Born, raised in secret: kids to get birth certificates

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.

When aged 19, the woman gave birth to a girl in 2011 in Sydney's south.

At the time, the woman and child's father were in Australia on student visas.

In 2019 the woman gave birth to a boy, delivering him at their southwest 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 NSW birth certificates, overturning a refusal by the Registrar of Births Deaths and Marriages.

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.

"The social stigma attached to teenage pregnancy cast a shadow over many prospects in her life.

"Fear, confusion and an overwhelming sense of shame kept them quiet and they decided to deal with the pregnancy themselves."

In both cases the woman hid the fact she was pregnant from others including colleagues by wearing loose-fitting clothes.

"Because she and her partner did not know how to nourish her body properly to prepare for the pregnancy, she was extremely skinny at the time and almost always wore loose clothes to hide her protruding abdomen."

As the couple's daughter grew older they were unable to enrol her in school due to the requirement for a birth certificate, instead purchasing textbooks for her to complete daily maths and reading assignments at home.

By the time the second child was born the couple's student visas had lapsed and both were in Australia illegally, further preventing them from seeking help.

The woman gave birth to her son entirely alone, with the father arriving home from work five minutes later.

"They thought that if he arrived quickly he could take her to hospital, but he proved unable to make it back in time," the tribunal said.

Neither of the children had any serious medical complications requiring intervention and have not received any vaccinations to date.

On one occasion when the boy seriously cut his hand on a piece of glass he was taken to Bankstown Hospital, where without any Medicare information for the child, staff instead took down the couple's contact details and sent a bill to their home.

The couple recently gave birth to a third child who was born in a hospital and received a birth certificate under more conventional circumstances.