Gender-neutralizing Mother’s Day

The SJWs have set their sights on a holiday for which biological gender truly makes a difference: Mother’s Day. Waitrose, a high-end grocery chain in the United Kingdom, has announced it would be going “gender neutral” in a marketing campaign for Mother’s Day, known in the U.K. as “Mothering Sunday,” by selling gender-neutral cards and ones that use an array of pronouns for the mother who identifies by something other than “her” or “she.”

The Times UK reports that Waitrose’s intent is to make the day more “transgender inclusive,” after trans activists have advocated renaming Mother’s Day with suggestions such as Guardian’s Day and Carer’s Day. One trans campaigner, Karen Pollock, conceded that “Mothering Sunday” does feel more inclusive than “Mother’s Day” because “anyone can be ‘mothering.’”

Waitrose will be selling cards such as “Happy You Day” without the use of the word “mother,” though traditional cards will continue to be sold. The store says it wants its cards to be applicable to anyone, including “transgender mums.”

The Times reports that some schools have referred to Mother’s Day on their websites as “Special Person’s Day” or “Mother’s and Special Person’s Day,” noting that some children have lost their mothers tragically. Liverpool Cathedral recently held a service for “Mother’s Day runaways.”

And while it is commendable to take measures so that children without mothers do not feel left out of the celebration on Mother’s Day, the holiday should not be used to continue the charade that transgender women are actually women.

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Mother’s Day is a celebration of traditional families, which sadly, are becoming a dying breed. But even more than that, Mother’s Day celebrates mothers, whose impact on child development has been well-documented by psychologists. Noted psychologist John Bowlby developed Attachment Theory in the 1950s based on his observation that mothers in particular play a critical role in a child’s ability to learn, grow, and develop healthy adult relationships.

There is plenty of scientific evidence of the bond between mothers and their children. Just last year, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences based on mothers from 11 countries revealed that there is a connection between mothers’ brains and their behaviors when they respond to their children. In the study, mothers consistently picked up, held, and talked to their infants in response to their babies’ cries, and MRI scans taken of their brains revealed heightened activities in regions tied to caregiving.

Studies have also shown that a mother’s mental state has important consequences for the development of infants. Avoidant and depressed mothers who do not touch their babies as frequently or with the same affection as mothers who are not depressed create deficiencies in infant development. Those infants have cognitive delays and develop behavioral problems from preschool through high school, according to the magazine Psychology Today.

Mothers of newborns are encouraged to hold their infants skin-to-skin, known as “Kangaroo Care,” because of the incredible health benefits for the child.

“The more skin-to-skin [contact] the better. It should ideally start at birth, but is helpful any time,” says Dr. Nils Bergman, senior medical superintendent of Mowbray Maternity Hospital in Cape Town, Africa, where doctors deliver 7,000 children a year.

“Physiology and research provide overwhelming evidence that Kangaroo Mother Care is not only safe but superior to the use of technology such as incubators,” Bergman adds. “Depriving babies of skin-to-skin makes alternative stress pathways in the brain, which can lead to ADD, colic, sleep disorders, among other things.”

In other words, the science of motherhood makes it rather difficult to simply replace mothers with other caregivers, despite how wonderful those caregivers might be.

That has not stopped the British Medical Association from issuing guidelines asking doctors to discontinue the use of the term “expectant mothers,” suggesting instead to refer to them as “pregnant people,” so as not to offend the transgender community.

That same guide states that doctors should not use terms such as “born man” or “born woman,” or “biologically male” or “biologically female,” because these phrases are “reductive and over-simplify a complex subject.”

In response to the guidelines, Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, said, “I think it is sad that society is being pushed in this direction. God has made us man and woman, and mothers relate to their children in different ways than fathers. This ruling will confuse people about the vital role of mothers in bringing up their children.”

Perhaps that is why Mother’s Day, or Mothering Sunday, is now on the chopping block. Confusion and misinformation are the only tools the SJWs have to advance their agenda.

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