“Birthing parent” language in work policy – inclusive or erasing women?

[InvisibleBumble]

Our workplace has just emailed all staff about changes to parental leave. Throughout the email they repeatedly use the term “the birthing parent”. There is no mention anywhere of women, mothers or maternity leave.

I’m honestly really uncomfortable with it. In trying to be “inclusive”, it feels like women - and our lived experience of pregnancy, childbirth and recovery - are being erased from a policy that is specifically about leave after giving birth.

I’m not anti-inclusion, but I do struggle with language that refuses to even acknowledge women or mothers in this context. Childbirth is not a neutral experience, and maternity leave exists for a reason.

It’s really bugged me, but I’m nervous about pushing back at work in case I’m labelled difficult or “not inclusive enough”.

Am I being unreasonable? Has anyone challenged this kind of language at work, and if so, how did it go?

Has your workplace got an affiliation to Stonewall? They came into my workplace and made them change all the policies to this gender neutral offensive language

Birthing parent sounds fine to me

My work did this with the miscarriage and baby loss policy: no use of the word ‘woman’. I complained, it wasn’t changed

Inclusive language by definition doesn’t exclude anyone. I’m sure there are other things to worry about 😊

It’s not ‘inclusive’. The opposite: these experiences are due to biological sex.

Ask them about parental leave for the ejaculating parent.

Is this shit still going on? Thought that was so 2023.

Only women give birth so the 'birthing parent' is the mother, so why not just say that

YANBU at all. It's been everywhere for years. Erasing the words "woman" and "mother" when talking about the one thing that only FEMALES can do. And it's not for the sake of "inclusion", either - the language excludes people for whom English is not their first language, or have learning difficulties, or who might struggle to understand it for another reason. The only reason for erasing "women" and "mothers" is to placate a tiny number of trans rights activists who want to appropriate the words and who take offense at women and mothers using them for themselves.

The sad thing is that I'm sure the vast majority of trans people - including trans men (ie trans-identifying females) - actually have no problem with women and mothers being referred to as such.

I think it’s clumsy language, but means it’s inclusive for a same sex couple where one mum is giving birth.

Out of curiosity was paternity leave mentioned or just non-birthing parental leave (because the latter phrase could apply to ANYONE who hasn’t given birth and who isn’t the parent just to a newborn and hence I’d wonder if the policy would be rife for abuse/testing by someone applying for leave as a “non birthing parent” who had children who were say 12 years old)?

I suppose they need to consider that sometimes there are 2 mothers, only the one giving birth gets certain rights

Old post but good
https://4w.pub/the-move-to-erase-women-from-periods-pregnancy-and-parenting/

Is it though? In the admittedly small sample so I’m not say it’s representative, of lesbian parents I know. They all refer to themselves as mothers (mummy) because they are, so wouldn’t ’birth Mother / birthing mother’ be accurate?

OP, I’d be suggesting that ‘mothers or birthing parents’ is used for “inclusivity” reasons. I’d also be asking at the same time if the current proposed wording had been assessed for accessibility purposes?
As a PP inferred, i strongly suspect it wouldn’t meet expected standards.

Nope nope nope.
Women give birth.

The erasure of women from motherhood might not feel important to you though if you gave it some thought you might work out why it matters.

The erasure of the words woman, mother and maternity from the maternity leave is ridiculous.
Birthing person/parent is a nonsense phrase that is legally illiterate. The protected characteristic is pregnancy and maternity and even mother is a specific legal term that only applies to women who give birth (as determined by the supreme Court in connelly vs the home office).
Even if a woman identifies as a man and has a GRC she is still a mother and will be registered as such on all of the child's documents including the birth certificate.
So really nobody should be using these stonewall approved nonsense phrases let alone put them in policies

so a woman

Just want to say this made me laugh out loud.

Nothing really helpful to add to the rest of the thread except that in general I hate all this ‘inclusive’ mumbo jumbo that just adds words and makes you go on some sort of word dance to explain simple concepts like maternity leave for new mothers. I feel the same about jobs like postman so it’s not women specific. Postman can be man in the ‘mankind = person’ sense rather than man or woman, it’s much simpler than postal delivery worker. I used to be a linesman at a sport and that’s now become linesperson and it’s a mouthful. Just keep it simple and stop reading into things where there isn’t any ill intent to be read into!

Yes.

And sometimes they are accompanied by their wives / also women / also mothers.

So language needs to distinguish.

Could easily be solved by ‘birthing woman’ or ‘birth mother’.

I also received an email about updated policy today with this ludicrous language. Either we work at the same place, OP, or our employers have used the same guidance to create their new policy.

I had to read it twice to understand what they were wanging on about; the language seemed so determined to avoid offence that it also avoided being clear and concise.

Wrong it excludes anyone who doesn't speak English as a first language and anyone with a learning disability and is extremely offensive to many men and most women

So we all know why those phrases aren’t used.

That's not inclusive - it's excluding women as a sex class

It doesn't deny that women give birth, and it doesn't stop me being a woman that gave birth. I really don't see why I should be upset ot uncomfortable with the policy wording. It includes me and any body else that's given birth 🤷🏼‍♀️