Earlier discussions deemed parents useful, but not parenting. And the issue popped up again later. But until now, parenting was still in existence. Today, the last question with that tag was re-tagged. A tag not associated with any question is automatically deleted.
In addition, parenting became a tag synonym of parents. From the tag synonyms FAQ:
The system organizes tags in a master–synonym relationship. All attempts to use the synonym tag for any given master tag are automatically converted to the master tag. So, users can enter a synonym tag when writing a question, but the master tag will be displayed when the question is loaded. Editing a question tagged with a synonym tag causes it to be replaced by the master tag. Similarly, when users search for questions tagged with a synonym, a list of questions tagged with the master will be displayed.
I've done most of the re-tagging and I didn't get the impression that parents and parenting have much to do with each other. Only once did parents make sense to me when removing parenting (and that was a duplicate).
In general, since a question needs at least one tag, parenting seemed to be used almost randomly. That's why re-tagging couldn't be done automatically like, say, with todler and toddler, but for each question appropriate tags had to be found individually.
On the other hand, parents has a clearly defined use:
About the parents themselves, and not (only) about the children.
Questions are tagged that way if they are from a child's perspective or when it's about the relationship between the parents themselves. It has been used 254 times at the time of writing. In my opinion, it does serve its purpose and is a useful addition to Parenting.SE's tags. But it should not be used ubiquitously.
Considering what's written in the FAQ cited above, with the synonym relationship in place, whenever someone tries to tag their question parenting (which is like no tag at all as every question could be tagged this way), in its stead parents will be displayed, i. e. a tag whose usage is clearly defined and narrow.
Since the tags themselves have not much in common, I fear that parents would be out of place on almost all of those questions so they'd need to be re-tagged - how is that an improvement to questions with parenting? It does not solve the problem, just changes the tag that needs to be removed via edits later. That's why I hope for your feedback, especially also from moderators (hence the tag) as only they can undo it.
What is the community's stance on this synonym relationship? Shall we keep it or shall it be undone?
