Question: Gender-neutral family titles
Anonymous asks…
To the genderqueer parents out there: what do your kids call you? Do you just settle for mom or dad, or is there a neutral parent title?
Please post your response in the comments below.
» Ask Genderfork «
Posted by Merritt on April 14th, 2012 at 08:00 am
Category: questions 6 comments »
April 14th, 2012 at 8:58 am |
My baby, when they’re of age, will call me by my first name. seems easiest.
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April 14th, 2012 at 10:25 am |
You could consider trying to see if there are any languages which don’t gender parental names, or use the word for “parent” itself, whether in another language or in English. I’ve heard some families use “Maddy” or similar blended terms. Or, it might depend on whether you simply prefer a title like “mama” or “papa” etc. based on how you individually relate to your child and your gender, and are comfortable subverting the gendered usage of that term.
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April 14th, 2012 at 10:47 am |
A good friend of mine has a parent who is genderqueer. He refers to this parent as “mom” but uses male pronouns. His dad identifies as male, so he has a mom and a dad but uses male pronouns for both.
The parents refer to eachother as significant others rather than husband and wife. They don’t really gender anything in their house.
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April 14th, 2012 at 7:15 pm |
I was thinking I’d like to be called Bubby. It’s usually associated with Jewish grandmas but it means “special person”.
Otherwise I’ll just pull an Atticus Finch and let them call me by my first name.
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April 16th, 2012 at 12:05 am |
I actually have several old photos of family members from the late 1800s. All are labeled ‘wa’ or ‘grandwa’ along with their names. To this day we don’t know why they used neutral pronouns, but it’s a pretty cool idea, nonetheless!
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Anonymous replied:
April 18th, 2012 at 2:07 pm
that’s really intriguing! i wonder if the word was in use beyond that or if they invented it themselves.
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