双语阅读|荷兰拟立法允许孩子有两个以上合法父母
FOUR years ago Pepijn Zwanenberg, a club DJ and a city-council member for the GreenLeft party in Utrecht, sat down with his boyfriend Ivo and their friend Janette to plan having a child together. They wrote a letter agreeing to make medical decisions by consensus, to live within cycling distance of each other and to enter mediation in case of quarrels. “Straight people often have kids by accident, or take it for granted. We thought about it much more seriously,” says Mr Zwanenberg. Two years later Janette gave birth to their daughter Keet. All three consider themselves Keet’s parents. But Ivo, who is not her biological father, has no legal connection to her. In the Netherlands, as almost everywhere else in the world, a child can have only two parents in the eyes of the law.
四年前,一家俱乐部DJ及同时也是乌得勒支绿色左派联盟(GreenLeft Party)市议员佩皮恩•兹瓦南堡(Pepijn Zwanenberg)决定与他男友伊沃(Ivo)及他们共同的朋友珍妮特(Janette)计划共同生孩子。他们写了一协议,同意以协商一致方式作出生育决定,并同意彼此生活相距不远,在争吵时会进行调解。“异性恋们经常是无计划地要孩子,或认为这是很正常。我们对这种事更为慎重。” 兹瓦南堡说。两年后,珍妮特生下了他们的女儿凯特(Keet)。他们三个人都认为自己是凯特的父母。但是,伊沃不是凯特的亲生父亲,也不是法律上的父亲。在荷兰,甚至是在世界上几乎所有地方,一个孩子在法律上都只能有两个父母。
Dutch gay-rights groups and advocates for non-traditional families say this “rule of two” does not match the realities of modern-day parenting, and that the country should allow meervoudig ouderschap, or “multiple parentage”. Until recently, they seemed to be making progress. In December a government commission recommended that children be allowed up to four legal parents, in up to two households. Most of the major parties, including the governing Liberals, quickly signed on.
荷兰同性恋权利团体和非传统家庭的倡导者称,这种“法定两个家长”的规定与现代的育儿现实并不符,国家应该允许多个父母或者说“多重父母”。最近,他们似乎取得了一些进展。12月,荷兰政府的一个部门提出建议,孩子最多有四个合法父母以及有两个家庭来抚养。大多数主要政党很快就同意参与这项提议,其中包括执政的自由党。
But multiple parentage has since fallen victim to the country’s four-party coalition negotiations, which have been dragging on since an election in March. The centre-right Liberals and the left-liberal D66 party support the reform, but the Christian Democrats are wary. More important, the Christian Union, an economically leftish and culturally conservative party, is strongly opposed. The negotiations are secret, but leaks suggest the parties intend to put off a decision by calling for more research.
但是,自从四个政党联合谈判以来,“多重父母”沦为了牺牲品;此事从三月选举以来一直拖延不动。中右翼的自由主义者和左翼自由主义的D66党支持改革,基督教民主党则持谨慎态度。更重要的是,基督教联盟——经济上左倾和文化上保守的党派——持强烈反对态度。谈判在秘密进行,不过,泄漏出来的消息表明各方有意要求进一步的研究来之后再作出决定。
That has frustrated those who hoped that the Netherlands, the first country to legalise gay marriage in 2001, could become the first to pass a national multiple-parentage law. The issue is a global one, affecting not just gay parents but those in fused households following remarriage, or raising children from other relationships. Parents who lack legal status may be unable to check their children into a hospital, enroll them in school, take them abroad or speak for them with the police. They can generally get court orders or permission letters to do so; but it is a hassle. Worse, if their relations with the legal parents sour, they have no automatic right to a share of custody or even to visit their children.
那些迫切希望荷兰——在2001年成为第一个同性婚姻合法化的国家——成为第一个通过多个父母法案的国家的人感到失望。这是一个全球性的问题,不仅影响着同性恋家长,还影响再婚后或者以其他关系来抚养孩子的重组家庭。缺乏合法身份的家长可能无法让子女住院、入学、出国或在警察面前成为监护人。他们通常可以通过得到法院命令或许可证来实行这些事,不过这很麻烦。更糟糕的是,如果他们与法定父母的关系恶化,他们没有权利要求监护甚至看望他们的孩子。
The lack of legislation governing complex families often obliges courts to step in. In some American states, judges have granted legal status to a third parent when they deemed it to be in the child’s best interest. Although multiple parentage is often seen as a gay-rights issue, many cases in America are unrelated to same-sex marriage: the first, in Louisiana in 1985, involved an out-of-wedlock conception, and a recent New York case involved a ménage à trois. California passed a law in 2013 allowing judges to designate third parents; in Canada the provinces of British Columbia and Ontario allow more than two people to register as parents. But no country has adopted the practice nationwide.
缺乏关于复杂家庭组成的立法监督,往往会让法院介入。在美国的一些州,在认为符合儿童最佳利益的情况下,法官会给予第三任父母法定地位。虽然多个父母经常被视为是同性恋权利问题,在美国有许多案例与同性婚姻无关的:第一例是1985年路易斯安那州关于婚外情的概念,以及最近纽约关于三人性行为的案件。加州在2013年通过了一项法律,允许法官指定第三任父母。在加拿大,不列颠哥伦比亚省和安大略省允许两个以上的人登记为父母。不过,没有一个国家在全国范围内采用这种做法。
Multiple parentage has its critics. Some worry that groups of three or more parents are more likely to break up, leading to unpleasant custody battles. “The more adults have legal rights, the more complicated the primary parent’s and the child’s lives are,” cautions Joanna Grossman, a family-law professor at Southern Methodist University. Similar concerns lie behind the Christian Democrats’ hesitation. The Christian Union’s arguments are more old-fashioned: the party’s leader, Gert-Jan Segers, has said that recognising more than two parents is contrary to “biological reality”.
“多个父母”的提议受到了批评。有些人担心,三个或三个以上父母的群体更有可能分手,从而导致难看的监护之争。南卫理公会大学(Southern Methodist University)家庭法教授乔安娜·格罗斯曼(Joanna Grossman)警告道:“成年人越多,法定权利越多,主要父母和孩子的生活就越复杂。”基督教民主党的犹豫也包含有类似的担忧。基督教联盟的观点更传统:该党的领导人格特-扬·塞格斯(Gert-Jan Segers)称,承认两个以上的父母是违反“生物现实”的。
Yet in the Netherlands, the main obstacle to reform is not ideology but political fragmentation. The probable coalition will have a bare one-vote majority in parliament, and will be split between two liberal and two Christian parties. They are unlikely to reach an accord before the end of September. (The caretaker government nearly collapsed in the interim, before a last-minute deal met a Labour demand to raise teachers’ salaries.) A more stable government would probably move quickly to let Mr Zwanenberg’s boyfriend, and other de facto parents, make their status official. As Ard van der Steur, then the Liberals’ justice minister, said after the government report came out in December: “There is nothing wrong with making regulations for the way the Netherlands actually is.”
然而,在荷兰,改革的主要障碍却不是意识形态,而是政治分裂。或能成形的执政联盟将在议会中刚刚有多数优势,却分成了两个自由派和两个基督教派别的势力。他们在9月底之前不太可能达成协议。(临时政府在过渡时期几乎倒台,在最后时刻满足了工党提高教师工资的要求)。更稳定的政府可能很快就会让兹瓦南堡的男朋友和其他事实上的父母确立自己的正式地位。在十二月份发表政府报告之后自由党正义党时任司法部长阿德•范•斯图尔(Ard van der Steur)说道:“实际上,荷兰做出这样的规定,没有错”。
编译:李文卓
审校:雷月营
编辑:翻吧君
来源:经济学人