Expanding Language Around Parenting Experiences
Disclaimer: the author’s scope is limited to her life experience, including education, work, and interpersonal relationships.
To be vulnerable (but real) for a moment, despite my own identity, I used to struggle with the concept of gender inclusive language in birth, postpartum, and parenting spaces before I fully immersed myself in the work of a queer affirming postpartum caregiver and family/parent advocate. I felt that words like mother and woman held so much power and importance when it came to the specific experiences of gestational parenting, and that not using them would threaten the strength of the people taking on these incredible roles and biological feats.
As a person who identifies as queer in both orientation and as a way of life, being able to wholly affirm and hold the experiences of families who approach family planning and parenting with queer values, it was important to me to understand fully why inclusive language matters, and is not harmful or disempowering for women and mothers.
It took just one sentence to completely change my understanding and feelings around using inclusive language in birth and postpartum spaces.
Cedar Rivers (Love Over Fear Wellness), a full-spectrum careworker and community educator that I got the privilege of learning from in my first year of studying postpartum carework, taught an incredible masterclass to postpartum doulas-in-training on queer inclusivity in birthwork. Cedar said:
Inclusion benefits everybody.
Let me elaborate. There is a phenomenon known as the “curb cut effect” - when ramps became a part of urban planning in sidewalks so that wheelchair users could more easily access these spaces, the sidewalks became more accessible to everyone, not just people with disabilities using mobility devices. People pushing strollers, pulling luggage, children in wagons or push bikes, all benefit from a design choice that was initially meant to accommodate one set of people. Inclusive language is a perfect example of the curb cut effect: it gives more options to everyone, beyond who it was originally meant for.
Every person relates to parenthood in a unique way. Inclusive language provides us with an expansive and celebratory way to embrace all ways of showing up as a parent. I was recently working with a family and I referred to one of the parents as Dad. I was corrected and humbled by his choice to go by the Korean word for Dad (Appa, if you were curious), since those are his cultural roots and how he identifies with his parenting role. So you can begin to see - while inclusive language helps us to acknowledge parents along the gender and sexuality spectrum, it also helps us to include parents who simply don’t use the terms we automatically assume they do. Best practice is to ask before assuming (a great question for an intake form!), and to mirror and respect the language people use to describe themselves, rather than defaulting or assuming.
It is important to acknowledge that there are endless ways that language around birth and postpartum can be shifted and re-thought in order to be inclusive. These are fields that are highly gendered, and the world has not caught up yet. The way we speak directly impacts the way that we think and the way that we move about the world. When we celebrate diversity through inclusive language, we get to celebrate the strength and experiences of every individual doing the important work of raising young people. When we expand our language, we expand our experiences, our compassion, and our humanness.
-Written by one of Sanctuary's postpartum doulas, Zoey Helgesen
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