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A decision by the NSW District Court which removed a sperm donor’s name from a birth certificate, so that both the child’s mothers could be recognised as her parents, has drawn attention to ongoing deficiencies in how we record the various kinds of parents that exist today.

The biological father of the child, who has a 10-year known relationship with his daughter and visitation rights awarded by the Family Court, is understandably devastated. But in fairness to the mothers, the law as it stands only allows for two parents to be recorded on a birth certificate — no matter who or how many people care for a child or intended to bring a child into the world.

When birth certificates were originally conceived of, divorce was rare and heavily stigmatised and adoptions uncommon, so their initial purpose was simply as records of the circumstances and persons involved in births.

But in the 21st century, the birth certificate has increasingly grown to become a straightforward and easily portable way to prove a relationship of responsibility with a child when dealing with government agencies, hospitals, schools and extra-curricular activities — so long as you’re on the birth certificate.

In an age of IVF, surrogacy, adoption and blended families, many children may have three or four people who fall into varying definitions of parenthood — biological parents (the people whose eggs and sperm have resulted in a child), legal parents (the people who have legal custody of a child), and emotional parents (the people who a child loves and who love and nurture a child) — and there are many circumstances where people may be in one or two of these parental categories but not the others.

In co-parenting arrangements, and blended families where separations have been amicable and new partners also have caring relationships for children, there would be situations where it would be useful for three or four people to be recognised as being legal parents of a child or be authorised by a legal parent to make decisions in their absence — and the birth certificate remains the most convenient way of doing that.

Providing the biological parentage of a child on a birth certificate, whether those parents have a known relationship with a child or not, preserves a certificate’s genealogical function, giving children access to their deeper genetic history, while allowing all of a child’s parents of intention to be recorded on a birth certificate maintains its function as a convenient way of proving legal responsibilities for a child.

For those who would not want to show a document revealing they were not the biological parents of their child, a certificate of legal parenthood with only details of custody and responsibility, issued by an authority like the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, might be a useful alternative to protect privacy — but that’s another issue for politicians to act on.