to think this is discrimination- would you complain?

[dogscatsandbabies]

DP (same sex) and I welcomed DD2 at the end of March. Both children conceived through a fertility clinic with anonymous donor. We have been in a civil partnership since 2007. DD1 was born in 2011, shortly after the law change which allows DP to be listed on the birth certificate as "second female parent" (a fairly perfunctory title if ever there was one, but gives her parental rights so who cares!)

When we registered DD1's birth the registrar had never had to do the second female parent registration and we sat for 30 mins or so while she made phone calls to find out the procedure etc. At that point we discovered our DD was only the 2nd child in Northern Ireland to be registered this way. At that time the computer systems hadn't been updated and DD1 has a hand written birth certificate as a result. This has caused some problems as it is unusual and when we tried to open DD1 a bank account the bloke in the Halifax suggested it was a forgery. Git.

Anyway, given that 3 years have passed, we assumed that all would now be plain sailing as they were bound to have updated the system. Not so. We went to a different registry office (still in N.I.) and were told that they had never done the second female parent registration before. Cue more phone calls and after a bit of a palava with a template and the photocopier, we got a printed birth certificate.

Now, all the staff we have encountered in the registry offices have been lovely and have bent over backwards to help. And its obviously not their fault that they are not doing lots of these registrations; my girls are unusual and special and that's just fine by me! But would it not be reasonable to expect that 3+ years following the legislation change that they have the systems in place to ensure that our experience of registering a birth is the same as that of a straight married couple??

I'm no activist and generally couldn't care less how people respond to DP and myself but this feels like discrimination against my kids, which does annoy me a bit. Should I complain or just be glad that the legislation exists, that I have beautiful children who have 2 loving parents, and get over it?

Systems can take years to update, I know it's frustrating but you got what you needed done and everyone was helpful. YANBU but bureaucracy is inevitably slow.

I would complain but I don't think it meets the description of discrimination exactly because it hasn't been intentional.

I don't think it's discrimination, but it's definitely worth writing a letter about, so you can thank them for being lovely and helpful but also so that they can't be allowed to forget about it the minute you walk out the office and end up with the same palaver for the next person in your situation.

Fwiw, I don't think it's discrimination because we too (opposite sex couple) had a long and complicated experience registering a birth because ds was born in an ambulance in one area but was then immediately taken to a hospital 10 minutes away while still attached to me in another area. This meant lots of phonecalls between the registry offices in the two areas, both saying that he should be registered with them, and it took nearly three hours to get it sorted.

The best way for staff to learn new systems is to actually carry out the task on a regular basis. You say yourself DD1 was only the second in Northern Ireland to be registered this way in 2011! Presumably there's a different template and all sorts because of the different terminology. I can just imagine the staff scratching their heads and thinking, "I'm sure there was a memo sent 'round about this...".

Seems like the only way to resolve this is for more same sex couples to have more babies so they get used to it. There needs to be a campaign or something, something for the TUV and DUP to froth about congrats on the squishy new baby!

My BF is in a similar position to you, OP. Her eggs were removed, fertilized, and put into her partner - so she is the biological mother, and her lovely wife is the birth mother. They now have two beautiful children. Science is wonderful.

I think you SHOULD complain every time you encounter a problem, because systems are not going to change unless some pressure is brought to bear. However, I do think that it's probably most productive to focus on the businesses who are making this a problem in addition to the government office who are dragging their heels. Having someone suggest a birth certificate is a fake is deeply upsetting, and should never have happened.

Are there any charities/advocacy groups in your area who might have a campaign already going on this issue?

I think it is terrible for a bank to suggest you may have forged a birth certificate because it is hand written. I think both my short form and complete birth certificates may be handwritten so I'd be mightily p'd off!

Some organisations can be worse than government agencies for these kinds of things because they have policies written by someone who doesn't have all the information or has chosen to ignore some of the information/guidance to write a policy they feel is watertight. Happened to me after I reverted to my maiden name - phone company insisted on a deed poll even though there was no legal requirement for me to have one. I had a right old row with them.

But complain nicely, iyswim. Tell them that it is a potential problem and that it needs to be addressed before someone does take offence.

And congratulations on 2 special DCs.

You're right, it should have been updated but I'm not sure it's a discrimination thing, we had the same kinds of troubles registering a child born through surrogacy, it's an unusual situation thing.

My birth certificate is handwritten - I though everyone's was! Obviously I'm wrong. I have never had a problem with it and wouldn't be too chuffed if anyone questioned it!

You could complain to the Minister for Equality. Not sure who it is now. You could also try writing to your MP saying you aren't happy at the length of time this has taken to get sorted out. But I didn't think handwritten birth certificates are that unusual.

My birth cert is handwritten, but then when I was born, dinosaurs walked the earth.

I wouldn't complain exactly, OP, but I might well write a letter maybe to my MP and ask if there is any way procedure can be "normalised" a bit quicker.

I would complain to the bank, because that was uncalled for.

Congratulations to you both on DD2 anyway!

X post with Vivienne!

MPs are the way to go, I am always writing to mine.

It doesn't sound like discrimination to me, the staff were doing their best. It's something they don't do often. I'm surprised they don't come across it more though. If you do write a letter I would certainly make it a nice one; say that the staff were helpful and hardworking but you wonder whether, in the 21st century and with lots of legal rights for same sex couples, there could be a bit more training made to make experiences for other same sex couples quicker and easier?

I don't think it was discrimination, just incompetence.

However, I do think you should complain, as otherwise people in charge will think everything is fine, and will not realise this is a problem. They might send the memo round again, at least.

Complaining can be a positive, helpful thing if it is done right.

I doubt it's discrimination, it is more likely to be a matter of cost and unfamiliarity. Systems, especially government systems, are expensive things to update and if something is happening with such comparative infrequency, a decision was probably made at some point that a cost of £££ to change the system for only X number of occurrences is financially unviable.

If you do write, I'd couch it in terms of suggesting some updated training to make life easier for both the staff and registrants, and perhaps asking if there are any plans to update the system to cater for the change in legislation and if so, in what sort of timeframe?

I think discrimination would be not allowing both parents to be on the birth certificate. I also wouldn't say it is incompetence, it's a person not knowing how to do something and doing their best to resolve the issue.

This is a training issue which should be raised.

Having had a recent discussion with a lady from our local council about their computer systems, during which she was incredibly scathing about the whole thing I would say it's an issue with keeping everything updated and in line with current policy rather than discrimination.
However as mentioned above taking your concern further in a helpful 'it might be useful if..' Type of way might bump the process along a bit quicker
Congratulations

I think there is some sort of law that NI bureaucracy has to be as ineffective and disorganised and behind-the-times as possible.

I think it is worth a complaint not on grounds of discrimination but to ensure the information on how to do these registrations is easily accessible for registrars and they can be more effective and competent.

I think it's a problem with the fact that systems take a very long time to change rather than discrimination as such. After all from what you say the officials did not refuse to do this for you, or suggest it should not be done, they just took ages to get it done because they did not know how to do it.

I remember attending a talk by an academic lawyer on the, then, proposed changes to the law and on how she was surprised that even with the proposed changes quite a few new types of family would not be covered, e.g. there was no provision for trangender parents who had changed sex but retained some sexual characteristics of the other sex and could still have a child in that biological role. She had brought this up with the civil servants dealing with the changes who said that all they could do was adapt the existing law to take into account as many new possibilities as possible because if they wanted to change the whole thing to make it more modern it would have to go back through the entire Parliamentary process at which point every politician and his dog would jump on the bandwagon to object to it, defend it, try to change it, stick ammendments to it, etc and the process would take years!

Having lived in NI I would say if your daughter was the first your second daughter a few years later was probably still in the under tenth category. And for many parts it definitely would be more uncommon.

You said that they went to the effort of ringing about and sorting it out. If this was polite then I would be less inclined to complain. Sme story if it had been the department where u registered your first and they hadn't learnt.

Instead I would send a letter to the chief exec of that council. Thanking them for doing it/polite praise of their staff and a paragraph stating

"Whilst the staff where polite and endeavoured to understand a relatively uncommon procedure I am slightly disappointed that in three years the computer systems etc have not progressed to keep in line with the changing needs of society. Perhaps I could suggest this as a training and development point."

Polite but puts the point across. I don't really think there is a discrimination part to it.

Welcome to NI!

Thanks for all comments- Just for clarity, my birth certificate is hand written too but the vast majority of children under 5 (and a good number of those above that age) have printed ones. So it is unusual.

I may well write a letter about this, nicely, as many have suggested. It's obviously not the individual staff who have been at all discriminatory but more the organisation in failing to update systems / train staff. But then again, I have a 3 year old and a 2 week old so I might not!!