It’s not something that’s relevant in my own life, but for those in families where one parent is transitioning I see problems as to how the transitioning parent should be addressed within a family where younger children are involved.

Ariadne over at Translucidity has posted about the experiences of her family, and it got me thinking on this.

Does our language need to come up with new nomenclatures for parents who transition?

Whilst that parent will probably always still be “Mum” or “Dad” to their children it is incongruous to refer to, say, a now female biological father as “Dad” all the time.

The first obvious solution would be to in some way intermix the standard, gender defining titles of Mum, Mom, Dad, Mother and Father, but this doesn’t work. One ends up with words like Mather, Fother or, worse still, Dum, Dom and Mad!

Ariadne’s family are working through this together in a sensible and caring manner and will no doubt settle on something appropriate for all of them with regard to how Lisa is addressed, but is that what happens in all such families? I don’t know.

So I’d be interested to hear of any Trans-Parental naming conventions that you feel might be appropriate as a generalised solution to this problem plus, of course, your own experiences of overcoming the issue within your own family situation as others may find this helpful.