Even as the year winds down, there’s still plenty of news about LGBTQ parents and our families. Here’s a roundup of some recent stories from around the world that I haven’t yet covered.
Politics and Law
- A nonbiological mother in Latvia is the first in the country to take “paternity leave,” which had in the past been granted only to fathers, reports the Baltic Times.
- The Swedish government is working to make the nation’s legislation, including its Parental Code, gender neutral, says Sputnik News.
- In less good news, the Hungarian government has approved a bill defining marriage as between a man and a woman and effectively excluding same-sex couples from adoption (if not from parenting altogether). The bill states, the “foundation of the family is marriage and the parent-child relationship. The mother is a woman, the father is a man,” reports CNN.
- Ron and Fabian Eckstrom-French, a two-dad couple who had become legal parents through surrogacy in the U.S., still had to go through an adoption process for those same children when they moved to New Zealand, explains Stuff. Last week, New Zealand’s Law Commission started a review of the country’s surrogacy laws, and the Eckstrom-French’s situation shows why change is needed.
- An Israeli legislative committee will soon consider a draft bill that would allow same-sex couples in Israel to be equally eligible to adopt children. Currently, same-sex couples can be approved for adoption, “but in practice only a handful of such couples have adopted children in the past decade,” reports the Times of Israel, noting that same-sex couples have been treated unequally by only being offered older children and those with special needs.
- Freddy McConnell, a transgender man in the U.K., has lost his final legal appeal to be named the father, rather than the mother, of his child. (Here’s more on McConnell and the film about his journey to become a parent.)
Family Creation
- Same-sex couples are now adopting one in six children in England, according to new government data, a big leap from one in 22 adoptions in 2012, reports Gay Star News.
- Sadhbh O’Sullivan at Refinery 29 looks at “The Cost Of Having Kids When You’re LGBTQ+” for people in the U.K. (I did a similar piece a few years back for the Advocate, but focused on the U.S.)
Parents in Power
- Julia Hoggett has become not only the first-ever out gay chief executive of the London Stock Exchange (LSE), but the first gay parent, PinkNews notes. She has two children with her ex-wife, and splits her time between London, where she lives with her current partner, and Dublin, where the children live with her ex. Among her many career achievements, she has “campaigned to reduce barriers for women returning to work after childbirth.”
Penguins
- Male penguin pair Sphen and Magic of the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium, who hatched an egg together in 2018, have adopted and hatched a second egg. Their first chick, Lara, is now learning how to build a nest and incubate eggs herself. They grow up so fast!