Geeks, Gays and Form Letters

[Salvor-Hardon]

Once again I am faced with a delicate situation, so naturally I am turning to a community of smut writers for answers.

I am working on a database system for school information, and of course I need to have family information. The current system we all hate has "father" and "mother" and a few of our same sex couple families either scribble through the superfluous title or just chalk it up to some things are slow to change.

Since I have to redesign the whole thing anyway, I figured its time to be realistic about family dynamics and make changes. My first stroke of genius is to use "1st Contact Parent" and "2nd Contact Parent" not only to allow for same sex couples but also to make situations where the father stays home and the mother works outside the home, contact the stay home parent first, or whichever one has the more flexible schedule to come get a puking kid.

My questions though are:

1) Typical form letters are addressed "Mr. and Mrs. Jenneric". For same sex couples would it be best to use "Mr. and Mr. 1st Contact Parent" or "Mrs. 1st Contact and Mrs. 2nd Contact"?

2) Until same sex marriages are uniformly legal, should the correspondence just be concerned with the one parent? (I personally don't like that option as families are families in my head)

3) Am I over thinking this and its not that big of a deal just yet?

4) Geez Sal, do you ever have a normal thought in that brain of yours?

Ok, lets hear some answers people.

 

[mikey2much]

You're on the right track

I like yur ideal about the 1st and 2nd contact parents. It does what you are trying to do and at the same time does not give the more rigid members of your community anything to bitch about.

I think that I would use a term a little more vague in the heading such as 'dear parents' .

You are walking across a minefield here and it could blow up on you if you are not careful.

Good luck,
mikey

 

[FallingToFly]

Dear Parents seems like your best solution.

I love the 1st 2nd contact idea.

And you, my lovely, are a strange ducjk, but that's why we love you.

 

[Guest]

You are walking across a minefield here and it could blow up on you if you are not careful.

That was my first thought too. I applaud your desire to make an IT system reflect reality (radical!), but this borders on a policy decision and probably something you should seek direction on.

 

[cloudy]

Dear Parents seems like your best solution.

This was what I was going to suggest.

 

[Skip1934a]

I think I'd leave off titles like Mr. and Mrs. and go with a generic. 'Parents' would do it.

 

[OhMissScarlett]

Everything we get in the mail from my child's school district is addressed "to the parents of...." Since my boyfriend and I are not legally married, I was happy to see things done this way. I get plenty of mail that says Mrs. Scarlett____ on it.

 

[Skip1934a]

duplicate post deleted. A senior moment.

 

[jomar]

Don't mean to throw a monkey wrench into the database, but want to give you something to consider. There will be a number of kids in foster homes, (ETA) group homes, or their grandparents/relatives will be raising them. Some of those folks will be legal guardians, others will not (which may mean you'd want a field for actual legal guardian). So you might want to consider the contact fields being "1st emergency contact" and "2nd emergency contact."

In my kids system we get letters addressed "to the parents of" and that should be benign enough if a kid is not living in his actual parents home - the caregivers will simply take it as a letter from school with some sort of info.

Good luck with it.

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

Thank you all for your input and suggestions. I took a few moments to talk to the staff in a few departments that do the bulk of the form letters, and got some other ideas as well.

For grades, general news updates, mass mailings of impersonal natures, "Dear Parents" is fine and even already in use.

The area when a specific name is used is predominantly in fund raising, and in certain cases only one parent /guardian is addressed, assuming they will discuss the giving with their partner. In those cases the Mr / Ms / Dr / Rev / Hon will suffice to the individual.

Thanks again for all of your input, and any other ideas you come up with will be appreciated as well.

IDeally, once this system is done, I can then sell it to other schools, make my millions (you would not believe how expensive school information systems cost!) and buy a tropical island to start the AH commune.

 

[Guest]

IDeally, once this system is done, I can then sell it to other schools, make my millions (you would not believe how expensive school information systems cost!) and buy a tropical island to start the AH commune.

Dibs on a beach front bungalow!

 

[Weird Harold]

The area when a specific name is used is predominantly in fund raising, and in certain cases only one parent /guardian is addressed, assuming they will discuss the giving with their partner. In those cases the Mr / Ms / Dr / Rev / Hon will suffice to the individual.

Are you collecting a "Title" field for each name, or are the form letters just going to use "Mr / Ms / Dr / Rev / Hon" for everyone?

One of my pet peeves about forms is that they don't take into account the many varied titles people use. I have a title but it is virtually impossible to get any civilian paperwork to acknowledge it -- I am NOT Mr, Dr, Rev, Hon, or the like, I am a Master Sergeant -- properly Msgt (ret) in formal correspondence ---and I'm just as proud of that title as others are of theirs.

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

Are you collecting a "Title" field for each name, or are the form letters just going to use "Mr / Ms / Dr / Rev / Hon" for everyone?

One of my pet peeves about forms is that they don't take into account the many varied titles people use. I have a title but it is virtually impossible to get any civilian paperwork to acknowledge it -- I am NOT Mr, Dr, Rev, Hon, or the like, I am a Master Sergeant -- properly Msgt (ret) in formal correspondence ---and I'm just as proud of that title as others are of theirs.

That's another point of contention. The current system allows for input of titles, so if someone put down that they were a Msgt (ret) and rightfully proud of their rank and title, it allows for it. The problem is that sloppy data input allowed for bad typist to also put addresses, first names and even absolute gibberish with no way to remove them later.

My ideal would be to allow for a multitude of titles, but the most common ones available in a drop down list. The platform I'm working in (Filemaker Pro v 8) will allow for that option, but I just have to set the filed as such.

Thanks for the insight into the other options Harold.

 

[Weird Harold]

The problem is that sloppy data input allowed for bad typist to also put addresses, first names and even absolute gibberish with no way to remove them later.

How much gibberish can you post in a four character field? Virtually every title I can think of has an "approved" abreviation that is four characters or less.

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

How much gibberish can you post in a four character field? Virtually every title I can think of has an "approved" abreviation that is four characters or less.

Yeah but the geniuses at the current company didn't cap the field length. There are 12 entries of full addresses, 5 that are variations on Mr. mr. MR or Mr... and 7 proper first names.

And the yutzes have the tables so convulated, that going in to clean out the garbage is near unto impossible without pulling every record one by one.

 

[Weird Harold]

Yeah but the geniuses at the current company didn't cap the field length. There are 12 entries of full addresses, 5 that are variations on Mr. mr. MR or Mr... and 7 proper first names.

And the yutzes have the tables so convulated, that going in to clean out the garbage is near unto impossible without pulling every record one by one.

I's a bit of a sledgehammer approach, but it should only take about ten minutes to write a utility that will blank any title filed that is over four or five characters -- personally, I'd rather form letters had no title than the wrong title.

 

[lucky-E-leven]

I like:

• Dear Parents
• To the parents of
• Dear Dynamic Dyke Duo
• Dear Sexy Bitches
• Dear Lezzies ... er, Ladies
• Dear Ms. Lucky
• Dear Ms. Vella

I'm not super particular about what is used, but in this day and age, I find it mildly ignorant to generalize that each child has a mother/father situation. I'm proud of you for thinking on it and wanting to be proactive and kind about the change.



~lucky

 

[JamesSD]

1) Typical form letters are addressed "Mr. and Mrs. Jenneric". For same sex couples would it be best to use "Mr. and Mr. 1st Contact Parent" or "Mrs. 1st Contact and Mrs. 2nd Contact"?

How about "To the parent(s) of Susie Jenneric"? This could be helpful for parents of multiple children as to which child the letter is about.

3) Am I over thinking this and its not that big of a deal just yet?

Ok, lets hear some answers people.

The gay parent question aside, the "nuclear family" is hardly the norm it once was. Step-parents, single parents, grandparent guardians, families where people have different last names, etc., aren't exactly brand new concepts, yet fail to be properly addressed by "Mother:" "Father:".

 

[Liar]

1) Typical form letters are addressed "Mr. and Mrs. Jenneric". For same sex couples would it be best to use "Mr. and Mr. 1st Contact Parent" or "Mrs. 1st Contact and Mrs. 2nd Contact"?

Even if we exclude the gay aspect, how does that work for unmarried parents?

 

[Liar]

• Dear Sexy Bitches

I want all of my letters from now on to be adressed to Dear Randy Beast.

 

[PMI]

Can you

Just enter the names of the contact people in the generic letter?

to Sally Jones and Derrick Smith?

 

[PMI]

Or atlternatively

To MSGT Derrick Jones and Mr. Conrad Smith?

I mean, these are computers, right? so take the first contact parent and second contact parent names out of the data base.

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

I have a few options rattling around now:

Including a gender field for each parent that would cue scripts to parse out the titles and then reinserting them so that if the last names are the same it would be 'title1' & 'title2' FN1(if male) LN for the old school who think that a woman should be subjugated to her husband's name to give us Mr. & Mrs. Old SChool. If only a single entry is made it becomes Mr(s) Single Parent. If two parents of same sex OR two parents with differing last names it becomes Mr(s) First Name and Mr(s) Second Name.

And then a small little easter egg, that if either name matches Lucky or Vella, then it outputs "Dear Sexy Bitches".

 

[Vermilion]

I have a few options rattling around now:

Including a gender field for each parent that would cue scripts to parse out the titles and then reinserting them so that if the last names are the same it would be 'title1' & 'title2' FN1(if male) LN for the old school who think that a woman should be subjugated to her husband's name to give us Mr. & Mrs. Old SChool. If only a single entry is made it becomes Mr(s) Single Parent. If two parents of same sex OR two parents with differing last names it becomes Mr(s) First Name and Mr(s) Second Name.

And then a small little easter egg, that if either name matches Lucky or Vella, then it outputs "Dear Sexy Bitches".

Now *that* sounds like a plan.

<snort> this is a bit of a random blurt, but just remembered that one of the characters on Grey's Antomy got married and is now Callie O'Malley. hee hee hee.
OK. I'm done thread-jacking now.
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