Birth certs should be changed to reference ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’, instead of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ with the option of adding additional parents, according to a proposal from two Irish academics.

Writing on the RTE News website, Drs Páraic Kerrigan and Amber L. Cushing say the current structure of the birth certificate is orientated around ‘normative’ categories of gender and sexuality, and does not allow for the ‘fluidity’ and ‘multiplicity’ of gender and sexual identities that exist today.

The say the process of collecting birth information and the design of the birth certificate must be reconsidered “to enable a more accurate and fuller representation of LGBTQ families”.

“This can come down to changing the field of information on the birth certificate to be more inclusive, such as changing “mother” and “father” to “parent 1”, “parent 2” and perhaps allowing for additional parents to be listed, as is allowed in the Canadian Province of British Columbia”.