"Call Me By My Name"

“CALL ME BY MY NAME”

            “Mother.” “Mother” the Judge repeated again. “Are you listening?” My client, the “mother” in question, was distracted by her two children, ages 5 and 7, crawling all over her in Court. I tapped her shoulder, “Ms. ‘X’, the Judge is talking to you.” And while she was, understandably, distracted by her children, it is not uncommon for parents to fail to recognize when the Court is actually talking to or about them. In fact, some parents sit in court without ever really listening because the Court’s routine reference to a generic “mother” (or “father”, “step-father”, “grandma”, etc.) seems to have little to do with who they are.

            Not only does “mother” fail to recognize a woman’s legal identity (i.e. her legal name), it creates an identity based solely on the fact of her motherhood. Although the individual’s legal relationship to the child in question is obviously highly relevant to the discussion, this “name-calling” (or lack thereof) dehumanizes the individual being addressed. A name conveys a specific identity. It distinguishes us from other people. Many women might be a “mother” but not every mother is “Emma Brown-Bernstein.” Names anchor us to a family and, in some cases, an entire community—something that we say we care lots about in child welfare.

            Recognizing an individual solely by her (or his) relationship to the child in question reinforces the narrow lens through which courts and agencies often view parents and interact with them. It’s almost as if their lives exist in a vacuum, as if their “parenthood” is not connected and intertwined with their other identities, such as daughter, sister, grandmother, professional, veteran, person living with a disability, homeless individual, foreigner, trauma survivor—and on and on. Imagine a child welfare system that really sought to understand and address the intersection of all these identities.

            To fail to engage in this type of analysis leads to a culture in which agencies, service providers and courts fail to acknowledge the uniqueness of every family and the ways in which the particularities affect parenting behaviors and style. We know that stakeholders have significantly failed to engage in this type of analysis, for example, in cases with people with legally protected disabilities who were not given reasonable accommodations in their case plans in line with the legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, or in cases where courts and agencies have failed to ask whether a family is tied to a federally recognized tribe triggering all of the protections of the Indian Child Welfare Act.  Or, more fundamentally, when a parent’s unique strengths and challenges do not play a central role in shaping a constructive, realistic case plan.

            Parent advocates should model the practice of referring to their clients by name. Admittedly, there have been occasions when I slip into the practice of saying “mom” or I fail to request that the Court address my client by his or her name. It is easy to adopt the prevailing culture, focus on legal issues, and neglect to animate our client’s unique story. But it is our job to convey that story to the court. As a new attorney, I often feared clients who wished to testify or address the court. I wanted to protect them from the judgments of the court, but this practice also had the negative effect of the court only hearing one voice, mine (talk about homogeneity). If and when appropriate, encouraging clients to tell their stories in their own voice on behalf of themselves can be very powerful.

            The point is not that our clients should not be identified as parents. They should because they are. But it should not be the language we use to identify them.  William Shakespeare once wrote, “What’s in a name?”  I believe the answer is a lot.