The Spanish Bioethics Committee (CBE), attached to the Ministry of Health, has published a report on the coparenting model. Specifically, contractual coparenting prior to conception (called CPC coparenting), which refers to a situation in which two people – or sometimes more than two – between whom there is no emotional-sexual relationship decide to have a child. in common upbringing, after signing an agreement that establishes the responsibilities, obligations and rights that will correspond to each person and the parameters in which care and education will be carried out.
The document, which is titled On contractual coparenting prior to conception. Reflections and recommendations 2024, establishes nine recommendations. The fourth draws attention, where it is emphasized that the logic of the market should not turn the son or daughter into a “consumer good.”
“In no case should the market logic in which intermediary agencies are embedded, according to which everything can be exchanged for a price, blur parental responsibility or turn the son or daughter into a consumer good,” it reads. the recommendation.
The committee is not at all opposed to this new model, which it says is not very common in Spain yet. Simply, as the report states, it aims to “provide citizens with tools for an informed understanding of co-parenting and its implications, confirming the need to establish solid ethical and legal frameworks that define parental rights, duties and responsibilities and safeguard the well-being of children. minor people involved.”
And it does all this, the writing points out, “in a context in which traditional definitions of family are under review” and in which “CPC coparenting emerges as an alternative that presents both challenges and opportunities that require truthful, free information. of biases and interests and a responsible and clear approach that identifies the possible repercussions for minors born in this family configuration and enables their understanding without misunderstandings or prejudices.”
For Anaïs Barcelona, general child, adolescent and perinatal health psychologist, everything that involves “putting the rights of the minor above all other considerations” is positive. She defends that people have every right to be parents, “but above that right is that of the child.” In this sense, she regrets that sometimes what concerns the latter is not taken into account, and she gives surrogacy as an example. “In this model, which is not legal in Spain, for me the desire to be a father takes precedence over the right of the child,” she maintains.
She explains that she has already known some cases of CPC co-parenting and, consequently, understands that “it is good to regulate it” as this model is arriving in Spain. What she doesn't like so much is that there is an agency that acts as an intermediary and that makes a profit from it. “It is true that she acts as a Tinder to connect two people who want to be parents, but I don't know if her participation is necessary for this. I have nothing against him, but I am not convinced by that intermediation.”
In its report, the CBE emphasizes that “the best interests of the child is the main axiological criterion”, and makes other recommendations, such as the duty to “reinforce parental responsibility in co-parenting agreements”. It also states that the desire to be parents “should not lose sight of the subjectivity of the minor or limit their physical, mental and emotional development, at the risk of weakening their self-esteem and harming their dignity, autonomy and identity” and suggests “ separate these co-parenting agreements from the so-called agreements on shared custody”, as the latter are situated in the “framework of a breakup of cohabitation of a couple with children”.
