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

[Destinysdaughter]

In America, Alberta's government have released a new set of guidelines for how to have an 'inclusive' environment in its schools, including instructions to avoid using the words 'mother' and father.

Underneath a section titled “Indicators of this best practice in action,” it states:

School forms, websites, letters, and other communications use non-gendered and inclusive language (e.g., parents/guardians, caregivers, families, partners, “student” or “their” instead of Mr., Ms., Mrs., mother, father, him, her, etc.).

Is this where we will end up with this incessant policing of language?

www.nationalreview.com/2016/01/alberta-schools-mother-father-transphobic/

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.

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

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'?

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.

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.