Children might be better off having three legal parents rather than just one or two, an academic has argued.

In an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Daniela Cutas, of the University of Gothenberg suggested that “the necessity of the max-two parents framework” needed to be challenged.

Cutas argued that while there may be drawbacks to families with more than two parents, the benefits could be significant.

Most governments, she said, tolerated single parent families, but they did not provide for families which contained three or more parents. 

She said: “However, more and more children nowadays grow up not only in impoverished, but also in enriched families.”

Cutas rejected the idea, which is backed a range of social science data, that children perform better when raised by their two married, biological parents.

She claimed that research on multi-parent families showed “that neither heterosexual coupledom of the parents, nor genetic ties, are an indication of family success”. 

“Instead, what seems to matter for children’s emotional well-being is family process, whatever the number of, genetic link with (or lack of it), sex and sexual orientation of, their parents,” Cutas claimed.

She added: “Allowing parenting by more than two people might help some who struggle with competition for parenting, as well as the children involved. It might also accommodate the reality of the lives of those who practise triparenting, but cannot, so to speak, make it official. 

“It might, in addition, make it easier for some people to include parenting in their lives. With two more adults to share parenting tasks, one might find it easier to organise one’s life as a parent.” 

“There are reasons why having three parents may be better than having only two or one: such may be the increased chances of parental survival and the multiplication of resources in general, as well as, arguably, a soothing of competition for legal parenting by not always needing to choose only two.