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

[NeedsCharging]

I ask that those who choose to comment do so in line with MNHQ rules.

As those on this bored are aware the drive to remove the word women/mother from everyday language and medical language is an ongoing issue. I see threads on this topic that discuss how that impacts women.
Today a well known newspaper ran a story concerning a transman who has given birth and their personal views on the language used to address them by their medical team.

While that language is an issue I would like to discuss the impact it may have on a child if/when they are told they do not have a mother.
Specifically will the child struggle with the concept of no mother at all?
Will that positively or negatively affect them as they have a mother in the biological sense but not allowed to say that?
I am interested in views about the child not any views about the parents.

Pleases do not delete this MNHQ as it isn't a TAAT but a question regarding parentage and how that affects children.

I read that article in the Daily Mail and that was exactly the question that sprang to my mind.
When the child learns about biology and that females give birth - how is that child's parentage going to be explained?
I hope that robust mental health help will be on hand.

Surely it must be deeply damaging to the child to be lied to in this way, and when they are old enough to know they have been lied to.

Surely it must be deeply damaging to the child to be lied to in this way, and when they are old enough to know they have been lied to.

I think so.
My niece was adopted at 6 months. She is 8 now and fully aware mummy and daddy chose her and she has a bio mum and dad so know who her bio parents exist but ate not about. The reasons why will be explained age appropriately when needed.

However the above situation removes the mother completely which is not factually true and in my view suits the parent not the child.

I think it would be very ill-advised to tell a child they don’t have a mother. If a birth mother has decided to identify as a man then the child will need to be told this, but also that the person is still their birth mother.

For a child I guess it’s explaining it all very sensitively and age appropriately a bit like you might if the child was adopted/in foster care or who had lost a parent through death, prison or other absence.

I still don’t understand how if you think you’re a man you would want to be pregnant and birth a child.

If a child is told they have two fathers, but one of the fathers gestated, gave birth to and nursed them, the other father basically ejaculated, this child will have no concept of...
Well. The list is rather long. I did try but I gave up.

The child is likely to be raised in an environment where concepts like biological sex are going to be conspicuous by their absence.

I don't know how that will play out by the time the child reaches an age old enough to understand sex and reproduction.

To discover one's father figure is actually one's mother? I can't really imagine the impact on a child.

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?

Yes, Delphinium.

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

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?

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.

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'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.

InvisibleDragon

Your father was an ultimate shit but you know he exists. The child in today's paper will apparently never have a mother despite the fact that his existence is because of his mother. Will he be discouraged from using the word mother? Will facts and biology be myths to him? Will he feel conflicted by facts and family?

Invisible.

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?

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

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.

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 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.

@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.

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.

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.

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.

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.