Gov. Kathy Hochul delivers remarks at the NYS Affordable Housing Conference at the Marriott Marquis Times Square on Thursday, May 14, 2026. James Keivom for NY Post See more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on Google A last-minute vote in Albany this month took New York one step closer to achieving the left’s long-cherished goal: vaporizing the nuclear family.
Does Gov. Kathy Hochul have enough spine to stop it?
The bill, S.9316, will erase the words “mother” and “father” from key sections of state law — and replace them with the coldly clinical “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent.”
This isn’t modernization, but cultural vandalism dressed up as inclusivity.
True, “mother” and “father” are not neutral terms.
They define roles based on biology, love, sacrifice, unique bonds and millennia of human experience.
That reality — a mother’s pregnancy and nurturing; a father’s paternity and providing — gives each parent irreplaceable significance in a child’s life.
Reducing them to the legislature’s hollow, sterile terms intentionally diminishes and demeans them.
Adoptive or step- mothers and fathers who provide vital love and stability, regardless of gestation, are equally denigrated by this insidious linguistic warping.
The majority claims they’re aiming for legal neutrality, but their new terms are anything but neutral.
“Gestating parent” reduces women to incubators, targeting and diminishing motherhood while pretending to elevate fairness.
“Non-gestating parent” similarly flattens fathers into a residual category — defined by inaction, it throttles their distinct contributions of strength, security and guidance.
This ideology-driven, objectifying language devalues the mothers and fathers who work to build strong families that mold their children’s emotional, educational and economic outcomes.
It undermines the foundational roles that for millennia have sustained stable societies.
It erodes the cultural and legal recognition that complementary parenting benefits kids most.
The damage extends beyond mere symbolism: S.9316 amends the Family Court Act, Domestic Relations Law, Civil Practice Law and Rules, and sections of education law, systematically replacing “mother” with “gestating parent,” “father” with “non-gestating parent,” “paternity” with “parentage,” and “putative father” with “alleged parent.”
Supporters claim that blurring these legal lines will change nothing of substance, but merely promote the ideal of “inclusivity.”
They’re either deluded or deceitful: The impact is real.
By injecting ideological language into the core machinery of family law, the legislature’s edict will remove legal clarity rooted in biological and relational realities, and will alter how rights and responsibilities, from parentage to support, are framed in custody battles and other disputes.
All while alienating everyday New Yorkers by effectively proclaiming that, under state law, traditional family structures are suspect or outdated.
This bill is the logical result of a broader progressive drive to re-engineer language and reality at the expense of common sense — and to foster greater dependency on government by eroding strong families.
Leftists in other states are making a similar push: Massachusetts’ Parentage Act, passed in 2024, erased references to “mothers” and “fathers” in its state laws, and Wisconsin’s governor tried but failed to change “mother” to “inseminated person” in certain parts of state law in 2025.
Mothers and fathers aren’t problematic relics to be erased — they remain the bedrock of a stable society.
Corporations and residents are fleeing because of high costs, driven by perhaps the highest tax burden in the country, a failing education system, poor public safety and a declining quality of life.
But instead of tackling these, Albany indulges in language tricks that abuse the very families paying the bills.
New Yorkers deserve better than an endless Sisyphean struggle against fees, regulations and ideological experiments.
And we certainly deserve better than legislators who vent their contempt for traditional family structures while letting the state’s real problems fester.
Hochul now faces a choice: She can take a stand and veto this insult.
The bill passed both houses of the legislature by wide margins, but not quite enough to ensure a veto-proof majority.
Yet so far she’s been silent, allowing underlings to claim on her behalf that the law simply “appears to address technical legal issues” — nothing to see here, folks.
Enough linguistic fiddling while the Empire State burns.
Time to douse the fire — not fan the left’s divisive flames.
Wai Wah Chin is an adjunct fellow of the Manhattan Institute.
