Baby's an It (call of the obstetrician?)

[Lynne Murphy]

A few observations from recent experience:

Referring to babies as 'it' can't just be because of the difficulty in
sexing clothed babies by sight, since (at least in older generation BrE),
it's used of babies whose sex is known--as in the example of our friend who
calls our baby 'it' even though he knows very well that she's a she.  When
he was holding her the other day, he'd say things like "It's really getting
strong now"  or "It's really interested in this paper".  The man is a
father himself, so I'm always shocked by what I perceive as him referring
to a person as a thing.

'Baby' as proper noun/pronoun substitute is alive and well in the midwifery
profession here.  I was in the hospital for my third trimester (what there
was of it) and beyond, so heard a lot of "Let's see what Baby is doing" and
"when Baby is born..."  It got quite annoying after a while (I'd have
preferred 'your baby'), I have to say, but much better than 'it' .

Before ours was born, we didn't know the sex, but used 'he' because 'it'
didn't sound nice to us --and we called her 'Grover', which is part of why
'he' came naturally.  I got so used to it, that I was quite surprised when
we had a girl.  I'm trying very hard to refer to her stuffed animals as
'she' and to give them girly names--but that's not working very well.

Last night there was a good example of generic baby 'it' on a formula ad
(Heinz Nurture) on British tv.  I can't remember it exactly, but something
like 'we care about your baby and its nutrition'.  It struck me that an
American ad would probably use a sexed pronoun there with visuals that said
'here's a boy baby' or 'here's a girl baby'.

For what it's worth, checking on google:

"your baby and its" = 8990 hits
of the first 30, 14 are examples in which 'its' refers to 'your baby'.
Since I'm in the UK, it's probably not reliable that many of the early
examples are from the UK, since the same is true of the next search.

"your baby and their" = 53,000 hits
of the first 30, 25 are examples of 'their' = 'your baby'.

OK, that's enough real work avoidance for now!
Lynne

--On 09 September 2008 22:29 -0400 Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
wrote:

> At 10:12 PM -0400 9/9/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
>> Whatever you call it, "mommy", "daddy", etc., fall into the same
>> category, except that they can also refer to the speaker.
>>
>> m a m
>
> Yes, sort of indexical names.  I'm not sure "Mommy" and "Daddy" [as
> indexical names] are that different in function from "yours truly",
> "{this/your faithful} correspondent", "the present writer", etc.,
> except that they're used more with children.   As far as the illeism
> component, children at the toddler stage often use their own name in
> place of the first person pronoun too.  (But I guess not "Baby",
> except for Baby Houseman in "Dirty Dancing".)
>
> LH
>
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 7:36 PM, Laurence Horn
>> <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:
>>
>>>  At 4:10 PM -0700 9/9/08, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>>>  > I've often wondered if "baby" should be considered a pronoun. You see
>>>  > it in sentences like (making them up):
>>>  >
>>>  > When baby gets into trouble
>>>  >
>>>  > My guess is you also see:
>>>  >
>>>  > When doggy won't obey
>>>  > When kitty won't come
>>>  >
>>>  > BB
>>>
>>>  More a proper name than a pronoun, I'd reckon.
>>>
>>>  LH
>>>
>>>  >
>>>  > On Sep 9, 2008, at 3:55 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>  >
>>>  >> -
>>>  >> Of course, the use of "it" simplifies one's grammar. When writing a
>>>  >> paper on babies or children, authors can simply use "it" instead of
>>>  >> using "he ... her," "she ... him" or other grammatical asininities
>>>  >> in a silly effort not to appear genderist, as though the 99.44% of
>>>  >> the population that has no interest whatsoever in scholarly papers
>>>  >> of any kind would give a flying fox at a rolling doughnut about this
>>>  >> "problem" with the English language.
>>>  >>
>>>  >> -Wilson
>>>  >>
>>>  >
>>>  > ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>  > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Mark Mandel
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language
Arts B135
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org