The Two Mother Problem
One of these things is not like the other
Do you remember that song from Sesame Street: One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others)? You could sing along as you’re reading.1
One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn’t belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song essay?
I’m a New Zealand citizen, born and raised here, and have lived most of my years in this country. But I didn’t start here. That initial event took place in the United Kingdom.
My mother ended up in New Zealand, pregnant and without meaningful support. Adoption was her only option. And I became a New Zealand citizen by birth and by allocated parentage.
Here’s what the New Zealand 1955 Adoption Act says:2
The adopted child shall be deemed to become the child of the adoptive parent, and the adoptive parent shall be deemed to become the parent of the child, as if the child had been born to that parent in lawful wedlock.
It doesn’t matter if you were born in 1955 or today; the state retains the power to rewrite your identity. To make you “as if” born to an unrelated stranger.
My legal birth certificate confirms it.
But I have another one. All adopted people do.
My original birth certificate (OBC) shows my mother’s name and her place of birth in the United Kingdom. In my era, mothers were denied the right to name the father. (I cover this in depth in my PhD thesis, now titled BASTARDS.)
Internal Affairs is very clear that your OBC is “essentially ornamental” and cannot be used for any identity purpose. It is even endorsed with your adopter’s names and your new name, just in case you were tempted to try to use it.3
“Our Departmental Policy is to provide the endorsement on the pre-adoptive original birth certificate to ensure the record is not used to establish a new identity for the individual.”
So I thought, let’s test this. Why not use my OBC to apply for British citizenship by maternal descent?
I provided my original birth certificate, my mother’s birth and death certificates (and my father’s too, for good measure).
It took some time, but eventually the answer came in….
