Rhonda Edwards writes:
‘I read the article in the centre page of the Dompost with disbelief.
Not often our conservative newspapers lead me to shouting abuse.
But this time I did and here I am weeks later shouting with my pen.
THIS IS CANCEL CULTURE!

( The Midwifery Council of NZ is updating its Midwifery Scope of Practice guidance for midwives to entirely remove the words ‘mother’ and ‘woman’. The terms Māori equivalent of ‘wahine’ and ‘māmā’ are also absent…instead they propose to become ‘whānau centric’ which is the Maori term for family/extended family).

But Rhonda Edwards says:
‘Every generation has its foibles its strengths and weaknesses. But this one!
Being offended is the current fashion and this one offends me…hugely!
My trigger?
The New Zealand midwives’ cancellation of the word mother.
Mother is a fabulous word which embraces much that we hold dear.
Mother earth, mother nature, Mary mother of God, warm fuzzies Mother’s Day, mother of the
bride, beautiful mother of pearl…strength…Motherland.

What about Fairyland?
Fairyland too is full of wise godmothers.
Mothers our first source of love and nurturing are now to be called birth parents and they will be
chest feeding their babies according to current protocol.
Horrible. What a ghastly patriarchal assault on half our population.
After women fighting so hard for equality so much has been hijacked or cancelled.
Female pilots, aviatrix are now aviators. Actresses are now actors.

This sly and quiet war on womanhood through control of language is unforgivable striking at the
very heart of our culture.
A baby’s first close relationship is cancelled.
In today’s fragmented society family is being dealt yet another blow.
A babies first word is usually a derivative of mother, across the world mama, mutter, mater,
motina, meme, maman, mor, mummy,mum , though inexplicably in Japan…okasan!

The word mother has its own history going back to the very dawn of time.
Old English moder from Old Germanic from Indo-European root meter and similarly the Latinmater and Greek milo.
‘Mother is one of the 23 oldest words in all languages. In effect, it may be the oldest and certainly the most essential’ Downtown-News.com.
The word mother is a universal symbol for love and nurturing. So let us join together to protect
our godmothers, actresses, school mistresses, actresses and aviatrixes and mums, our
mothers, our protectors need protecting.
PS. It’s getting worse. The Anglican church wants to change a two thousand year old prayer to
remove the word father. This will place mother earth in even more peril!
Our universe is going unisex…help!’