Lesbian mothers should be on birth certificates

I see ok, you think because some people say that xyz which is wrong should happen it means that abc which isn’t a problem is now a problem.

Aside from the fact that I disagree on a number of the concerns you have, I don’t think they’ve got anything to do with the fact that same sex female couples can both be on a birth certificate as mother and parent.

My wife won’t carry our babies, she won’t donate her eggs either, she will be no less of a mother than I will be. Just because I would grow and birth the baby, doesn’t mean the baby will be less attached to my wife than to me, that’s not how attachment works. If we took shared parental leave and I decided to take the minimum amount of maternity leave due to finances (not the case for us but could be for people we know due to the woman being the higher earner) then it’s possible the baby’s primary attachment could be to my wife rather than me. Biology is not the be all and end all of a family relationship.

And I don’t think that a baby raised by two fathers is any worse off than a baby raised with a mother and father, just a mother, or two mothers, I t’s all dependent on how well those fathers respond to the needs of the child. That’s what makes a secure attachment. And that’s evidence based. I’m specifically not saying how those fathers became fathers because it could be from a number of ways, not just surrogacy, and the evidence still applies around attachment.

The problem is using equality arguments for biological processes and phenomena. I causes unreasonable demands and morally dubious State practices to meet those demands. It’s already gone too far.

“Everyone has the equal right to be viewed and treated as a woman and have a birth certificate saying that they are female.“

“Everyone has the equal right to create a family”

”Everyone has the equal right to breastfeed their children (and of course ‘their children includes children they are not biologically related to)”

”Everyone has the equal right to have their name on a child’s birth certificate”

etc.

Biology and nature are not a ‘rights’ issue. Some people have better and worse luck biologically, but it is not up to the State to equalise these differences as a matter of ‘rights’.

surely that “gateway” worry would already have come to pass?

It has already come to pass.

Since this ideological/semantic shift that ‘mother’, ‘father’ and ‘parent’ are not words to describe biological relationships, there are activist moves to have mothers recorded as fathers on birth certificates, efforts to normalise surrogacy, efforts to have the purchasing adults registering the birth and the surrogate mother denied any parental responsibility, or the right to change her mind, for her to be completely invisibilised and not part of registering the child she bore.

I have heard the argument that because ‘lesbian mothers are just the same as any other mother’ ie- biologically unrelated women in a relationship with the mother are equally the mother as the mother, or in other words biological relationships have no intrinsic value or importance to a child, then a man who calls himself a mother is equally the mother - they even use the ‘porridge and bath time’ argument in just the same way as PPs in this thread.

I have heard other arguments using the ‘unrelated woman is equally a mother’ to justify why a child doesn’t really need a mother and being raised only by men is no different to a child being raised by their mother.

The gateway has been opened.

@Triplemove yeh, it is just is a very bizarre argument. I go back to my previous statement that at best they are being ignorant and at worst prejudiced. Otherwise why would they not try and tackle the real, evidence-backed, issues first.

Married female partner on the birth certificate has been the case since 2009, surely that “gateway” worry would already have come to pass? Or if not then why not and when will it be a worry?

There is no point in engaging with @TangledRoots because she is only interested in ideological purity, and has no actual input for what her values look like in the real world. This is a thread about birth certificates.

statements like this:

…the certificate doesn’t bestow parental responsibility.

The registrar records who are the parents and that document can be used to legally prove the fact of their parenthood.

Contradict themselves. She is basically arguing that there is a natural law that gives genetic parents parental responsibility, and no one else. While this might be true in an anarchist society, anthropological reports of societies without written records generally show more flexible views of familial relationships and who is responsible for the children.

the fact that In the U.K. (and most countries) the birth certificate is both a record of parentage and also the thing that confers parental responsibility is well established weather or not she wants to accept it. Her insistence that it’s not has completely derailed this thread.

She’s also not concerned with birth certificate “fraud” in straight couple because she claims it’s rare. Only in lesbian couples, because it’s a “gateway.”

However, the numbers are really easy to look up. In 2012 (latest year I can find numbers for in all these categories)

there were:

348 babies registered to lesbian couples
4,100 babies born via gamete donation
812,970 burn total
4,080 with likely incorrect paternity (based on the 2008 study which established incorrect paternity at .005 percent )

so about 350 babies with lesbian birth certificates

about 8,000 with incorrect genetic paternity

If this was about the birth certificate being a true record of parentage, the bigger number would be addressed first.

@excellenfish that's interesting

This is one of those sneaky little falsehoods:

you could completely change the law so that parental rights were not automatically granted to those named on a birth certificate

The parents automatically have parental responsibility by virtue of making a baby together - it’s biology, and the birth certificate simply keeps a record of that (as well as other identifying details about who the baby is, most importantly, their name).

The registrar isn’t handing out parental responsibility, the certificate doesn’t bestow parental responsibility.

The registrar records who are the parents and that document can be used to legally prove the fact of their parenthood.

The change in law was the one to allow people who aren’t the assumed biological parents to be recorded as parents.

I think there should be biological truth recorded.
So on these cases there would be the carrying mother, the egg donor source and the sperm source. I know a lesbian couple where one is carrying the other's egg - this would work here because otherwise how would you pick which gets "mother" on the certificate? The one who carried the baby and gave birth or the one who is biologically related?

I understand, I suppose it boils down to:

What is best for hypothetical child A

a) Their birth certificate lists their birth mother (whose womb they came from). It also lists their second parent who will raise them if there is one (this could be a person of any gender) and who is legally allowed to make decisions for them if their birth mother is unable to.

b) Their birth certificate lists their birth mother and the man who provided the sperm. This could be a known person or just “sperm donor number 123647”. Their second parent (if present) is then unable to make decisions for them if their birth mother is unable to, however as the law stands currently their sperm donor could. In the case of an anonymous donor this would mean tracking them down, in the case of a dangerous or abusive man this could put the child at risk.

Obviously you could completely change the law so that parental rights were not automatically granted to those named on a birth certificate, or change the birth certificate to allow an extra section for parental rights. But you’d have to reissue all birth certificates to ensure this was clear for every child under the age of 16/18.

That doesn’t hugely bother me, as long as the new process didn’t place undue burden on non-traditional families (should be the same as it is to currently register a birth) but also can’t really see why that option is any better than the current system (a) where a child can then access information about their donor when they reach adulthood.

The children of lesbians know that they can’t have biologically come from two women, perhaps a system is needed to ensure the children of a man and a woman who used a donor or know that paternity doesn’t match the bc have access to accurate biological history as those parents could hide those facts easily if they were so inclined?

To be honest I think the ‘equality’ arguments around biological processes and phenomena are illogical, delusional and dangerous. I was merely pointing out the inconsistency of it’s application around sexual orientation and parental responsibility.

“You’ve missed the point. If a woman is in a civil partnership/marriage with a woman and gets pregnant through sexual intercourse with a man, rather than using a sperm donation method, then she and her civil partner/spouse may get different automatic parental rights.”

I don’t think I have missed the point. I understand the law as it stands, and it likely is an attempt to regulate sperm donation and prevent issues with paternity. As donors agree that they will not have or seek parental rights but to ensure this it has to be done through official channels. Not sure how I feel about it personally, never having had to think about it as it wouldn’t apply to me as I wouldn’t be having sex with a man to have a baby so as things stand my wife would be listed as the second parent automatically.

Your point was this was discrimination against bisexual women, I asked why/how? The potential problem with this law applies regardless of an individual woman’s sexuality, as sexuality does not automatically define behaviour. A bisexual woman married to a man does not become heterosexual for example.

I want to add that this is why impacts of exactly what changes are being asked for need to be properly thought through, instead of thinking ‘oh women, nice, safe, mums, nice safe, all good, all good’.

You’ve missed the point. If a woman is in a civil partnership/marriage with a woman and gets pregnant through sexual intercourse with a man, rather than using a sperm donation method, then she and her civil partner/spouse may get different automatic parental rights.

I am pointing this out because the ‘equality’ arguments about parental responsibility documented on birth certificates is inconsistent.

To be honest the gateway thing has made me cross, because it is frightening, you've touched a nerve.

I completely understand. However, women are often used as the friendly face, often unwittingly, to push male interests which people are otherwise rightly wary of. For example, the urine and faeces fetishist and pedophile Ian Dunn, used the appealing narrative of the rights of lesbian mothers to keep their own children after a divorce, to advance male sexual entitlement at the expense of women and children. The toddler rapist Jamie Rennie, used the appealing narrative of lesbian mothers feeling scared to collect their kids from school, to remove protections of children from premature sexualisation at school.

right I'm signing off. I don't think we are going to convince eachother. I will hug my kids extra tight tonight.

I am frightened of adoption certificates because, apparently, I am seen as a gateway to a transhuman world and therefore rely upon people social attitudes towards homosexuality/alternative parenting forms to be granted adoption. I am more frightened about adoption certificates since this thread.

How? If a bisexual woman is married or civil partnered to a woman and is the second parent it is the same as if they are a lesbian married or civil partnered and the second parent.

if a bisexual woman is married or civil partnered to a man and have a baby “the old fashioned way” then they’d be the mother.

The woman’s bisexuality doesn’t really come in to it? Unless you think that because a bisexual woman is bisexual she’d have sex with a random man who she isn’t married to so her and her wife/female civil partner can raise a baby? Which is also something a lesbian could do…as sexual orientation/attraction doesn’t mean you’re unable to have sex outside of that. It just probably wouldn’t be very pleasant.

You seem to have some strange views about sexuality, it makes a lot of your arguments seem like they’re coming from ignorance at best and prejudice at worst.

what your actually frightened about is what I am a gateway to.

Also, this misses the point. I disagree with biologically unrelated people being registered as a child’s parent on their birth certificate both in an of itself, because it is a falsehood, but also because it is a gateway for further falsehood, further divorce from biological reality.

I disagree with people being able to have the wrong sex registered on the birth certificate, I disagree with a mother being registered as a father on a birth certificate, I disagree with boyfriend’s, friends, acquaintances, biological unrelated people generally, being registered as a child’s parent on their birth certificate.

and anyway, what are you a gateway to? Following your arguments that biological parents are best and that the truth of identity is genetics, where could that lead? All sorts of ugly places if you use a bit of imagination.

To be honest the gateway thing has made me cross, because it is frightening, you've touched a nerve. A decade ago, I felt safe as a married lesbian, and then as a mother in a two-mum family, I felt backed by society. Now I feel I am being reassessed as a 'gateway'. To be honest it is scary, especially when I see hate speech directed towards those I am apparently a gateway towards (and I do see it, including on here). And it is frustrating because I work closely with vulnerable children at work and there are so many bigger fish to fry if you care about child welfare - like socioeconomics, male violence, international poverty. And so many bigger fish to fry if you care about women's/mother's rights. Like proper social care and support, flexible working, proper parental leave etc. Do not be frightened of me being a parent. In the scheme of the real fights to be fought, for women's safety and for children's welfare, we are probably allies. We need to be.

Why are you so scared of adoption certificates?

If your wife or civil partner conceived a child after 6 April 2009 through sexual intercourse with a man, you will not automatically have any rights to the child.

Doesn’t this discriminate against bisexual women?

I don't think the distinction between an ID document and a practical record of responsibility is so clear either. This is who you are, is another way of saying, these are the people you are related to.

The way I see it, is that everything has been rushed ahead with, without proper consideration.

Before egg donation was possible, it was simply a given that mother= genetic, birth-giving relationship person. Before clinics enabled gamete donation (or before the infrastructure enabled the black market in sperm donors) there was no anonymity where a mother would not have met the genetic parents of the child she gives birth to.

These technological developments altered the linguistic definition of who a person born actually is and how they can be identified, from a biological definition, without much thought or awareness about the impact of that.

I believe something urgent needs to be done to ensure those people created by these methods are not disadvantaged and have a proper record of who they are. It’s overdue. The current situation has been driven by the wishes of the adults.

I am leaning towards there needing to be a second document, currently an adoption certificate is the only thing for it, or a additional section of the birth certificate, which would identify who has parental responsibility if it is not the biological parents, as it should automatically be.