i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

From The New York Times Magazine
New Vocabulary for Parents
by Lisa Belkin

Melissa Sher created mammalingo.com to fill in the gap of all the words needed for parents that the English vocabulary lacks. Each post is a word with definition.  Some highlights include: 

superpaleonriflery- Example, “Even though I am violently anti-violence, I bought Harrison a Nerf gun because he’s so into SuperPaleonRiflery and wants to shoot villains while dressed in a cape, riding on his imaginary dinosaur.”

schaden-friend- “the emotion a mother feels when somebody else’s kid is behaving worse than her own….”  

So, while the blog is clearly humorous, Sher has tapped into  a niche that is ripe for new terms, in this case mostly for stress release,  to more accurately delineate the unusual joys of parenthood. Although I think it's also fair to say that the vocabulary of parenting has been grown enormously at least since Dr. Spock published The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care in 1946. (Don't believe me? Check out this Baby Vocabulary Quiz). Perhaps we have the beginnings of a new controlled vocabulary for parents?