The Spanish Bioethics Committee (CBE), attached to the Ministry of Health, has published a report on the co-parenting model. Specifically, contractual co-parenting prior to conception (called co-parenting), 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 foster care in common, by means of the prior signing of an agreement establishing the responsibilities, obligations and rights that will correspond to each one and the parameters in which care and education will be carried out. The document, which is entitled About pre-conception contractual coparenting. Reflections and recommendations 2024, establishes nine recommendations. The fourth draws attention, in which it is emphasized that the logic of the market must not turn the son or daughter into a "consumer good".
"In no case should the logic of the market in which intermediary agencies are ingrained, according to which everything can be exchanged for a price, blur parental responsibility or turn the son or daughter into a consumer good ”, says the recommendation.
The committee is not opposed to this new model, which it says is still not very common in Spain. Simply put, as the report says, it aims to “provide the public with tools for an informed understanding of co-parenting and its implications, and confirms the need to establish sound ethical and legal frameworks that define parental rights, duties and responsibilities and protect the well-being of the minors involved".
And it does all this, the article points out, "in a context in which the traditional definitions of family are under review" and in which "CPC co-parenting emerges as an alternative that presents both challenges and opportunities that require truthful information, free of biases and party interests and a responsible and clear approach that identifies the possible repercussions for minors born in this family configuration and enables understanding without misunderstandings or prejudices".
For Anaïs Barcelona, general child, youth and perinatal health psychologist, everything that involves "putting the rights of the minor above all other considerations" is positive. He defends that people have every right to be parents, "but above this right is that of the child". In this sense, he regrets that sometimes what concerns the latter is not taken into account, and gives surrogate motherhood as an example. "In this model, which is not legal in Spain, in my opinion the desire to be a parent is prioritized over the child's right", he says.
She explains that she has already seen some cases of CPC co-parenting and, consequently, she understands that "it is good to regulate it", since this model is already arriving in Spain. What he doesn't like so much is that there is an agency that acts as a mediator and gets a profit from it. "It's true that it acts like a Tinder to connect two people who want to be parents, but I don't know if their participation is necessary for that. I have nothing against him, but I am not convinced by this intermediation".
In its report, the CBE emphasizes that "the best interest 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 "must not lose sight of the child's subjectivity or limit their physical, mental and emotional development, at the risk of weakening their self-esteem and injuring their dignity, autonomy and identity" and suggests "separate these co-parenting agreements from the so-called shared custody agreements", since the latter are in the "framework of a breakup of cohabitation between a couple with children".
