Rethinking CODA: When Identity Labels Center the Wrong Perspective

The acronym CODA, short for “Child of Deaf Adults,” is widely used to describe hearing individuals raised by Deaf parents. It’s a term often embraced with pride, identity, and belonging. But like many identity labels, it carries embedded assumptions, ones we rarely pause to examine. CODA centers the Deafness of the parent before their role in the family. It marks their hearing status as the defining trait, rather than the relationship of parenthood. This isn’t just a question of semantics. It’s part of a larger pattern where language quietly reinforces power, default norms, and cultural distance.

This type of framing is common across social systems. Women in leadership are called “female CEOs” while men are just CEOs. Black families are identified by race while white families are simply “families.” Immigrant students are labeled “non-English speaking,” whereas English-speaking students go unnamed. These examples show the same asymmetry: dominant identities remain unmarked, while everyone else is named, labeled, and explained. CODA fits into this same logic. It tells us who is assumed normal and who must be identified by their difference.

What makes CODA more complicated is that the term was coined by hearing children of Deaf parents themselves. It arose as a way to describe a unique cultural experience, living between two worlds. It is meaningful, valid, and often empowering. But even self-naming is not immune from inherited cultural bias. By identifying the parent as a “Deaf adult,” the term reflects a hearing-centered worldview, one that emphasizes hearing status over familial role. Deaf parents are not usually referred to simply as “parents” in this term, they are first described by their condition, then their humanity.

The irony is especially clear in the film CODA. This Academy Award-winning movie tells the story of Ruby Rossi, the only hearing member of her Deaf family. What many viewers don’t realize is that the film is a remake of the 2014 French movie La Famille Bélier, named after the family’s surname. In the American version, the family’s name, Rossi, remains, but the title shifts entirely. Instead of focusing on the family as a unit, the title centers the hearing child and her relationship to Deafness. The term “CODA” here isn’t just a description, it becomes the frame for the whole narrative. It’s worth noting that CODA also plays on a musical term, referring to the concluding passage in a piece. But even that metaphor reinforces the arc of the hearing child’s journey more than the family’s collective story.

None of this is meant to dismiss the identity of CODAs or diminish the importance of their lived experience. Rather, it’s a call to examine how our language often centers the dominant perspective, even in spaces that claim to honor difference. Hearing children of Deaf parents are uniquely situated between cultures, but that doesn’t mean their parents should be named by condition rather than by role. Saying “hearing person raised by Deaf parents” centers the experience without flattening the identity of the parent. “Deaf-parented child” keeps the relationship intact without falling into the ableist pattern of condition-first framing.

Language is never neutral. It tells us who matters, who is normal, and who must be explained. The acronym CODA may have started as a way to name belonging, but it’s time to ask, who does it center? And what does it subtly reinforce? If the goal is dignity and equity, then our labels must begin with connection, not condition.

Even legacy terms can evolve. And when they do, they have the power not just to describe identity, but to reshape how we see one another.