Global Parent (Anna)

Good news!

With 9 days to go before our baby is due, Australia now has federal legislation recognizing same-sex parents!

This is a huge deal for us. Prior to a few weeks ago, I would have been recognized as a parent in Canada and then flown back to Australia and lost all of my parental rights. It's like a crazy game of peek-a-boo. "Here's your Mum! Where's she gone?" One minute a legal parent, the next a legal stranger. If we were ever back in Australia and something happened to Caroline, I would have had to hightail it to the Canadian embassy to reassert my parental rights (which I would lose again outside the gates).

Which doesn't seem like a huge deal (after all, it's the emotional stuff that matters, right? Right?) until you count up all the ways you can get screwed if you are not recognized as a parent. Everything from giving permission for medical procedures, to being allowed to travel with the child, to being allowed to make schooling decisions...not to mention custody rights in the case of seperation, etc, etc. The kinds of rights you completely take for granted...until you don't have them.

It hasn't just been a problem practically (and, after all, we do live in Canada and so would have been much more protected than couples living permanently in Australia, and many other places around the world) but also emotionally. I've never been able to understand how Caroline and I can go through this process so much as a team, with every decision a joint one, and then somehow she ends up with full rights and I end up with nothing. It just doesn't make sense. And it has also left me completely vulnerable - if Caroline and I ever broke up and she moved back to Australia, it would have been her good will and ethics that would have protected me, not the law (and, of course, good will is usually available in spades between couples after a break-up!)

But now Australia has come aboard!! Now, when I go back to see my family, I don't have to sacrifice my family to do it.

A beautiful case of the political having huge implications for the personal.