Thursday, October 10, 2019

word choice - "My son/daughter" or "Our son/daughter"?


To me, it sounds selfish to only say "My child" since he or she has two parents and not just me.


I'm struggling with this at work, where we have people of many nationalities, but there's no one that I can ask who has English as their mother tongue.



Answer



If a woman said to a male colleague, "Our child is good at music," the male colleague might humorously pretend to think he was being told he was the father of the child. It is perfectly normal, and not considered selfish, to say "my child" - particularly when speaking to someone who does not know the child's other parent, or in the absence of the other parent.


One would probably say "our child" when talking about aspects of parenting that one shares with the other parent, e.g. "My wife and I do not let our child play in the street." Also, it might be considered stiff or formal to refer to the child as "my son/daughter" rather than by name - particularly when speaking to someone who has met the child, or someone with whom you have a more than cursory acquaintance.



Outside of certain specific contexts, you would speak of "my child" and not "our child". That is, in general, we use the singular possessive adjective 'my', when talking about relationships: my child, son, daughter, father, sister, brother, aunt, etc. Even though I share a father with my sister, I would only call him 'our father' in the specific context involving my sister, e.g. my sister and I visit our father every Sunday.


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