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What Do Our Children Call Us?
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This discussion strikes me as particularly absurd when I
compare our family to the so-called more traditional model.
My participation in our kids lives as a caring, involved parent
greatly exceeds that of many dads that I've observed - both
in the families of my childhood and many that I see today.
Yet nobody hesitates to refer to these people as daddy. Certainly
if they are a dad, given their degree of involvement, my relationship
with my kids should be described with a label which our society
assigns to a parent-child relationship involving a woman -
that is mom (or in my case, mama)!
I don't think the name is important,
I do think the relationship is.
I speak from the biases of being a
non-bio mom of 2 kids. My opinions were also formulated after
the experience of many years of observing lesbian families,
both socially and in my professional work. Basically, I think
it's important to realize that there are no rules. We are
creating new kinds of family, and in redefining family we
create them in many different ways. I have been involved in
each of my daughters' lives since before they were conceived,
and have been there every day for them since then.
My kids' physical
and psychological reality is that they have two involved,
nurturing, caring parents. They deserve to be given the terminology
to describe their reality, both to themselves and to the outside
world. Just as was said in the thread regarding talking about
sex and donors with our kids, it is important to give our
kids language even before they ask the questions. It is not
my wish to place my kids in any political or linguistic battles,
and I recognize that at some point they may choose to go in
the closet around the fact that they have 2 moms, sharing
this information only when they feel safe. We certainly do
not help them with this pain by denying them the language
to describe the truth about their family. I am privileged
to live in the state of California, which has granted legal
recognition and protection to my relationship with each of
my children, through the granting of a second-parent adoption
decree. (This decree is binding on all other states under
the U.S. Constitution - full faith and credit clause). The
judge granted the adoptions despite a Department of Social
Services recommendation of denial - due to a statewide policy
mandating denials in adoptions where the couple doesn't have
a marriage certificate. The judge's act in granting the adoption
and overriding the denial was in recognition of the caseworker's
finding that our kids were equally bonded with both of their
moms. It was a unique and moving official validation of our
family. It is a shame that some of my lesbian sisters will
not grant my relationship with my kids the same recognition
as the court was willing to.
I am the non-biological, adoptive
mother of my partner and I's child. From age two weeks I have
been the primary caretaker, stay-at-home mother. With my partner's
schedule I am sole caregiver for some l0 - l2 hours most days,
but when my partner's on call I can be sole caregiver for
up to 36 hours straight. I also nursed the baby using a supplement
until she was a year old, which was very demanding (she never
took a bottle her entire first year.) So I disagree that the
non-biological mother can't do equal amounts of caregiving
-- indeed I am more caretaker than the biological mom.
However I have never wanted to be called "mom."
I much prefer being "Ama," short for "amazon.."
I got the idea from Sarah Lucia Hoagland's book "Lesbian
Ethics" where she discusses how much young girls and
children need more than nurturing: they also need womyn to
challenge and transform heteropatriarchy. Thus I see my caregiving,
my political work, and my artwork all as amazoning for my
daughter who usually calls me AMA and Kate Mama, but now and
then calls us both "mom."
After some discussion on this list
about who the "real" mother is my partner and I
decided to go to the true expert to test this theory. As I
suspected, our girl thought the question was a little silly.
As she quite clearly put it - "the one whose uterus the
kids came out of is a real mom and the other mom is a real
mom, but a different kind."Out of the mouths of babes....!!!!
Most of all I feel concerned about
putting small children on the front line of battles for linguistic
and social change.
The above line spoke
clearly to me. Children have a natural way of defining themselves
and the world they live in. They are usually the best guide
to social change and are not necessarily as willing to accept
the world as we define it for them.. They are honest and want
to know exactly what things are. But also, as they are better
than we are at seeing how things are, it's better for us to
listen to them and let them take the lead in places like what
they decide to call us.
My partner and I have a 16 mo old
daughter by AI and I was very involved in her pregnancy. We
had the same question and decided she would be mama and I
would be mom and fully aware that our child may come up with
her own names for us at some point in the future. It's worked
out pretty well, even at 16 MO although we think I've turned
into mommy now. But then the "dog" turned into "doggy"
a few weeks back too. We have friends who go by mommy and
nana and other friends who go by mama Sue and mama Rose. I'm
sure you've heard of them but "Considering Parenthood..."
by Cheri Pies and "The Lesbian and Gay Parenting Handbook"
by April Martin are excellent resources for these questions.
They don't necessarily give you answers but point out that
there is no "right" answer to things like this.
I am "mom". The kids call
both my previous partner & the person I am currently with
by their first names. At situations (like school) in which
the partner had my permission to pick up the kids, they were/are
listed as "friend" in the space where it asks about
the relationship to the child. This started when I lived in
a very homophobic state, and it would have been potentially
dangerous to list the partner as such. No one ever questioned
it. & I did have to be very clear with the school who
had permission to pick up the kids. (Their father had made
kidnapping threats.) The kids knew the difference between
the "friend" mom slept with and other friends. But
no one ever made a big deal of it.
Well, in our family, we never specified
that our daughter call either of us anything. It seemed (and
still seems) sort of presumptuous to tell her to address us
by a title, while we don't call her "daughter."
For most of the first 6 years of her life, she called me by
my first name while certainly knowing I was her mom. When
she got to school, she started to conform a bit by calling
me mom more often; she switched off and on with it in her
own mysterious way. When my partner came into our lives when
she was five. I didn't tell her to call this new person anything.
In fact, she called me mom more, I think, to express her preference
for me, at this stage of her life. Later, she naturally began
calling her mom, all on her own. My partner was so honored
that our daughter gave her that title herself.
My partner and I
are not co-parents, since our kids came from other relationships.
She was a single mom for 12 years, and my 2-yr old is from
my marriage. But the kids know that there is a special relationship
among all 4 of us. My partner's daughter calls me by my name,
and when she's ready for bed, I get the same hug and "I
love you" that her mom does :) We have been trying to
get my son to call my partner by Lisa, but he has got it into
his stubborn little head that her name is Asi! He's even gotten
into arguments with the other kids in her daycare about her
name!
We also refer to each other as "friend" on emergency
forms, and when I went with them to the hospital when we thought
her daughter had appendicitis. Once we move in together, I
imagine we'll say "roommate".I wish we could be
more "out" but I think that's the best we can do
right now.
We are Mommy and
Mama, kids have NO problem, some adults do (as Helen said,
adults who refuse to learn). We also do not distinguish between
mom and co-mom or other-mom. We are both equal. They also
use "Mom" when they don't care who responds. Our
kids, now almost-5 and just-6, play "Mom and Dad"
too, even though they have no dad experience. They know who
is in their family - and they name us, and say who-loves-who
combinations. So I don't think their play reflects their own
family all the time, just social experience. You know, they
don't make doll houses with 2 moms, or 2 moms and 1 dad. (although
we've been tempted to remove the "father figure"
and replace with another woman, although sometimes they take
the farmer from the farm set and make a family with 2 dad's).
The only time it gets confusing is when they play "Mom
and Mom", which also happens. Then when one of them says
"Mom" three people answer, then they'll say "Not
You! I meant (childs name)".
My partner and I decided before our girls were born that they
would call me "mommy" and her "mama."
I really wanted to be mommy so there might have been a problem
if we both felt strongly about the same name. At 3, the girls
are very used to this and have never had any difficulty making
the distinction. Sometimes one will be be calling MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA
from her bed, and when I appear it becomes MAMA-EEE as she
changes in mid-cry. Sometimes we slip and get corrected. Once
my partner said to one of the girls, "Time out for hitting
Mommy" and she said "I no hit Mommy, I hit MAMA!"
We've come up against this as well.
Why do so many people assume that it would be "confusing"
to call two people Mom? After all, there may be two Grandmas,
Aunties, etc. We decided that our son would call me Ma and
my partner Mommy. In fact, he is now 2 1/2 and has only recently
started distinguishing me as Ma. He also calls me Mommy. But
when he asks me "Where did Mommy go?", it is clear
that he means his my partner. And when he says to her, "I
want Ma," he means me. He is not confused.
Written by Debbie Ranard, "creating our families"
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