Comment: Who has the right to define what family should look like, in today’s Romania?

Guest writer Dana Costache, a family mediator in New York, analyzes the referendum for family in Romania from a different perspective.

A father once asked me how I manage teaching catholic children about family and faith, and then go to work as a family and divorce mediator. It was hard, then, for me to explain that family doesn’t start with marriage and doesn’t end after the divorce, and that these two socio-economic concepts have little to do with the immense love children have for the people they call their family. As a mediator serving families in New Jersey and New York City, I got to witness the dissolution of several marriages and observe family members’ efforts to re-define their own roles within the family once the marriage ended. As a catechist in a Catholic Church, I taught the principles of Catholicism to 4