Motherhood, womanhood, gender and what that means to a child.

A friend's kids have been raised very happily within a lesbian relationship. They still by 18 months were happily shouting 'daddy!' at everyone they identified as male, having picked up the concept from other kids.

One thing we know about women, is that we were all born from one, surely. Are we going to take this knowledge away from children now?

I believe some people are. I have had two men tell me their child (acquired through surrogacy obv) does not have a mother. I said "of course there is a mother. Every single person on this planet has a mother" to which I was told my understanding of biology was different to theirs.

I think most adoptive parents take a similar stance to PP who have diligently researched best advice and are carefully explaining their child's origins in an age appropriate way as they grow up, mindful of their child's needs.

These men who seek to erase the woman from their child's life will surely find it's not so simple as their child grows up and goes to school and asks questions. I'm sure there will be a lot of children growing up for whom the details of how they came to be are erased and we will have to see how that works out as they grow up. I fear that boys will grow up with a poor view of women. For girls who may want to be mothers one day I think it may be very difficult.

A friend is adopted, she had a happy, secure childhood. I think motherhood hit her like a brick wall. Instead of going back to work as she had planned she found she couldn't leave her baby, or entrust it to anyone else. Her determination to be the "perfect" parent caused some difficulties in their own way. It clearly impacted how she adapted to motherhood in ways she hadn't forseen.

How we parent our children is influenced by our own upbringing, for better or worse. We find ourselves perhaps with new understanding of why our parents did particular things, of the influences on them. Maybe we are determined not to repeat harmful behaviours. Or maybe we model ourselves on the good example set by our mothers. Our memories inform our own behaviours and these children will have their own challenges to face.

With the Christmas rush I hadn't checked MN...sorry OP, I thought I knew the rules and had followed them in this thread. I was concerned about protecting children when they are born.

Over Christmas, my little nephew (18 mo) kept calling all his uncles dada and all his aunts mama. To him, men of a certain age are daddies and women of a certain age are mommies. I think it would have been quite confusing (and a little mean spirited) if we deviated from his toddler logic and demanded to be called different titles.

I’m an adoptive mum to two wonderful children. We have two fundamental rules in our house. 1) we never lie to our kids, we may tell the truth in an age appropriate way, but we never lie. 2) nothing about their past comes as a surprise, we drip feed tiny bits of info at any given opportunity. Nothing comes as a shock. If you don’t tell kids stuff, they do create their own reality. My kids are young, but in a few years - when they seriously start asking questions (and they will, and we are probably in for a few rough years) we will have already laid the groundwork -truth and information. I was at a conference once were this was discussed and it went something like this…at age 4 they want to know who they are, at age 7 they want to know who you are…at age 9 they want to know who they are but also ‘who the fuck are you?’

I wonder also what message it sends to a daughter (not sure if this person has a son or a daughter). A mother is a girl's very first role model, the example of what you will grow up to be (i.e. an adult human female). Imagine that person effectively telling you that growing up to be a woman is so awful that they won't admit to being one. How can a little girl process this? Your mum, standing in front of you, doesn't want to be your mum. Being female is unmentionable.

Imagine having to dance around the illusions of your own parents. Should be the other way round, mum playing along that her child is a puppy or dinosaur today!

This is going to be discovering that the information shared was knowingly, fundamentally not so, and that they were intentionally misled for the adult's personal needs.

I’m not sure for this particular family it can only be considered the same as a faith based upbringing because faith doesn’t deny your biological roots which most people find very important. There is a huge risk that the child will feel incredibly betrayed which I don’t generally think comes about in faith based households.

I can see the link though and more generally I think a child being raised to believe in trans ideology is being raised in a faith based household, but it might not directly impact them when they learn the truth about biological sex as their parents may not be trans themselves. Their parents may just believe TWAW and men can give birth and that’s what the child is told.

You are right about birth certificates. McConnell lost the case to get them adapted so it would say father instead of mother. Thank god. Can’t remember if it lost at appeal also.

I agree with JellySaurus; it would be similar to being brought up in a fundamentally religious household, although the child will eventually come upon the actual existence of sex based biology whereas the existence of a deity can only ever be a belief.

Also, I thought that requests to have two fathers on the child's birth certificate were refused. That document belongs to the child and states the facts of their birth, not the ideology of the parents.

I still find it baffling that women can become pregnant and give birth but deny that they are actually women, hence all the 'birthing-person', and 'chest-feeding' language.

A child can grow up in a faith household, and then leave the faith. It's not a given that this will involve trauma, though it likely would, and they may need to learn to navigate the world outside the faith, and they may never be completely free from the effect of their faith upbringing (an ex-Muslim or ex-Jew might never be comfortable with eating pork, for example).

But for a child brought up in this particular faith there would be the added challenge of language. They would have been brought up in almost a different form of English to everyone outside their family or TRA community. Pants, knickers and vest mean completely different things to Americans and Brits, and this can lead to extremely uncomfortable misunderstandings if one person thinks they are talking about intimacy, whereas the other is not being intimate at all.

My DS is donor conceived. I did A LOT of research on donor conception and adoption before making the decision to use a donor. The research suggests it’s the being lied to/deception that has the devastating emotional impact, not the family set up in itself.

Anyone using donors are strongly encouraged to use age appropriate language throughout to be honest about the child’s biological roots and be open and supportive with anything they want to know.

I can only imagine how damaging and confusing it would be to be told all your life your ‘dad’ gave birth to you then finding out some other way, probably at school with other kids, that it was only possible because ‘he’ is biologically female and is actually their biological mother. It’s so fucked up and I think it’s actually worse than the older generations who were told never to tell the child they were adopted or donor conceived (at the time thinking it was the best interests for everyone including the child) . We now know how damaging it is to children to be lied to in this way and there is no excuse to do it anymore.

It was something that struck me too. A young child can be raised in the faith based position that their father gave birth to them and they do not have a mother, and that some children were not born from a mother. However that child will not remain eternally three. At some point, they will come to realise that this is not true, that they were misled and their lack of world knowledge taken advantage of by an adult who was prioritising their own needs and agenda.

Other parents who adopt, gay couples, children born by sperm donor - huge care is taken about how the child is informed of this, how they learn about their parentage, and the child has rights to the information that is theirs in law. These protections do not seem to be extended here. But in those situations, there is not an adult who needs very significant reframing of facts and certain realities obscured in order to meet their own needs.

It is also as women here have been saying for years: current adults know: we may be saying one thing because kindness/adults needing realities obscured behind language for various needs, but we know that these things are not actually real or true. Children being raised in this obscured language will trust adults that it is literally true. And a point will come when they realise that adults sold them a false reality for political reasons which have not been properly thought through in their impact on others.

Is this individual going to tell their children that they just have one parent ("father") or two, but that they are both "fathers"? Both lies are going to cause confusion. How do you have honest, open, timely conversations about puberty, when what you've been telling them is false?

Given this individual has publicised their issues; I'm guessing the kids are going to learn the hard way ie someone in the playground is going to gleefully tell them that their dad is really their mum.

@SantaClawsServiette I think people often underestimate how children can misunderstand how the physical world works, family relationships, and so on.

Exactly this, as I wrote in my post just above, I had no idea my DD had thought this for so long! Now what if I'd pressed on with that narrative myself, because it had suited me and my want to erase her bio Dad's existence? I'd be roundly criticised for that (rightly so) and it would be potentially quite damaging for her to find out that her step dad wasn't her bio dad some way down the line, and that I'd lied to her all these years.

My feeling is that these children will have a difficult time figuring out how it all fits together. Which lots of kids do already, I think people often underestimate how children can misunderstand how the physical world works, family relationships, and so on.

I don't know what these kids will be told about who birthed them. What will they think the word mother even means?

Ultimately "birthing person" or whatever they want to call it means the same thing as mother, at least in the biological sense. I can picture it being like other attempts in identity politics to change words used for groups in order to drop unwanted connotations. Soon enough, the connotations become attached to the new words.

Funny that the big man in the red suit has been mentioned.
My son is 12 now but about 4 or 5 years ago he was starting to doubt, he asked me in all sincerity if santa is real.
I said of course he is.
My son asked me to pinky promise that Santa is real and I did it.
When I told my friend about this pinky promise he told me it was a parenting fail that I had lied to my son and that I should have come clean and that it could damage his trust in me.
Santa still comes to my house with stocking presents for my son and the cat even though I'm sure my son is just humouring me at this point.
If lies about Santa can cause so much angst god knows how people pretend to their kids that sex isnt real or doesnt matter.
poor kids. i feel sorry for any child with a narc for a parent.

My 13 year old DD told me today that for years she'd thought all children had a "first dad" and then a "second dad" because that's how it was for her, with an absent bio dad she barely remembers and then my DH entering her life when she was 2.

Of a school friend, who I will call Julia, she said "when I met Julia's dad, I said to her 'but who is your first dad'? Because I thought everyone had 2 Dads!"

It was kind of sweet and we laughed about it today, but it was the first time I had ever heard her say that and I thought it was interesting she had believed this to be the case for so long, because why wouldn't she? It was her lived experience.

Difference is... The adults around her hadn't performed a lie around that and gaslit her into believing it.

I suppose if gender ideologues get their way, kids won’t be learning biology anyway.

Just before Covid I was supervising a group of 10-11yo children at an activity. They were chatting about their families. Two of the children were twins, born by surrogacy to two gay fathers. It was interesting hearing the twins gently bickering about whether they had a mother. They knew where they came from, but one maintained that they had a mother because biology, whereas the other maintained that they did not have a mother because she had never parented them.

I think where their situation differs from that of children of a transman, is that they are growing up with honest acknowledgement of both the facts of their birth and the roles of their adults.

Children of trans identified people are taught that their lived reality is subject to another's whims. (Maybe whims is the wrong word, because it could imply 'arbitrary' Choices? Desires?) Up to a certain age children completely accept what their parents tell them, it is real, like the fat man in a red suit, who will soon sneak secretly into their house at night. Will they have the language to understand eventually?

Invisible.

I'm not sure how damaging it is.

I think that the most damaging thing is the cognitive dissonance of the whole family colluding in insisting that something is true that demonstrably is not. I read a book called "Raceless" by Georgina Lawton recently - it's her autobiography of being a mixed race child in a white family, with the entire family insisting for her whole childhood that she was white and the biological daughter of her white father. It's clear that the confusion and distress caused by that was huge. If the family insists that "Dada" is and always has been a man, despite giving birth to a baby, the kid is going to have to learn some pretty fancy mental gymnastics to square that with what they learn in biology.

On the other hand, an age appropriate version of Dada being a trans man who used to be a woman and so is able to have babies doesn't seem so bad.

My mum told me that I literally didn't have a dad and I believed her until I was about 8. As I got older, I gradually learned the truth - that he was extremely abusive and had nearly killed her. I don't think lying was the best idea, but I don't think the lie itself was particularly damaging, as it wasn't maintained beyond the age at which it was clearly inappropriate.

I suspect we won't know until this cohort of children grow up. Potentially bringing a child up in a climate of fundamental untruths is likely to cause some psychological harm. But we won't know until the experimental nature of all this is concluded.

My view is that the rights of the child trump the ideological wishes of the parent. How do you insist to a child that the female body that birthed them is male when all the scientific evidence is that only biological women give birth? Does that mess with a child's mind and sense of self? Or will it have no impact? I'm not a psychologist but am very uneasy at adults who appear to use their children as collateral in their personal battles.

I actually wonder about donor conceived children as well. I know it's currently considered fine for children to be conceived this way because they'll be able to contact their biological father at 18 now, but I can't help but wonder why it's considered ok to pretend to a child that a totally unrelated person is it's family.

I do think so much of this is parents' wants over a child's needs, and I wonder how it will end.

Ah, sorry, seems that is to do with interventions in childbirth. Different thing.

Can't see why Delphinium's post was deleted. Mothers aren't allowed to discuss the laws surrounding childbirth and motherhood, on Mumsnet?

Yes, Delphinium.

courtofprotectionhandbook.com/2014/08/29/court-sanctioned-interventions-during-childbirth-guidance/