A new video ad for Baby Dove, a line of baby bath products, includes a transgender mom who’s part of a two-mom family.
The ad is part of the brand’s #RealMoms campaign. “Moms are redefining what it means to be a ‘good mom,'” the ad tells us, before introducing us to a variety of moms, partnered and single, who share what being a mom means to them.
Shea, a transgender mom, is shown with her partner/spouse (the video doesn’t specify), and explains that both of them are their child’s biological parents. “You get people who are like, ‘What do you mean you’re the mom?’ We’re like, ‘Yep,'” she relates.
I haven’t tracked this very closely, but this might be the first example in an ad of a trans person who became a parent after transition. (Update, 4/13: It turns out that Vicks India beat Baby Dove by a week in depicting a post-transition trans parent, although Baby Dove still has the first U.S. commercial I can recall with a post-transition parent, and the first with a trans biological parent.)
Kudos to the brand for not only being LGBTQ inclusive, but for being willing to think beyond the more common solution of showing a cisgender two-mom couple (much as I love seeing LGBTQ parents of any type on my screen). (Side note: Not all transgender women who are parents go by “Mom,” as singer Laura Jane Grace recently reminded us. I’d suggest asking for someone’s preferred parenting title just as you’d ask for their pronouns.)
I love the campaign’s overall theme of “There’s no right or wrong way to be a mom — only your way.” As one of the other moms in the ad says, “Do what fits your family. And trust yourself.” That’s pretty much the best parenting advice I can imagine.
They both have every right to call themselves ‘mom’, but the person who inseminated the person who gave birth to the baby isn’t the biological mother, they are the biological father. Words mean things.
If we’re talking biology, I’d call that person the “provider of semen,” and leave “mother” and “father” as terms to be used as the person wishes, based on their gender identity and how they feel about their parenting role–exactly because words mean things.
Agreed. There are ways to describe the biological story — such as the person who provided eggs/ person who provided sperm. But mama, papa, baba, mapa, and every other beautiful word parents and kids give birth to are social/emotional terms. Parentage may be biological, but parentHOOD is social/emotional.
I’d rather see an ad with two lesbian moms, two female homosexuals, raising a child together instead of a heterosexual couple any day.
“Kudos to the brand for not only being LGBTQ inclusive, but for being willing to think beyond the more common solution of showing a cisgender two-mom couple ” I’m sorry, but in what world is this common place yet? Kudos to whatever social forwardness you ascribe to and all, but don’t cheapen the plight of others in the process, just sayin.
Not trying to cheapen the plight of others (of whom I am one) at all. While it is certainly not yet common to have cisgender same-sex parents in ads, the ads that do show LGBTQ parents do tend to feature cisgender same-sex parents. I’m just arguing for representation across the whole spectrum.