Symposium on Multi-Parenthood
Specialist Workshop
"Multi-Parenthood in Germany and the Netherlands
- Possible Ways of Legal Regulation"
Date: 11 April 2024, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Location: Deutsches Institut für Menschenrechte, Zimmerstraße 26-27, 10969 Berlin
Target group: Professionals from the fields of law, counselling, politics, welfare associations, foundations, activists and multi-parent families.
Languages: English, German
It is one of the great controversial issues of our time: who is actually family? For our legal systems, biological connections still play the main role. Family is therefore the social unit consisting of biological parents and children. This mother-father-child principle is decisive and yet it cannot (any longer) fully reflect reality.
Children sometimes have more than two parents who look after them on a daily basis, take responsibility and provide a sense of security. But on paper, things look different: to this day, no country in Europe recognises more than two legal parents. In this way, family members are de jure declared to be strangers. This means many practical and legal disadvantages for children growing up in multi-parent families.
In the Netherlands, a state commission looked into the issue several years ago and recommended that legal parenthood should be made possible for up to four people. The Dutch government endorsed the recommendations in a letter to the House of Representatives in October 2023. The German Federal Minister of Justice, on the other hand, recently presented key points which, although they want to enable the protection of diverse family models and also have multi-parent families in mind, do not want to shake the legal two-parent principle. Is this still in keeping with the times, or is the Dutch model also a model for Germany?
The Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany (LSVD), the "Meer Dan Gewenst" foundation from the Netherlands and the Network of European Rainbow Family Associations (NELFA) are inviting you to a specialist workshop on 11 April 2024 in Berlin.
The aim is to determine the current situation and to work out possible ways of providing legal protection for multi-parent families:
- What legal issues do multi-parent families face when planning their family model, in everyday family life and in the case of separations?
- What legal ideas and solutions have been proposed so far?
- Are there justified reasons for adhering to the two-parent principle or do we simply need more courage to provide better legal protection for multi-parent families?
- What are the requirements for contemporary family law in the context of the upcoming reform?
- What can we learn from the Dutch process for our own legal policy work?
At the specialist workshop we expect contributions from, among others,
- Wilma Eusman, Dutch lawyer and activist, member of the Euro LGBT Family Law Institute, member of the Dutch State Commission for the Reassessment of Parenthood from 2014 to 2016
- Prof. Dr. Anne Sanders, M.Jur. (Oxford), German law professor, member of the Commission on Family, Inheritance and Civil Law of the German Women Lawyers' Association, author of the habilitation thesis "Mehrelternschaft" (multi-parenthood) published in 2018
- Dr. Christine Wagner, Founder of the German co-parenting platform "familyship" and part of a rainbow family
Following the specialist workshop, a panel discussion with representatives of German and Dutch politics and civil society and multi-parent families will take place from 7 pm, followed by a get-together, for which separate registration is required.
Contact: Dr. Sarah Ponti, lsvd@lsvd.de
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