Schools told to avoid using 'mother' and 'father' ( in America). Could it happen here?

yikes lass i didn't mean that to upset anybody when i said

"it is my belief that genuine inclusivity for those children would mean going a lot further than just paying lip service by hiding words. it would mean asking them how they wanted to mark mothers' day for example and supporting them through it (be it to skip the class where cards were made, to make a card for someone else in their lives or to make the card they wish they could give to their mother)."

my poorly made point was not that schools MUST celebrate mothers day and children who do not have contact with their mothers MUST leave the class when they make cards. my point was that children who have no contact with their mothers do still know they have/had a mother.

my point was meant to say that this will be an issue for them on some level, however much we use euphemisms or don't talk about mothers' day. hiding language does not solve problems or take all the pain away.

my experience of working with children in a variety of roles is that the issue does come up regardless. humans are triggered by so much more- smells, the time of year, a certain way of moving, somebody's dress. children won't always tell you when. they are more likely to "act out". the concept of mother is embedded in our culture, is in stories and art and everyday conversation.

i was trying to say we need to be more proactively sensitive with these children if that makes sense? not to deal with them so that the mothers day card session can go on. but to reach these children and be sensitive to their life stories even on an ordinary day and especially on a day like mothers day.

Our school always does this anyway. Parent or guardian.
Seems fair enough to me.
It is less clumsy than mother / father / guardian which seems a bit long-winded when parent / guardian would do.

Just waiting for the day that I can no longer call myself Mrs
Really?
That's what you get from a thread where almost everyone has said 'parents/guardians is because of different family set ups, not genitals or self identified gender'?

Just waiting for the day that I can no longer call myself Mrs

Parent/guardian is pretty standard in my experience. Often children aren't raised by their parents and this is a way of covering all. I don't think it's an eradication of the term mother.

As a person in a same-sex relationship, I always check for “parent 1” and “parent 2”.

Otherwise, I was at school in the 90s/00s, “Dear Parent/Guardian” was the standard greeting.

Ours has ‘caregivers for’ or parents/guardians.

I did go to school with several kids who had lost parents, or were in care, or brought up by GPs - this was around then (80s.)

I dont think it’s necessarily an assault on mothers. We never did mother’s day either now I think of it.

Actually, Alberta (and Canada) are in North America, and as the OP just said 'America' it's not actually clear whether they meant North America, which includes the U.S.A, Canada and Mexico, or the United States of America. So they may not have been actually wrong, just imprecise.
scuttles back to pedants' corner

Yep, 'parents/carers' is standard on most communication in schools in the UK, and has been for a long time.

This is not about Trans issues. Schools have been sensitive to the fact that children come from a variety of family situations for decades.
Being aware that many children are brought up by grandparents, foster parents, same sex couples, siblings, living in care etc etc means that the casual use of mother and father just needs thinking about. It's being sensitive to the pupils in front of you and their situation.
Not controversial at all.

Parents or Guardian used here too and that's fine. My children still call me mum and that's enough for me.

"Parent or guardian" was used when I was at school in the 1980s. I really don't think this is a big issue.

Re mother's and father's day I have an antipathy to both, as did my mother and my mother in law.

I think it is extremely insensitive for schools to push either. The suggestion by one poster that a child could just skip the class when that is being done astonishes me. So a child should be expected to draw attention to his or herself?

By say 11 or 12 won't most children will have picked up from the media that this concept exists? If they then of their volition buy or make a card or bring their mother or father breakfast in bed doesn't that mean more than it being something which will only happen if a teacher or another adult has had to push it? Particularly if the promotion has been at the expense of making other children feel left out or odd?

Making either mother or father's day cards was not a thing when I was at school and neither were done at my son's school.

I do wonder if the OP is a parent given the use of parents/ guardians/ carers has been standard terminology in the UK for decades.

I'm completely happy with it tbh - I actually think that using Mum and dad or mothers and fathers leads to more lazy stereotyping as well as being incorrect.

There's plenty of festivals for the kids to make and do so dropping mothers/Father's Day really wouldn't affect the amount of 'art' that comes home to me as well

There are plenty of children with atypical family set ups. I wish schools wouldn't do Mothers/Fathers Day stuff. My DH died when our DC were still in primary school. You do not want to trigger a child's overwhelming grief when they think about their dad.

Like others I think this probably hasn't got anything to do with trans issues and has everything to do with being quite rightly sensitive to children from non-standard family set ups

I can see what Lass is saying re mother's day, but as a single parent I rather liked it when DS came home from nursery or infant school classes with home made mother's day cards as there was no one at home for him to sit down and make one with (one can't very well supervise the making of one's own card). I also appreciated that they had the common sense to let him make a card for grandad in the run up to father's day.

I think Alberta is showing itself to be about 30years behind the times!

And I'm surprised it is taking legislation there to impose the terminology that is already nigh-on universal in UK. (And which is sod all to do with trans issues - though everything does seem to get shoehorned into that debate in this topic)

Alberta is in Canada. I wouldn't expect anything else actually. There is a powerful TRA in their government and the press regulations are very strict on the way they report about Transgender people. Their prisons are segregated by gender not sex. They have self declaration for all documents. Sports I think are segregated by gender not sex but you wouldn't actually know because they'd just say "woman wins" whatever.

We use parents/carers/guardians.

Mainly because not all children live with their mum/dad, quite a few children have sadly lost their mum/dad, we've got some who are moving around the care system and have had 15 homes in 8 years, others are looked after by grandparents. In some cases, we've had informal fostering arrangements where family friends have been looking after children.

Parnent and carers covers most bases. It has nothing to do with keeping adults happy and everything to do with being aware that different children have different backgrounds.

I don't think this is a trans issue or a feminist issue. Schools have been using "parent/guardian" for as long as I can remember.

*Piece of info

My dds schools used parents/guardians on every single letter/not of info.

They are 27 and 23 so it’s been happening for decades.

Our school, in England, already refers to 'parents/carers' in all letters. And I'm pretty sure has done so since DC joined (I kept the first school newsletter in a memory box). That's early 00s.

I thought this was totally normal, we live in a diverse area of London and listing all the possible preferred titles would make forms and letters really unwieldy. They were also really tactful about things like Mothers Day and Fathers Day, and I think that's a good thing.

I absolutely agree with this. I have children in my class with 2 mothers, with single parent families, with both parents dead, living with grandparents, etc.

Saying 'parents and carers' harms noone and includes everybody.

My children's school generally uses "parents or guardians".

On one occasion they used the term "responsible adult", which ended with lots of clever clogs signing off "The Irresponsible One".
However, I am not in the UK. It sounded better in the original language.