Should there be a single mum (and dad) emoji?
Almost every other type of family is represented – so why not single parents?
What does a burrito, the middle finger and a unicorn have in common? Well, they're all new emojis soon to be added to the ever-growing list of icons you can add into messages on your phone.
But now some people are campaigning for a different kind of new emoji – one to make sure that all kinds of families are represented.
There are currently 15 different types of family emoji available including same sex families and variations of only children and two children. Unicode – the organisation responsible for creating emojis – added a skin tone modifier function to emojis earlier this year following complaints about a lack of racial diversity. And now there's a growing movement online full of people hoping to put pressure on them to add single-parent emojis.
"I think the taco is great, I just think single parent households are perhaps more important," Kate Leonard, a vocal supporter of single-parent emojis told Tech Mic. "I think a lot of self-perception on the whole comes from how we see ourselves reflected in the media, [and] emoji get used by many, many people."
"If you want to reflect your family and that option isn't available to you, that does have some kind of emotional impact," she said. "There's not a lot of support for [single parents] - I think it would be wonderful to normalise them."
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So what do you think? Should there be a single-parent emoji? Let us know in the comments below...
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