The words “mother” and “father” have been removed by the Connecticut Department of Public Health from documents for new parents.
According to guidance updated in January 2022, the paperwork to obtain a birth certificate for a newborn now uses “birth parent” to refer to the mother.
The father will be referred to as the “non-birth parent.”
Documents are circulating on social media after a father, whose wife is expecting to deliver their second child at home, shared them with a third party.
The “Registration of a Home Birth Parent’s Guide” includes a variety of forms requesting background information, medical data, affidavits, and immunization records from the “birth parent” and “non-birth parent.”
Earlier versions of the documents included a “Mother’s Worksheet,” which has now been changed to the “Birth Parent’s Worksheet.”
Female pronouns are not used in the new documentation, which asks questions like “birth parent’s weight immediately before they became pregnant with this child.”
Similar updates for childbirth paperwork were issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the Ohio Department of Health.
The Pennsylvania worksheet, updated in May 2022, also uses the term “birth parent” instead of mother.
“The term ‘birthing parent’ is used to describe the parent who birthed the child,” it says.
The Ohio paperwork has a “Birth Parent’s Worksheet,” but still uses the term “mother” in several places.
The Department of Health and Human Services has updated a lot of their resources for parents to allow for “inclusive language.”
“This document uses the terms ‘birthing parents’ and ‘pregnant and postpartum people’ to refer to anyone who gives birth, regardless of their gender identity, which may be female, male, nonbinary, or other,” a language update said.
On August 10, 2022, a page for child nutrition was changed to say “Consider using the words ‘parent,’ ‘birthing parent,’ and ‘pregnant person’ instead of or in addition to ‘woman’ and ‘mother.'”
The HHS Head Start program changed resources on breastfeeding to include the term “chestfeeding.”
“‘Chestfeeding’ is another term that can be used as a way for transgender and nonbinary parents to describe how they feed and nurture their babies after childbirth by feeding them milk from their chest,” they explained.
Other sources, including the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, have changed the language in their resources to include terms like “father’s milk,” “chestfeeding,” “human milk feeding,” and “lactating person.”