This Proposed Law Says Childless Households Aren't Families

October 2017 delivered a pile of stunning headlines, and the one from Jutamji List, the Croatian daily newspaper and website, announces the nation is considering a new law declaring a household without children, even one with a married couple, will not legally be considered as a family.

I have heard several creative ways to describe the driverless train ride called 2017, from the US presidential election to record-breaking hurricanes and the devastation they've left behind. We seem to be trapped in WTF Hell.

After Croatia's draft ruling entered public debate, Jutamji List explained, "Few countries in Europe have legally defined family," but Croatia is legally saying that "unless there are children, there is no family."

The newspaper went on to note:

"Although according to the Law on Life Partnership, the same sex partner who is not a child's parent has under certain conditions the right to the so-called partnership rights, which are almost equal to parenting rights, the new law is telling them clearly that they are not a family,"

And for extra measure, households where children are being raised by a same-sex couple wouldn't be considered to be families, either. The idea is pushed by an organization called the Coalition for the Family

WTF?

A journalist at the Serbian website B92 wondered about children whose parents are deceased and who are raised by their grandparents. What about a wife and a husband, whose child has died? Do they represent a family?

Not long after I posted the B92 story on Facebook, a NotMom replied, "Something similar happens in my country, Romania, these days."

Wait. What?

My Romanian Facebook friend wrote that the Coalition for the Family "also supports canceling subsidies for contraception and elective abortion, forcing parents of minors to have counseling if they want to divorce, and lowering some taxes for married couples and parents, while forcing single and childless/childfree individuals to pay more."

I had to know more.

Google introduced me to a Romanian blogger who wrote in November 2016 that the Coalition for the Family is "a misogynistic wolf in a homophobic sheep’s clothing".

His blog, Bucharest Life, reports that with "the institutional help of the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Coalition collected almost three million signatures" in 2016 to force a constitutional referendum on the issue in 2017.

Reportedly, public reaction is "strong" against the proposed ruling, and in unrelated October 2017 reports, Romania's Prime Minister Mihai Tudose is thinking about shaking up his cabinet, and maybe more.

There are readers of The NotMom who decided to click off somewhere in the second paragraph that revealed this post's Eastern European focus. That's unfortunate, because history teaches that what happens elsewhere can always happen to you.