Symposium on Multi-Parenthood
Panel Discussion
"Multi-Parenthood in Germany and the Netherlands
- Possible Ways of Legal Regulation"
Date: 11 April 2024, 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Location: Reinhardtstrassenhöfe, Reinhardtstrasse 12-14, 10117 Berlin
Languages: English
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 for a panel discussion with representatives of German and Dutch politics and civil society and multi-parent families, followed by a get-together on 11 April 2024 in Berlin.
Welcoming words
- Alfonso Pantisano, Contact Person Queer Berlin, Senate Department for Labour, Social Affairs, Equality, Integration, Diversity and Anti-Discrimination
- Patrick Dörr, LSVD Federal Executive Board
On the Panel we expect, 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
- Kathrin Vogler, Member of the German Bundestag since 2009, health policy spokesperson for Die Linke in the Bundestag; queer policy spokesperson for Die Linke in the Bundestag; full member and chairwoman of the Health Committee
- Gabriela Lünsmann, German specialist lawyer for family law, activist, representative of the LSVD Federal Executive Board for legal issues of rainbow families, from 2015 to 2023 on the LSVD Federal Executive Board
- Christian Gladel, German-Dutch activist for the rights of rainbow and multi-parent families, father of three children in a binational multi-parent family, on the board of NELFA and associated with Meer Dan Gewenst
- Moderation: Björn Sieverding, on the NELFA Board (most recently President) for the LSVD since 2016
Contact: Dr. Sarah Ponti, lsvd@lsvd.de
