Relationship Tab - Individual relationships - Gender Neutral?

@Margaret Williams We use gender neutral relationship names and have never found that it hindered anything.

@Margaret Williams, as @Dariel Dixon has said, it can heavily depend on organizational culture. For example, our org is religious, and so the motivation that affects your data policy really doesn't connect with our target base or affect our data policies in the same way.

That being said, I do actually prefer to use gender neutral labels in the Relationship tab as much as possible, and not because of social advocacy or PC-ness, but just because it's easier! Using Spouse as opposed to Husband/Wife, and Parent vs. Father/Mother has benefits because

• it can cut your table entries almost in half
• if you use a joint record for married couples, it reduces data cleanup if one parent dies (you don't have to redefine the relationship)
• Having fewer table choices speeds up expediency in all other data processing, such as query lists
• Sometimes the exact relationship is unknown and a broader term is easier to apply, resulting in more consistent entry
• A user can still easily guess that "Parent" Sarah would be the mom while “Parent” Rick would be the father … so really no loss of data efficiency unless you expect to pull bulk mailing lists like “a special note for alumnus moms” or some such. (Anyone actually do that?)

The one relationship I have found that does not lend well to neutral labels are the “in-laws”: sister-in-law, brother-in-law, etc. These have been useful to note because you can't always tell from a name or title if a sibling with a different last name is an in-law or just remarried, and because the relationship is more extended (thereby weaker), it can affect stewardship if the primary sibling dies and only the in-law is left. To force this into gender-neutral labels, you would need to jury-rig a label like “sibling-in-law”, which doesn't flow so naturally.

I also agree you would need a more precise term than “extended family” to replace “aunt”. However, you could satisfy the same aim by combining the joint terms into one table entry: “Aunt” and “Uncle” into “Uncle/Aunt”, for example. And yes, we do have an entry “Relative” for when the exact relationship is unknown.

@Margaret Williams I appreciate your org being sensitive to this. I set all relationships up as gender-neutral to avoid misgendering or making incorrect assumptions. We keep things simple with most family relationships under “family” with notes about the specific relationship if needed.

• Spouse
• Parent
• Child (We don't have records for actual children. This is just a gender-neutral alternative to son/daughter.)
• Sibling
• Family

@Margaret Williams Thanks for starting this conversation!

I'll be bookmarking this conversation, so I can reference a couple of things: 1. Data Governance Committee (love this idea!) and 2. Simplifying the Relationship Types.

This is a great conversation. My preference is to use Spouse over Husband/Wife. And, I do have Partner set up (which might be outdated?).

We have a ton of relationship types set up (has not been my priority to clean these up, yet). We even have 2nd cousin, Niece, Grandniece, etc. It's interesting to see how some organizations have found ways to reduce the number of relationship types and still have enough information for the fundraisers to understand the relationships.

Thanks to all for sharing!

@La Donna Borth We use “Partner” if the couple (of any gender or orientation) cohabits but isn't married. I don't think it's outdated in that sense.

@Margaret Williams as for relationships we use spouse, parent, sibling, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew. I believe we have a field set up in attributes for pronouns, but we do not utilize it to my knowledge. I wonder how my org will begin to adjust practices to create accurate records for gender non-conforming constituents.