If this case goes in favour of the trans person are the courts now sanctioning lies into law?

Are there any stats available on possible damage HRT cause to unborn babies? I know there's a few cases of transmen giving birth.