Family: Woman, Woman, Boy Emoji
U+1F469 U+200D U+1F469 U+200D U+1F466:family_woman_woman_boy:About Family: Woman, Woman, Boy 👩👩👦
Family: Woman, Woman, Boy () is part of the People & Body group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E2.0. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. On Discord it's . Click copy above to grab it, paste it anywhere.
Works in iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, and every app that supports Unicode.
Often associated with boy, child, family, and 1 more keywords.
Meaning varies across cultures, see cultural notes below.
Scroll down for the full story: meaning, trends, combos, and more.
How it looks
What does it mean?
Two women and a boy. A same-sex family with two moms and their son. It was added in Emoji 2.0 in 2015, the same year Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 US states.
For many families, it's the only emoji that looks like theirs. Roughly 2.57 million LGBTQ adults in the US are parenting children under 18, according to a 2024 Williams Institute study. The emoji gives those families digital representation that didn't exist before 2015.
As of iOS 17.4 (March 2024), Apple replaced all family emojis with grey silhouettes. The colorful two-moms-and-son image is gone on iPhones. On Android and Windows, the original design persists. The silhouette approach was Unicode's answer to the impossibility of supporting skin tones for every family combination.
This emoji spikes during Pride Month (June) and around Mother's Day, where families with two moms use it to celebrate their specific family structure. It appears in LGBTQ+ family content, adoption stories, and parenting blogs.
Outside of those peaks, it's used year-round by same-sex families sharing daily life on social media. It also functions as an allyship signal when shared by friends and supporters.
In professional contexts, companies include it in DEI communications and Pride campaigns alongside other family configurations.
It represents a family with two mothers and a son. Used to celebrate same-sex families, LGBTQ+ parenting, and family love in general.
What it means from...
When a friend sends this about their own family, it's sharing a personal milestone or daily moment. Respond with warmth. If they send it about your family, it's acknowledgment and support.
In workplace chat, this appears in parental leave announcements, family day posts, or DEI communications. It normalizes diverse family structures in professional settings.
Emoji combos
Origin story
Same-sex family emojis arrived in Emoji 2.0 (2015) as ZWJ sequences. Apple had actually added them to iOS 6 in 2012, three years before the Unicode standard caught up. The 👩👩👦 sequence is Woman + ZWJ + Woman + ZWJ + Boy, 5 codepoints for one family.
The timing mattered. In 2015, same-sex marriage became legal nationwide. The emoji keyboard updated the same year. For families who'd existed without legal recognition or digital representation, both arrived together.
A 38-year longitudinal study published in 2024 found that children of lesbian parents are mentally healthy, well-adjusted, and highly educated: 50.7% completed a bachelor's degree and 40% had some graduate education. A Cornell meta-analysis of 79 studies found no negative outcomes for children of same-sex parents.
The 2024 silhouette redesign on iOS affected same-sex family emojis too. All configurations now render as generic silhouettes on iPhones, meaning the two-moms family looks the same as any other family on Apple devices.
Design history
Around the world
In the US and Western Europe, this emoji is broadly normalized. LGBTQ+ family representation in media, advertising, and politics has increased substantially since marriage equality.
In countries with anti-LGBTQ+ legislation (Russia, parts of the Middle East and Africa), this emoji carries risk. Same-sex family content can be censored, flagged, or lead to harassment.
In East Asia, the picture varies. Taiwan legalized same-sex marriage in 2019 and uses these emojis freely. Japan has growing recognition through municipal partnerships. South Korea's LGBTQ+ community uses the emoji in activism contexts.
Yes. A Cornell meta-analysis of 79 studies found no negative outcomes for children of same-sex parents. A 38-year longitudinal study published in 2024 found children of lesbian parents are mentally healthy and highly educated.
Do's and don'ts
- ✓Use freely to represent your family or show support
- ✓Use during Pride Month and Mother's Day for two-mom families
- ✓Pair with 🏳️🌈 for explicit LGBTQ+ pride context
- ✗Don't use to mock same-sex families
- ✗Be mindful of recipients in countries with anti-LGBTQ+ laws
- ✗Don't assume all families with two women are romantic partners (some may be co-parents or multigenerational)
In most Western countries, yes. In countries with anti-LGBTQ+ laws, same-sex family emoji content may face censorship or draw unwanted attention.
Caption ideas
Aesthetic sets
Fun facts
- •Roughly 2.57 million LGBTQ adults in the US are parenting children under 18 (Williams Institute, 2024).
- •Apple added same-sex family emojis in iOS 6 (2012), three years before the Unicode standard included them in 2015.
- •A Cornell meta-analysis reviewed 79 studies and found no negative outcomes for children raised by same-sex parents.
Common misinterpretations
- •Not every two-women-and-child family is a same-sex couple. The emoji could represent a mother and grandmother, two co-parents, or other configurations. Context determines the reading.
- •On iOS 17.4+, this renders as a generic silhouette. Recipients may not realize you sent a specifically same-sex family emoji. On Android/Windows, the original colorful design still shows.
In pop culture
- •The Fosters (2013-2018) featured a lesbian couple raising a blended family, normalizing two-mom households on mainstream TV. The show ran for five seasons on Freeform.
- •A 38-year longitudinal study (2024) tracked children of lesbian parents and found 91% completed bachelor's degrees or higher. It's one of the most comprehensive studies on same-sex parenting ever published.
Trivia
For developers
- •ZWJ sequence: + + + + . Five codepoints, one glyph.
- •Family emojis don't support skin tone modifiers in the standard recommendation (except on Windows).
- •On iOS 17.4+, this renders as a grey silhouette identical to other family configurations. The underlying codepoints still specify two women and a boy.
Emoji 2.0 in 2015, the same year same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide in the US. Apple had actually included it since iOS 6 in 2012.
Apple changed all family emojis to silhouettes in iOS 17.4 (March 2024). It's a universal change, not specific to same-sex families. Unicode recommended it because full skin-tone support would require thousands of additional designs.
Not on most platforms. Skin-tone family emojis only work on Microsoft Windows, which created 52,000 family combinations in 2016.
See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.
What does 👩👩👦 represent to you?
Select all that apply
- Family: Woman, Woman, Boy Emoji (emojipedia.org)
- iOS 17.4 Emoji Changelog (blog.emojipedia.org)
- LGBTQ Parenting in the US (2024) (williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu)
- 38-Year Study on Children of Lesbian Parents (sdsu.edu)
- Cornell Meta-Analysis on Same-Sex Parenting (cornell.edu)
- Obergefell v. Hodges (wikipedia.org)
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