Student explores Dutch three-parent families

Although many view Amsterdam as a mecca for queer relationships and untraditional lifestyles, it has become increasingly hard for same-sex partners to start a family since Dutch sperm banks no longer accept anonymous donations and it is no longer legal to have commercial surrogacy. This has led to the formation of three-parent families.

The first Women’s and Gender Studies-Chellis House Event of Gaypril 2010 was a talk by Lark Endean Nierenberg ’11 on “The State of Queer Families in the Netherlands: Discrepancies Between Intentional and Legal Three-Parent Families.”

Lark Endean Nierenberg ’11, who is joint-majoring in sociology-psychology and minoring in women and gender studies, studied abroad in Amsterdam this fall and completed her gender research project at SIT (School for International Training) and the University of Amsterdam.

The three-parent families Nierenberg interviewed consisted of “two female partners in a relationship and a male who was brought into the relationship for reproductive purposes.”

Before birth, she explained, all three adults decided to co-parent and have a lasting relationship as three parents for the child.”

However, difficulties arise when trying to define the legal authorities and rights of the three parents. Only the gestational mother and recognized father are awarded legal parental rights, even if the gestational mother carried the other mother’s egg so that both partners are biological mothers. If the father is unknown, the non-gestational mother is still only awarded “parental authority,” which Nierenberg defined as a “tricky Dutch concept in which the parent gets all the responsibilities but none of the rights of a legal parent.”

The two mothers in a three-parent family will only have full legal standing if they go through formal court adoption and the father relinquishes his rights. So, what if all three parents want to be intentional parents, but only two people can be legal parents?

The basis of Nierenberg’s project came from research by Raewyn Connell, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault and their theories on marriage, kinship, family and the state’s involvement in those institutions. She spoke about the prevailing heteronormativity that functions as a practice of nomination and legitimation of “the family” as it simultaneously limits and represses individuals and organizations of individuals that fall outside of the hegemonic norms. The results of Nierenberg’s research and interviews showed that the main problems faced by three-parent families mostly fell into four categories: definitions of family members, finances, international travel and legal adoption.

Nierenberg, who was excited about connecting her semester abroad to the Middlebury community by sharing her research in this student talk, also shed some light on her personal connections to this project.

“My research seems to stem from a life-long fascination with the ideologies and realities of the family,” said Nierenberg.

“I came up with the idea for my project when the first woman to marry a same-sex partner in the Netherlands gave a lecture to my class. Such a theme of difficulty navigating familial legal rights is quite familiar to me.”

Nierenberg’s family started out as a two- parent family with a mom and a dad, but since she was eight, she has had three parents: her mom, her mom’s partner Colleen, and her dad. While Colleen’s social and familial involvement in her life is simple — “we love each other, she’s my parent” — negotiating her legal involvement has been more difficult.

“Think financial and school forms, for example. It’s gotten in the way of things and has felt disadvantaged at times.”

Nierenberg feels this is an important subject to share with the Middlebury community for several reasons.

“It’s a privilege not to think of court dates after birth dates. These Dutch individuals form a family; they function as such, they love as such, but they are not legally protected as such,” she said.

‘The family’ isn’t as stable as we assume it to be. It’s not this one configuration of individuals, or even a few variations on that. Its structure and significance is continuously developing and changing within societies, as well as simply within individual families, as my own family highlights.”

She also spoke about her beliefs that legal protection and privilege should accurately reflect this reality.

“The first steps to that are critically thinking about and questioning the social institutions and privildges we take for granted,” she said.