A throuple of gay men who recently adopted a baby have become the first family in America to have
three dads listed on their child’s birth certificate. The fathers all have equal and legal rights as the parents of their child.
Ian Jenkins, Jeremy Allen Hodges, and Alan Mayfield are the names of the parents. Jenkins and Alan have been together for 17 years. Mayfield met them eight years ago, and they have since been a
throuple.
“The big challenge for us was really the legal challenges, so with surrogacy, you have to have a parentage order from the court declaring who are going to be the legal parents,” Mayfield tells
The Morning Show. “In the beginning we weren’t sure that we could have all three of us on the birth certificate, so it became a court process where we argued in court.”
The couple received the legal protections that allowed their tri-parentage in 2017. The growing number of situations in which three people have the legal benefits of being a child’s parents are growing. These rights are extremely important, parents are the only ones who can make decisions for their kids.
Parents alone have the right to consent to their child’s medical care, visit them in the hospital, or access medical and educational documents. The increase in granting those legal parentage over a child that someone is not biologically related to reflects the reality that modern families are not created simply by their blood relationship. The courts are recognizing that those in parenting roles are not always given parenting rights.
While they are the first three men to be legally recognized as fathers on their child’s birth certificate, they are not the
first three people to be granted tri-parentage. In 2013 California passed a law that allowed a child to legally have more than one parent. Similar laws have been passed in 12 states since then. An easier process of having a parent being legally added after the birth of the child has been utilized by families before, where a judge determines that someone who is not legally their parent has been functioning as one.
The throuple has documented their struggles and joys fighting for this right on an Instagram account named “Three Dads and a Baby.” As society continues to progress, Jenkins says he hopes that their legal precedent will allow others in similar situations to get the legal rights and protections they need in order to raise their children.
