How many legal parents can a child have? The Dutch are asking the question | Mark Smith

In our rainbow family, there are two dads and a mum - but the law in the Netherlands only recognises two of us

Our daughter is very much on board with the idea that, unlike her, many other five-year-olds don't have two fathers and a mum. Only has one dad," she'll remark in a confidential tone of a newly made friend at the trampoline park or the swimming pool.

My husband and I live in Amsterdam, a short cycle from our daughter's mum, who is a longstanding mutual friend. Our daughter's time is split between the two households. We are just one of many rainbow families in the Netherlands, where parents (often, a gay male couple and a single woman, or a lesbian couple) choose to have and raise children in constellations of more than two adults. The Dutch have a proud history of championing gay rights - it was back in 2001 that Amsterdam's then-mayor presided over the world's first same-sex marriages - and families such as ours have long been embraced here. And yet, from a legal point of view, we are unseen and, consequently, disadvantaged.

Mark Smith is an Amsterdam-based writer