Children born and raised in secret for years to get NSW birth certificates
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Tribunal finds young couple faced ‘difficult situation’ and were too afraid to tell their ‘conservative’ parents in China about the pregnancies. A young woman who kept two pregnancies secret and gave birth at home was afraid to speak up in part due to her conservative Chinese background.
At 19 years old the woman gave birth to a girl in 2011 in Sydney’s south. At the time, the woman and the child’s father were in Australia on student visas. In 2019 the woman gave birth to a boy, delivering him at their south-west Sydney home, again having received no natal care.
Because the children were not born in hospital and their births were never declared, both grew up without any official recognition or documentation. On Friday, a tribunal ordered the children be issued New South Wales birth certificates, overturning a refusal by the registrar of births, deaths and marriages.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email. In its decision, the tribunal accepted the young couple had found themselves in a “difficult situation”. “They were afraid to tell their parents, who were in China, because they hold very traditional and conservative views, with cultural norms placing significant pressure on unmarried mothers, especially as she was a teenager at the time,” the tribunal said.
