While checking out “friends” on Facebook the other day, I was shocked to see the headline: “Manchester University bans the word “mother” ahead of Mother’s Day.”
“What?” you say? “How can you celebrate Mother’s Day without using the word “mother?”
Manchester University is exclusive, prominent, expensive and in some opinions, a stuffy institute of higher learning. It has an equality, diversity and inclusion team which “recommends” words such as “mother” and even “father” and “elderly” be blacklisted and branded as insensitive and not safe for use on campus.
The suggested names for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day would now be parent day or guardian day. Hmmmm.
Not unexpectedly, the recommendations created controversy for the university, with one British Conservative Member of Parliament suggesting it was “wokery gone mad.”
And then the university defended itself, saying it had not banned any words, that the inclusion team had simply prepared a “guidance document,” not a mandatory rule of word for students and staff.
Taking the university’s denial at face value means, that if we are able to celebrate, we may still find greeting cards that say “Happy Mother’s Day” or “Happy Father’s Day.” And certainly, if one is more comfortable calling those days by other names that is just fine too. There’s probably cards available for those names as well and they can sit side-by-side with traditional cards on the display shelves. There is room for both and choices should be offered.
This may seem insensitive to say, but looking back, just imagine how many young children of my generation would have been deprived of the yearly school activity of producing, with their own hands, cards for mom and dad — and paper mache hand prints and painted plaster of paris candy dishes.
We didn’t know then that we shouldn’t have been saying “Happy Mother’s Day” or “Happy Father’s Day.” We were just excited to present our gifts even if an explanation had to be made in the case of my artistic endeavours.
The world has changed significantly since the decades of my youth, and therefore I am having difficulty accepting that the time is upon us and we’re being told certain traditions should be altered: baking holiday cakes or festive cakes instead of Christmas cakes; buying holiday cards or seasonal cards instead of Christmas cards; or calling Easter’s favourite buns “spice buns” instead of “hot cross buns.”
The spice buns have a cross and look like hot cross buns, taste like hot cross buns and are still being requested by customers other than myself as hot cross buns.
If it waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, has feathers like a duck, then it is probably a duck and not a rabbit.
This is all so confusing for someone who, in the opinion of some folks, is not just elderly but is already in the “early elderly” stage. But research shows I have a few years remaining until I am considered “late elderly.” Lucky me!
As those years go by, perhaps I might learn to call them spice buns and festive cakes. But I hope no one is holding their breath waiting for that to happen.
Joyce Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
