“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?

This is at work. So I suspect not a lot of children require the policy.

This is just it ... It is the erasure of women specific language and the unique differences we go through being pregnant, giving birth and being mothers.

Even for lesbian couples there is still one biological mother who is pregnant and going through labour. It wouldn't be hard to use the word maternal or woman.

What the chuff is birthday recovery leave? You have a hangover? Or you’re burnt out from dealing with 30 over excited 6 year olds?

On that basis, surely ‘woman giving birth’ or ‘birthing mother’ is equally inclusive language.

Good for you! I really want to reply back to them but just don't know how.

I can confidently say that every child who gives birth is a girl, every lesbian who gives birth is a woman and every transgender person who gives birth is a woman and they would all be mothers. The word ‘mother’ already includes all of them.
Who else, apart from women needs to be included?

I agree as far as your reply goes, but the OP's work policy is about Parental Leave, not just maternity and/or paternity and the first item on the gov.uk website states:

Shared Parental Leave (SPL) and Statutory Shared Parental Pay (ShPP) can apply if you’re:

• having a baby
• using a surrogate to have a baby
• adopting a child
• fostering a child who you’re planning to adopt

A comprehensive employer's Parental Leave policy has to cover all these situations, including those few cases when there are three "mothers", so the language used has to be precise. The policy has to comply with the law, but there is nothing to prevent it exceeding the minimum requirements of the relevant law.

Ooh, I'm NHS, so we have loads of this anti-women shit in our literature and policies. Fingers crossed we'll be getting 'Birthday Recovery Leave' too, before my next birthday - it's the big 40 and I'm planning a party I'll definitely need to recover from!
I hope you and your colleagues enjoy benefitting from that Leave on an annual basis, OP. How long are you allowed to take each year to recover from your birthday?

Exactly this!

I think if they had said mother then it could offend same sex couples or someone going through surrogacy/adoption.

They could have said the birthing woman I guess but that sounds a bit weird.

I am usually dead against wording like ‘people who have periods’ etc but in this case I wouldn’t be offended by it.

Yes but they bs nonsense that the ops work put out is also the maternity policy that doesn't mention maternity, women or mothers. So they've arsed up big style these should be separate policies and use the correct legal language not made up bs

It was written to placate the TRAs who want to erase the words "woman" and "mother" from anything relating to female biology.

Agreed.

I think professional surrogacy also benefit from garbling language and hiding roles.

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

In my eyes, this kind of thing isn't inclusive but doesn't really erase women either...but it is just utterly ridiculous.

The lanyard classes and their bullshit jobs contributing nothing as usual.

How on earth can this sound "fine"???

Utter tosh

I thought we'd moved past this kind of idiocy, tbh...obviously not in your place.

Without giving yourself away if you don't want to, what kind of workplace is it, OP? What industry?

So much wrong in the world to fix, so much money/resources needed to fix it and this kind of thing is being resourced and actioned.

Birthing not birthday recovery 😅 thanks auto correct...

I understand that policies need to be inclusive. But what is so wrong with using the word mother, father, etc? We all understand what they mean. Even saying birthing mother or parent if they wanted to maximise inclusivity would be fine. It's the absence of that key word that is a problem and is a continued degradation of female specific language...

And yet as OP has just described, it does.

It's a technology company.

But only one parent can actually give birth....the mother so pregnancy should be linked to the biological sex of the woman carrying the baby

Because the parents could be two women so there is a need to differentiate I imagine.

Are they just ignoring adoptive parents too?

Birthing mother does the trick.

We all know why that’s not used.

It’s grim, unnecessary and panders to the permanently offended. Stop it.

But when two women are in a relationship only one of them gives birth. Couples aren’t all heterosexual

Well so does birthing parent and it is more inclusive so can’t really see why it is anything to be concerned about.

Birthing parent erases the fact that childbirth is for female people. That matters, a lot. And it’s profoundly misogynistic.

Yes but some biological women who give birth may not identify as such, which is their choice, so parent is inclusive in my view. If it not your view that’s fine.

It isn't more inclusive. It's fake inclusivity. Every woman who gives birth is the birth mother. 100% of all births, ever, have been by a birth mother. You can't include more people in a category than all the people who are already in a category.

Meaningless, stupid, virtue signalling fake inclusivity. It's insulting.