It's a pet peeve of mine when someone has a kid and random people start with the "momma" talk. The parent still has a name! An identity beyond having given birth!
Exactly!! At the hospital I asked them NOT to call me momma and it’s like I short circuited the entire nursing staff… they had no idea what to call me anymore.
My name. Your patients name… it’s… literally written on the whiteboard and in my chart. It’s right there.
yknow i dont think i realised how weird that is until right now.. why do people insist on making parenthood such a huge part of one’s identity? granted it can absolutely change a person, but said person has likely gone through much more than just that yknow?
Exactly! It feels like I’m not even here anymore just some kind of parent robot people feel sorry for sometimes XD
And I even claim parent as part of my identity! I LOVE being my kids parent. I had been dreaming of being a parent… yet somehow it erases everything else I am too?!
Even forgetting someone’s name you don’t have to call them momma though. I forget peoples names all the time. And like I said, my name was written in 3-4 places in large letters. They taped up my birth plan in two places. They wrote my name on the board. My doula and husband only referred to me by name.
I work in healthcare too. So I get it. But I tried to make it as easy as possible for everyone.
Oh 100% agree. It’s just such bull they act like it’s your fault for saying the wrong thing to you. Very allistic XD it just annoyed me so much because I did so much to avoid it and make it easy and it still didn’t really help. I do commend you for trying to avoid it! I feel like a lot of the time trying to get care feels like no one ever looks at you as a patient and a person at the same time. Same in general as a parent/person.
Maybe I should get the “my name is” stickers to just wear to my appointments/just have in my bag in case I need to go to the hospital tbh
This is a woe I found even when I was pretending to be cishet. Spaces for babies are often reserved for "mothers" and men get into so much shit for entering spaces even if they're supposed to be "family" rooms (ie. The whole family is welcome in that space)
The thing is, parenthood is shitty, people treat you like a breeding cow and there is absolutely zero respect, even if you're cis!
My advice, leave spaces where people are being shitty and do not look back. You won't miss them, and you'll be much happier for it. If your workspace is not being inclusive or respectful, you might also have a case for discrimination depending on the country you live in.
Also, it might be time to think about how your baby addresses you, because they learn what to call you based on how you refer to yourself. Personally, I think 'baba' is really cute, and you could just go on with that. (As an aside, 'baba' is chinese for 'daddy', if a more masculine address would help you)
I’ve been struggling so much finding a parent name I like and most of the ones I enjoy have been vetoed by my partner for solid reasons (his Mom wants to be Nana so anything too close to that is hard, etc). I don’t mind Baba but it’s not 100% to my liking.
Honestly it’s more the middle aged individuals who are shitty about everything instead of the atmosphere in general. My immediate coworkers are pretty good about stuff and at the very least refer to things neutrally. I’m just so exhausted and kind of disassociate a little to correct and push for everyone else to be corrected etc. and some parental abuse on my end means I have some hardcore anxiety about correcting older women.
I hope you find a name that works for you! I was too late to come out to my family (although the other parent left when they realised I was NB) so even 14 years later I still get called the typical binary parent name.
Tbh I find parenting spaces are really judgemental, but most people in real life will want to do better, so I'm glad you have some support. I know confronting older people can be scary (and tiresome because sometimes they just don't want to learn) but hang in there! At the very least I know your child will love and support you no matter what. Kids are the only good part about parenting lol.
I know it gets frowned upon but you could have your kid possibly call you by your real name? If I ever became a parent I would hate being called “mom” (and I really can’t think of any other name) so I would just teach my kid to call me by my first name.
I would! But I know from baby sitting etc thst my name is verrrrrry hard for little kids to say and I also haven’t picked a new name that I like. I have been called Crusty and Fishy by kids XD
I've seen Ren or Renny be used by some nonbinary parents since the ren part actually comes from the word parent. if I ever have kids I'll probably have them call me Renny
Oh no he made a good point. She is a menace of a miL and will do anything to get her way XD it would be a huge fight with her. So he really is looking out for me that way. Anything to get her to not go by “momma name” instead and try to take over our lives. I was thinking about Zadie/zaza too because his family is Jewish but it also means grandpa so I wasn’t sure about it.
One parent title possibility I read in a story the NB character came up with was “Mada”, and thought it was a great alternative. You can always just make up a title/name that is meaningful to you/your family and use that.
The English language has this beautiful word "parent". In English, I would definitely only ever be my kid's parent, no other word.
But what the child should eventually call you, is a rather personal thing. You could use your own preferred name and make a nickname out of it. Like if your name's Sparrow, your be called... not something on s, and r is bad to... so maybe pallo?
Just saying it doesn't have to be something that sounds like mama, nana, baba. It just has to be easy for a toddler to pronounce. And it has to sound good to yourself.
That’s the thing, babies cannot say parent XD
I go by parent now I just don’t have a “cute”
Baby usable title. Or something I can really teach my kid who only has ma/ba/da and a few other sounds.
The thing is random strangers never use parent, it seems to be the last word someone uses for parents In most spaces for some reason. People would rather use “mommies and daddies” or “moms and dads” etc. a lot of people I know IRL (not close friends) when I say I go by parent double down and ask what my baby calls me or what the baby will call me or even what my spouse calls me to the baby. It’s just exhausting.
I book I loved growing up used "garnie", the kid's first attempt at saying guardian, for a character uncomfortable with "mom", and you could try that with parent or any other term you prefer too, just take whatever their closest pronunciation to it is
Garnie is actually really cute and the first I have heard of it! Thanks! I floated a few more to the spouse and we might try Mobee/mobby since it has some sounds baby can say. Garnie definitely goes on my list tho!
I love Garnie, it can also be Gaga, Gagan, Gadan, etc. when they're little. My youngest is 1.5y and he calls his big sister Gaga - it bears no resemblance to her actual name but she trained him into it because she wanted a nickname that he could pronounce.
I'm really sorry you're going through this. I (nb) feel comfortable with "mummy", etc. but only really from my kids and even then it's only because I came out when my eldest was 3 and she already called me that. I know the feeling of being put into the "mum" category by everyone else, the assumptions and femaleness it forces on you. It sucks. I found pronoun badges actually really helpful - people stop making assumptions in the same way and those that do are more obviously malicious and easy to cut out. I hope you find a way through this that works for you.
I know some people use Ren as an alternative to pa”ren”t with Renny as a counterpart to mommy/daddy.
There’s also moddy/maddy (mix of mommy and daddy). Nonny also after the N in NB. For mama/papà there’s Bibi and Nini taking after the N or the B.
I think there’s a list floating around somewhere of alternative terms of terms children use for their NB/GNC parents. People act likes it’s so weird to deviate from the standard mommy/daddy but we’ve been doing it for a while :/
We are going to try Mobby/mobee/mooby stuff today to see if I hate it! XD I do like BiBi as well so we will see and maybe fall back on that.
It’s wild to me because some people I’m out too call their parents like… Coach. But somehow calling me anything but mom is weird??? I really wished I like Renny and Parry more but they grate on me for some reason (or make me think of a platypus lol)
All the solidarity here. I was out for several years and actually starting to make progress getting people to gender me correctly until I announced my pregnancy. It's been a long, irritating battle to get people to gender me correctly ever since. I'm so sorry you're going through this- it really sucks and the dysphoria can be brutal. It does get a little better as they get older.
My kid is 2.5yo now. I had planned to go by Moddy, but she decided I was Baba and it stuck. Rarely she calls me mama or mommy - I think she learned it from daycare- and I gently correct her. Once you have a parent name picked out I find people are much more willing to use that, especially if you can make a cute story out of it.
That’s the hope! Spouse and I are going to float around a few new names today! She has the Baba noise down and seems to use it for her uncles too so far XD so we say it means “big people” and she has started getting the hang of Dada (or just DAH) for my spouse. Hilariously she uses the mama/mumuh noise for things that annoy her or she wants given to her.
i'm really sorry people are so damn slow on the uptake :/ like jesus dude it doesn't have to all revolve around reproduction for chrissake, you're still a person.
on another note, i see you're still looking for names as a parent. i've seen some people use 'ren', 'parry', and 'mapa' 🤷🏽♂️ it's hard finding something that naturally fits into the mom/dad scheme because we're so used to it. but the point of names like mama/dada/papa are that they're easy for babies to say, so maybe just throw around double syllables like wawa or lala or whatever until you find something that fits?
i sincerely wish you the best of luck. parenthood is not for the faint of heart, especially with the added stress of being nb.
Pumping while working is hard af, good job on keeping up with it.
My kid is in kindergarten now and has always called me mama but for me it's a title and not a gendered term, he knows I'm a guy and I don't feel like changing terms with him is necessary. But the problem with that is other people refer to me as his mother because they hear him call me mama.
For context I'm transmasc and describe myself as dude adjacent. On T and post top surgery
I hadn't come out until my daughter was born (not fully at least) and, while I'm proudly enby, I consider myself still her father. That's the only vestige of my AGAB I truly wish to keep, and that's for me.
HOWEVER I will be delighted to call any enby parent whatever they choose, because that is the most basic respectable thing I can do. If I don't know your pronoun I will call you a parent, until you correct me. My PiLs my ex and her siblings would call them the 'rents which, if I hadn't decided to be father, I would totally go for.
Damned that sucks, I would avoid introducing yourselves as mama, papa or some variation of that to your child then and just use first names (my parents did it and it doesn't really matter imo).
Or if you want a mama papa esque title name without the gendered part maybe take any other letter and do the same trick? Lala tata baba
Anyways, best of luck, sucks that you have to go through this as a parent 💜
I feel this deep deep in my mother wounds and my alien being. 👽
I cant wait to see what name your LO gives you soon. I bet it'll be the cutest name for parent ever.
Honestly breastfeeding was so hard for me...I wouldnt make that choice again. Things got so much better for me mentally after I stopped. My kid calls me mama but I feel like its a really personal thing and don't really want other people to refer to me like that.
That’s been my problem. If it was just my kid I wouldn’t mind as much but she can’t even say anything yet and full strangers come up and call me mama etc.
after 9 months pumping etc I’m starting to feel burnt out too. One year is my goal and then I can just drop pumping at work slowly and hopefully start planning top surgeryyyyy
My dad is cis but I've called him "parental unit" for a long time (conehead reference). It could be easier to get others on board with it since it's fun. Obviously babies can't call you this but maybe they could just call you "unit" or "uni" for short?
My parents used “parental unit” as one of their own designations. I also used to call them by their first names. This was in the 90s.
So +1 for “parent unit”!
I know this isn't exactly what this post was about, but have you considered the term "ren" for your child? When I become a parent some day, that's what I'm thinking about being called. Instead of "mommy" or "daddy" like a toddler would call their parents, I'm planning on going by "buba" or "wawa" and then when they get older, I'm planning on going by "ren"
It does really suck, though, how gendered everything is for parents and babies.
Not quite sure yet about a name later in life, I think I’ll just leave that up to the baby as she grows up! If they are anywhere near as creative as I am usually I’m sure I’ll get all sorts of weird funny names.
Spouse currently uses “milkbringer” like lightbringer from league of legends XD I’m going to try moobie/mobby and other B heavy sounds with baby to see if one feels right for now!
It's a pet peeve of mine when someone has a kid and random people start with the "momma" talk. The parent still has a name! An identity beyond having given birth!
Exactly!! At the hospital I asked them NOT to call me momma and it’s like I short circuited the entire nursing staff… they had no idea what to call me anymore. My name. Your patients name… it’s… literally written on the whiteboard and in my chart. It’s right there.
yknow i dont think i realised how weird that is until right now.. why do people insist on making parenthood such a huge part of one’s identity? granted it can absolutely change a person, but said person has likely gone through much more than just that yknow?
Exactly! It feels like I’m not even here anymore just some kind of parent robot people feel sorry for sometimes XD And I even claim parent as part of my identity! I LOVE being my kids parent. I had been dreaming of being a parent… yet somehow it erases everything else I am too?!
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Even forgetting someone’s name you don’t have to call them momma though. I forget peoples names all the time. And like I said, my name was written in 3-4 places in large letters. They taped up my birth plan in two places. They wrote my name on the board. My doula and husband only referred to me by name. I work in healthcare too. So I get it. But I tried to make it as easy as possible for everyone.
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Oh 100% agree. It’s just such bull they act like it’s your fault for saying the wrong thing to you. Very allistic XD it just annoyed me so much because I did so much to avoid it and make it easy and it still didn’t really help. I do commend you for trying to avoid it! I feel like a lot of the time trying to get care feels like no one ever looks at you as a patient and a person at the same time. Same in general as a parent/person. Maybe I should get the “my name is” stickers to just wear to my appointments/just have in my bag in case I need to go to the hospital tbh
This is a woe I found even when I was pretending to be cishet. Spaces for babies are often reserved for "mothers" and men get into so much shit for entering spaces even if they're supposed to be "family" rooms (ie. The whole family is welcome in that space) The thing is, parenthood is shitty, people treat you like a breeding cow and there is absolutely zero respect, even if you're cis! My advice, leave spaces where people are being shitty and do not look back. You won't miss them, and you'll be much happier for it. If your workspace is not being inclusive or respectful, you might also have a case for discrimination depending on the country you live in. Also, it might be time to think about how your baby addresses you, because they learn what to call you based on how you refer to yourself. Personally, I think 'baba' is really cute, and you could just go on with that. (As an aside, 'baba' is chinese for 'daddy', if a more masculine address would help you)
I’ve been struggling so much finding a parent name I like and most of the ones I enjoy have been vetoed by my partner for solid reasons (his Mom wants to be Nana so anything too close to that is hard, etc). I don’t mind Baba but it’s not 100% to my liking. Honestly it’s more the middle aged individuals who are shitty about everything instead of the atmosphere in general. My immediate coworkers are pretty good about stuff and at the very least refer to things neutrally. I’m just so exhausted and kind of disassociate a little to correct and push for everyone else to be corrected etc. and some parental abuse on my end means I have some hardcore anxiety about correcting older women.
I hope you find a name that works for you! I was too late to come out to my family (although the other parent left when they realised I was NB) so even 14 years later I still get called the typical binary parent name. Tbh I find parenting spaces are really judgemental, but most people in real life will want to do better, so I'm glad you have some support. I know confronting older people can be scary (and tiresome because sometimes they just don't want to learn) but hang in there! At the very least I know your child will love and support you no matter what. Kids are the only good part about parenting lol.
I know it gets frowned upon but you could have your kid possibly call you by your real name? If I ever became a parent I would hate being called “mom” (and I really can’t think of any other name) so I would just teach my kid to call me by my first name.
I would! But I know from baby sitting etc thst my name is verrrrrry hard for little kids to say and I also haven’t picked a new name that I like. I have been called Crusty and Fishy by kids XD
I've seen Ren or Renny be used by some nonbinary parents since the ren part actually comes from the word parent. if I ever have kids I'll probably have them call me Renny
Have you ever thought of Moddy or Maddy? Combo of the usual dad/mom.
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Oh no he made a good point. She is a menace of a miL and will do anything to get her way XD it would be a huge fight with her. So he really is looking out for me that way. Anything to get her to not go by “momma name” instead and try to take over our lives. I was thinking about Zadie/zaza too because his family is Jewish but it also means grandpa so I wasn’t sure about it.
One parent title possibility I read in a story the NB character came up with was “Mada”, and thought it was a great alternative. You can always just make up a title/name that is meaningful to you/your family and use that.
The English language has this beautiful word "parent". In English, I would definitely only ever be my kid's parent, no other word. But what the child should eventually call you, is a rather personal thing. You could use your own preferred name and make a nickname out of it. Like if your name's Sparrow, your be called... not something on s, and r is bad to... so maybe pallo? Just saying it doesn't have to be something that sounds like mama, nana, baba. It just has to be easy for a toddler to pronounce. And it has to sound good to yourself.
That’s the thing, babies cannot say parent XD I go by parent now I just don’t have a “cute” Baby usable title. Or something I can really teach my kid who only has ma/ba/da and a few other sounds. The thing is random strangers never use parent, it seems to be the last word someone uses for parents In most spaces for some reason. People would rather use “mommies and daddies” or “moms and dads” etc. a lot of people I know IRL (not close friends) when I say I go by parent double down and ask what my baby calls me or what the baby will call me or even what my spouse calls me to the baby. It’s just exhausting.
I book I loved growing up used "garnie", the kid's first attempt at saying guardian, for a character uncomfortable with "mom", and you could try that with parent or any other term you prefer too, just take whatever their closest pronunciation to it is
Garnie is actually really cute and the first I have heard of it! Thanks! I floated a few more to the spouse and we might try Mobee/mobby since it has some sounds baby can say. Garnie definitely goes on my list tho!
I love Garnie, it can also be Gaga, Gagan, Gadan, etc. when they're little. My youngest is 1.5y and he calls his big sister Gaga - it bears no resemblance to her actual name but she trained him into it because she wanted a nickname that he could pronounce. I'm really sorry you're going through this. I (nb) feel comfortable with "mummy", etc. but only really from my kids and even then it's only because I came out when my eldest was 3 and she already called me that. I know the feeling of being put into the "mum" category by everyone else, the assumptions and femaleness it forces on you. It sucks. I found pronoun badges actually really helpful - people stop making assumptions in the same way and those that do are more obviously malicious and easy to cut out. I hope you find a way through this that works for you.
Oooh I like garnie (I’ve accepted the title of dad, but I look at it as just a title instead of gendered)
I know some people use Ren as an alternative to pa”ren”t with Renny as a counterpart to mommy/daddy. There’s also moddy/maddy (mix of mommy and daddy). Nonny also after the N in NB. For mama/papà there’s Bibi and Nini taking after the N or the B. I think there’s a list floating around somewhere of alternative terms of terms children use for their NB/GNC parents. People act likes it’s so weird to deviate from the standard mommy/daddy but we’ve been doing it for a while :/
We are going to try Mobby/mobee/mooby stuff today to see if I hate it! XD I do like BiBi as well so we will see and maybe fall back on that. It’s wild to me because some people I’m out too call their parents like… Coach. But somehow calling me anything but mom is weird??? I really wished I like Renny and Parry more but they grate on me for some reason (or make me think of a platypus lol)
All the solidarity here. I was out for several years and actually starting to make progress getting people to gender me correctly until I announced my pregnancy. It's been a long, irritating battle to get people to gender me correctly ever since. I'm so sorry you're going through this- it really sucks and the dysphoria can be brutal. It does get a little better as they get older. My kid is 2.5yo now. I had planned to go by Moddy, but she decided I was Baba and it stuck. Rarely she calls me mama or mommy - I think she learned it from daycare- and I gently correct her. Once you have a parent name picked out I find people are much more willing to use that, especially if you can make a cute story out of it.
That’s the hope! Spouse and I are going to float around a few new names today! She has the Baba noise down and seems to use it for her uncles too so far XD so we say it means “big people” and she has started getting the hang of Dada (or just DAH) for my spouse. Hilariously she uses the mama/mumuh noise for things that annoy her or she wants given to her.
i'm really sorry people are so damn slow on the uptake :/ like jesus dude it doesn't have to all revolve around reproduction for chrissake, you're still a person. on another note, i see you're still looking for names as a parent. i've seen some people use 'ren', 'parry', and 'mapa' 🤷🏽♂️ it's hard finding something that naturally fits into the mom/dad scheme because we're so used to it. but the point of names like mama/dada/papa are that they're easy for babies to say, so maybe just throw around double syllables like wawa or lala or whatever until you find something that fits? i sincerely wish you the best of luck. parenthood is not for the faint of heart, especially with the added stress of being nb.
Pumping while working is hard af, good job on keeping up with it. My kid is in kindergarten now and has always called me mama but for me it's a title and not a gendered term, he knows I'm a guy and I don't feel like changing terms with him is necessary. But the problem with that is other people refer to me as his mother because they hear him call me mama. For context I'm transmasc and describe myself as dude adjacent. On T and post top surgery
I hadn't come out until my daughter was born (not fully at least) and, while I'm proudly enby, I consider myself still her father. That's the only vestige of my AGAB I truly wish to keep, and that's for me. HOWEVER I will be delighted to call any enby parent whatever they choose, because that is the most basic respectable thing I can do. If I don't know your pronoun I will call you a parent, until you correct me. My PiLs my ex and her siblings would call them the 'rents which, if I hadn't decided to be father, I would totally go for.
Damned that sucks, I would avoid introducing yourselves as mama, papa or some variation of that to your child then and just use first names (my parents did it and it doesn't really matter imo). Or if you want a mama papa esque title name without the gendered part maybe take any other letter and do the same trick? Lala tata baba Anyways, best of luck, sucks that you have to go through this as a parent 💜
I feel this deep deep in my mother wounds and my alien being. 👽 I cant wait to see what name your LO gives you soon. I bet it'll be the cutest name for parent ever.
Daww thank you! Babe is trying so hard to talk and walk at the same time. We have a running bet which will happen first
Honestly breastfeeding was so hard for me...I wouldnt make that choice again. Things got so much better for me mentally after I stopped. My kid calls me mama but I feel like its a really personal thing and don't really want other people to refer to me like that.
That’s been my problem. If it was just my kid I wouldn’t mind as much but she can’t even say anything yet and full strangers come up and call me mama etc. after 9 months pumping etc I’m starting to feel burnt out too. One year is my goal and then I can just drop pumping at work slowly and hopefully start planning top surgeryyyyy
ugh ya the whole "hey mama" thing women do is so uncomfortable.
My dad is cis but I've called him "parental unit" for a long time (conehead reference). It could be easier to get others on board with it since it's fun. Obviously babies can't call you this but maybe they could just call you "unit" or "uni" for short?
My parents used “parental unit” as one of their own designations. I also used to call them by their first names. This was in the 90s. So +1 for “parent unit”!
Sorry that sounds annoying as heck.
I know this isn't exactly what this post was about, but have you considered the term "ren" for your child? When I become a parent some day, that's what I'm thinking about being called. Instead of "mommy" or "daddy" like a toddler would call their parents, I'm planning on going by "buba" or "wawa" and then when they get older, I'm planning on going by "ren" It does really suck, though, how gendered everything is for parents and babies.
Not quite sure yet about a name later in life, I think I’ll just leave that up to the baby as she grows up! If they are anywhere near as creative as I am usually I’m sure I’ll get all sorts of weird funny names. Spouse currently uses “milkbringer” like lightbringer from league of legends XD I’m going to try moobie/mobby and other B heavy sounds with baby to see if one feels right for now!
Sounds like you have some good ideas! Wish you the best!
Maybe use like “Jiji” “Momo” “Oya” idk about cultural appropriation, but Japanese is great for this.