There is a new show on TV called ‘Modern Family’. You’ve got your traditional family, your step-family and your homosexual couple with children, but if you want ‘modern’ the following case will take some beating. It’s complicated so bear with me. 

It involves two Australian couples, one homosexual and one lesbian. The lesbian couple have split up. Each of the women has a daughter via separate sperm donors. One member of the homosexual couple provided sperm to one of the two lesbian women who we’ll call Woman A. The homosexual couple had regular contact with the resultant child of Woman A and couldn’t help but have contact with the child of Woman B as well. 

But now that the women have split up, the homosexual couple are insisting on having contact with Woman B’s child even though neither of them is biologically related to the child, a girl. They insist that because they became ‘father figures’ to the child they have a right to ongoing contact with her, and she has a right to ongoing contact with them. 

The Queensland Family Court agrees that the men have a case and has given them permission to apply for access. 

Meanwhile, and since March, the child has been dividing her time between THREE separate households, that of her mother, the mother’s ex-partner, and the two men. 

Do I have to spell out how incredible and bizarre this is? It’s bad enough for a child to have to go back and forth between two houses when the child’s parents split up, but between three?

But why stop there? If every adult who drifts in and out of a child’s life can lay claim to be a ‘parent figure’ the number of households a child will have to divide time between, and the number of ‘parent figures’ a child can have is potentially infinite.

For example, the child’s biological mother is quite likely to move in with someone else who will then become a parent figure to the child. What happens when they split up? And what happens if the two men split up? Modern families indeed. The poor kids.