"On Father's Day they each make one card for Dad and one for Daddy." The old favourites often do win out: at last year's Alternative Families show a seminar on what children call their parents found that Mum and Mummy and Dad and Daddy were the most popular choices, although one child was heard to call her mother "Mister Mum". "Our kids used to get some very strange comments from other children at school when it came to Mother's Day," laughs Drewitt-Barlow. But sometimes they just say Mum and we both answer." "We are Mummy Helen and Mummy Sarah, or Mum and Momma. More and more well-dressed males can be seen roaming your school, mall, streets, and Instagram feed thanks to the growth of the men’s high-end fashion market as well as streetwear popularity. My ex's birth child calls her Mummy and me Makma." Helen Lawson and her partner Sarah have two children. With the rise in popularity of men’s fashion, there is an increasing amount of stylish males.
"What sounds cute when children are young can sound silly as they grow."Īnother lesbian couple (who have now split up) each gave birth to a child, and find that their children distinguish between the birth mother and the co-parent: "My birth child calls me Mummy and my ex, Lala. "We know other same-sex parents that started off as one thing, but ended up as something else as the child got older," says Drewitt-Barlow. One lesbian I know has her daughter call her by her first name, because she cannot abide the sugary labels others chose. Some names are a bit cutesy for my liking, but then same-sex couples do not have the thousands of years of precedent to follow, as straight couples do. I wonder if this seems a bit hierarchical to Mommy2?
"But the moment they were born, we became Dad and Daddy." Another gay couple I speak to say they go by "Mommy and Mommy2". "We couldn't make our minds up what they should call us and we decided before the first twins were born that we would be many different things," says Drewitt-Barlow.