The Dutch government would replace the word mother in the population register with a gender-neutral term
The Dutch caretaker government wants to replace the word mother in the population register with the "parent from whom the child was born" , the proposal to switch to a gender-neutral term was submitted to the parliament in a comprehensive amendment proposal together with several other planned amendments to the existing laws.
According to the justification of the bill - which was quoted by the NlTimes news portal on Monday - the change follows from the previous adjustment of the registry decree valid from 2022. At that time, the government made an exception for those who have children who still have the biological characteristics of a woman, but who are already legally registered as men. In their case, instead of the word mother, the expression "the parent from whom the child was born" appears in the birth certificate. The government now believes that this gender-neutral terminology should also be used in the Personal Registration Act.
Interior Minister Hugo de Jonge, a politician from the Christian Democratic Consolidation Party, said at the official meeting on the draft law: he does not expect the draft law to lead to many debates in parliament.
The representative of the conservative Reformed Political Party, Andre Flach, indicated in his statement that the government hides an extremely sensitive amendment in a joint proposal by submitting it together with other amendments. According to the representative, three years ago the cabinet still believed that the deletion of the designations mother and father was undesirable, because many parents consider the legal interpretation of the mother important, and now they want to remove the designation for everyone, while there is already a solution for a small group .
MTI
Photo: Gerd Altmann / Pixabay
