Teachers Union Wants To Replace The Word ‘Mother’ With ‘Birthing Parent’
Leaked documents allege the nation's largest teachers union wants to replace terms like mom with birthing parent inside of schools.
Moms are moms, and dads are dads. But nowadays, those terms aren’t necessarily the building blocks of a family. Today, more and more children have two dads or two moms. Plenty of children even have transgender parents. Sometimes, their birthing parent may identify as a male, or non-binary. To many, it’s confusing and outlandish, but still, the push is for inclusivity, and allegedly now, the largest teachers union in America wants to replace the word “mother” with “birthing parent.”
All week long, members of the National Education Association conglomerated for the union’s annual meeting. Leaked documents have been shared across social media, pointing to outrageous proposals alleged to be pushed by the union for public schools. One of those topics discussed changing the way teachers address students’ caregivers, in an attempt to use more LGBTQ+ inclusive language with words like a birthing parent instead of mother, and non-birthing parent in place of the term father.
Allegedly, the proposal was pushing to use this terminology for the formal educational language used in schools. Furthermore, it looked to replace terms that use maternal leave with the word parental leave. The leaked information also pointed out that the proposal looked to raise $5,000 to enact this activist push.
In all actuality, there has been a push to use terms like a birthing parent for quite some time. However, it hasn’t always served as a means to cater to the LGBTQ+ community. It is more customary than ever before for many students not to live in a traditional household. Some students aren’t even raised by their parents and may live with grandparents. Because of this, school administrators suggest that teachers use terms like “caregiver” to be more inclusive of this.
But still, many opponents vehemently fight back against these actions calling for more use of terms like birthing parent. Oftentimes, the news makes it appear as if teachers will be banned from using the words altogether. When school policy documents were shared from a NYC school last year all across social media, people were claiming that the school was forbidding staff from using the words mom and dad. The rhetoric, however, was construed, as the policy merely suggested they consider using a different term when addressing classes as a whole.
As the debate over this type of terminology in schools is rekindled once again, one spokesperson for the NEA spoke out against these allegations with The National Desk. First off, to calm fears over the many allegations floating around Twitter, they pointed out that any member of the NEA, which consists of over three million people, can submit a proposal during the annual conference. Many of them are bogus, and most will never see the light of day. What’s more, the spokesperson said this birthing parent proposal was never even on the table for discussion this week.
During a contentious time, where the NEA is already losing public trust at alarming rates, these allegations only serve to further the divide between the group and its opposers, despite the fact that many of these allegations only seem to be looking to stir the pot. Teachers across the country are already using terms like birthing parent, or possibly more traditional ones like caregivers, folks, and so on as to not leave out the representation of families. But for now, it appears this claim is just that, and parents won’t have to worry about unions barring schools from using words like mom and dad.
