suggestions for gender neutral version of mom/dad? something less formal than just ‘parent’
please note that while progenitor, guardian, spawnpoint etc are all respected titles, they are more the equivalent of mother/father than an affectionate nickname you would scream through the house multiple times a day. gimme something we can use people
I just tried to combine the words and got “dom” and i cant-
but wait, if we reverse ‘dom’ you get ‘mod’. I suggest we use ‘moderator’ as a gender neutral version of mom/dad
Admin and op would work makes them sound powerful and in charge of everything
Admin (respectful) Op (derogatory)
i was going to add something else to this but instead i got to thinking and i was like huh. what could you use.
in most languages the word for ‘mother’ usually starts with an M, because phonetically [m] is one of the easiest sounds for a newborn to make when they start babbling, and mothers tend to be the one most around the child. so in my mind that crosses M off the list, because it’s automatically associated with a feminine figure
similarly, ‘father’ tends to start with D, T, P, or B. (phonetically these sounds are very close together; [p, b] and [d, t] are all only different because of being voiced or unvoiced.) these are also phonetically easy letters and ones kids pick up on earlier.
now the hard sounds for kids are the following: [ɹ, d͡ʒ, tʃ, θ, ð] or in normal speak: the English R, the “j” or “dge” sound in “judge,” the “th” sound in “thigh” and the “th” sound in “the.” and we don’t want kids unable to say their parent’s name for years, so those are also off the list.
additionally, it’s easiest for young kids to just repeat the same sound twice rather than figuring out the tongue gymnastics of putting different sounds together, which is why kids will say Ma-Ma or Da-Da and not Ma-Mo or Da-Po. and we’ll want to stick with low back vowels like “ah” and avoid ones like the hard “i” or “ee.”
so what does that leave us? when we want a sound kids can learn easily and early but don’t want to just put a funky spin on “mama” or “dada”?
my suggestions: G, K, W, L. i personally lean towards W and L. they’re called liquids, since they’re the consonants that kind of aren’t consonants, and kids (and ESL learners) will tend to swap out the English R for a W or L until they can learn the R.
if i ever have a child, they’ll start calling me Wawa. then when they get older, they’ll call me Wala, or maybe even Wally.
and then, once they’re finally phonetically developed, they can call me by my true title as their nonbinary guardian for their 18+ years:
Waluigi.
Okay, but on an actually serious note, Baba is used in several different languages, but the meaning changes between mother, father, or grandparent. However, it is not used in English afaik, so it could be a good English option.
baba is what I use as a nonbinary parent (it has a long history for butches!) and this post hit me like a two-by-four to the back of the goddamn HEAD
How about Tata, because no matter what, they’re gonna try to latch onto a nipple
wait wait wait, do babies try to latch on to the nipples of non-lactating parents too? is this a thing? do babies just automatically zero in on any nipple in the vicinity, regardless of the presence of breasts or breast milk? is this an experience cis men deal with I need to KNOW
UPDATE: based on the notes the answer is a resounding YES!!!
I can’t speak to cis men’s experience, but my house has this kind of lamp, and my progeny were both very fascinated by it whenever I would carry them under one of them.
The lamp thing is legit, I’ve discussed it with so many fellow breastfeeding parents. The weirdest one for me was when my son latched onto the tied knot of a balloon.
I am so so grateful I decided to scroll through the tags:
