My closest friend just had a baby. She’s an only child and we’re damn near inseparable (as in, I was at the hospital while she was having her baby
She’s been calling me “Aunt Izzy” since she found out she was pregnant and says she plans on calling me that forever. She doesn’t plan on having her son baptized, so I wouldn’t be the godmother, exactly… just the “aunt.”
So… what do I call him? my nephew? my godson? “best friend’s baby” doesn’t quite convey the whole picture… but “nephew” isn’t exactly biologically literally true.
So- who else has fictive kin? what do you call them?
One of our family friends with whom my father and I lived for the past 18 months while I finished high school was like a cross between a big brother (46 year old men can be insanely juvenile) and another dad. I referred to him as my godfather in company so as not to confuse people to think he was a brother (if they hadn’t met him). I think it’d be fine to refer to him as a ‘quasi-nephew’ if you want to be specific about it, but I have a lot of ‘uncles’ while my parents only have one brother each. Also; my grandmother has a boyfriend who I refer to as my grandfather, if only because he’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to one.
Where I come from, you’re the kid’s aunt and the kid’s your nephew all right. Only if someone remarks on how you and your sister look absolutely nothing like each other do you mention you’re not biological sisters, just bestestestfriendsforever.
Any grown-up who belongs to the child, is not its parent and is it’s parent age, is the kid’s aunt/uncle. At least when they’re small; it often continues later.
I know families which are on generation #3 of being best-friends. One of my classmate’s sister went to a different school; when she said “yeah, I’m meeting my sister after class,” someone said “uh? sister-sister?” “close-families sister” “oh, I see, nice! So you’ve known each other forever, eh?” “our grandmoms on the maternal side gave birth in the same room… then our moms did the same with the two of us. We kind of met before we were born!”
I know families who, pre-divorce and due to sequential marriages and widowhood, have legal siblings with no biological relationship (and no adoptions involved either).
Lilbro was boy #4 born in a certain apartment building in a specific year. Only two of the mothers-to-be had any previous baby stuff. The newborn’s basket was passed around; so were the pillows to put around the baby for the first few weeks; the immense majority of the clothes, including the baptising set. If we’re for example talking about F J and Lilbro says “junior or senior?” or “the lawyer or the singer?”, standard answer is “your brother” or “senior.” Those four know stuff about each other that their wives aren’t privy to…
I’m told that when I was a baby, my parents took me to a nursing home, where I was fussed over by everyone who saw me but particularly by the lady whom we were visiting. Someone (nurse/employee type) stopped by and said something about the grandbaby/great-grandbaby, and the lady we were visiting said “No, we’re just kind of Cabbage Patch Relations”
That was a long time before the Cabbage Patch Doll Fad.
Aunties and Uncles abound in the Wry family. We have friends who are too close to be Mrs. Whatsis or Mr. Whosit to our kid, but they’re adults and so can’t really be addressed by just their first name. We refer to one another’s kids as nieces and nephews.
Never heard of “fictive” kin (sounds a bit like furtive kin, the kind you let in the back door when no one’s looking …)
I’m an “aunt” to a fair few folk, and I have “aunts” and “uncles” of my own, with no blood shared between anyone. I also have a close friend who’s like a sister, and one or two brother-like figures within the circle. No problems as far as I can see.
I’ve been an “aunt” for almost 6 years, and most of the time calling him “my best friend’s son” gets the job done. I never just say “my friend’s son,” though – I always have that “best” modifier, to convey that I’m close to the kid. If I need to stress the closeness of the relationship even more for some reason, I’ll mention that I’m his “Aunt Jenny.” Every now and then, though, if the subject of kids comes up with someone I’ve just met, I’ll simply call him my nephew with no caveats or air quotes.
Likewise, I’ve had an “aunt” all my life, and I refer to her as “my mom’s best friend.” I still call her “Aunt Re,” though. I hope that my friend’s son is still calling me “Aunt Jenny” when he’s 35.
I use relationship monikers as denotative of heart relationships, not genetic ones. (And looking at DNA research, it seems that might be literally true of many of us - a startlingly large percentage of “biological dads” aren’t. But I digress…) So I have two dads and three moms and two-or-sometimes-three brothers and three grandmothers and two grandfathers and three-sometimes-four cousins (only two of whom “really” are - and the one brother/cousin floats as our relationship gets close or not over the years - we’re not biologically related at all, but he’s the not-biological son of one of my dads) and two nephews (who are “really” cousins, but younger than my son). But I was born to one man and one woman neither of whom have other children of their DNA.
And that’s not counting very close friends who I refer to as sister or brother. The above listed are only those people who have some relationship with other people in my family tree.
If you know me well enough that it becomes confusing, I’ll clarify with “New Jersey Dad” or “Pharmacist Dad” or whatever label is most pertinent to the anecdote. Other than that, if you don’t know the tangled mess that is my family tree already, you’re not close enough for it to be important information.
I’m waiting for the pile-on one day when some Doper Stalker points out all the “conflicting” things I’ve written about my “dad”.
I’ve been calling him my godson to those who know my sisters (and so know that I do not have a third sister old enough to have babies) and not my friend, my nephew to people who only know me, and “(best friend’s) baby” to those who know my friend and me and know how tight we are. I’m sure it’ll all be smoothed out soon enough
and “fictive kin” is something I heard at school. It’s just a term for closer-than-family friends and such who are close enough to be “aunts” or “cousins” or whatever. … I guess it does sound a little weird, now that I think about it, but… I didn’t make it up.
If you had asked me that 2 years ago, I probably would have answered differently. Now? Well, babybeast has 5 Aunts and 3 uncles. I have one brother and my husband has 2 sisters. She also has 3 grammas, one nana and is getting darn close to having her own niece.
It works out, I was never able to figure out the kinship diagrams in anthropology. In our era of friends-becoming-family, I think it is actually more telling of our replacement of our prior extended family experience and quite telling of our need to have more people that we feel connected to rather than less.
Good on you and on your nephew. Frankly, I think if the Kid calls you Aunt and you don’t call him nephew, it would probably upset him. Kids love that kind of stuff. I still remember trying to figure out why my mothers second husband wasn’t my father and how amazing it all was. My husbands sister is mildly retarded (insert whatever politically correct phrase you see fit, I’d prolly say “she ain’t right” if left to my own devices) but she insists on insisting that he is her HALF brother and that even though he isn’t her WHOLE brother, she loves him very much. He’s been her brother her entire life, but it is still a bit of an obsession she has.
Pick a trait you and your best friend have in common, say brown eyes, tell him that is what makes you sisters. Heck, in the first grade wearing the same dress as another girl made us twins.
Besides, random kids are annoying, nephews are fun to spoil.
Years ago, I worked with a woman who had a lot of boyfriends… think of her as a dedicated short term serial monagamist…
One time her brother moved in with her, after arriving from the east, just while he got a job and was able to set up his own accomodations.
She brought her 5 yr old daughter to work one day, and we enjoyed talking to the little tyke quite a bit.
One cute quetion that left us smiling (and the girl’s mother blushing) was “Why does uncle Dave sleep on the couch, but all the other uncles sleep in mommy’s room?”
I find “godmother” to be simpler than “my mother’s 2nd ex-husband’s 2nd ex-wife.”
As for my half-sister’s (we have the same father) half-sister’s (they have the same mother) offspring, I refer to them as pseudo-cousins. I like the “quasi” modifier upthread. I would probably use that if I liked them.
Call him your nephew. Who cares if it’s literally true? I call two of my cousins my niece and my nephew just because the generational split seems to make it make sense that way. They’re already first cousins, but colloquially they’re a niece and a nephew just because that’s what they actually are to me. I feel like the terms are fluid – the kids are my cousins, but they’re also my niece and my nephew. I have a friend who is as close as your friend seems to be, and if he had a kid and wanted to call me “Auntie,” I’d be only too excited to have the kid as a nephew.
I have a ton of “cousins”, the children of my parents’ “comadres”. These are children close in age to me who might actually be 2nd cousins, godchildren of my parents’ or just their best friends’ children.
Cultural anthropologist checking in – and you’re using “fictive kin” correctly, SurrenderDorothy. I’ve usually defined fictive kinship as “friends so close they may as well be family”, or “family you actually choose”.
My sister and I had a bazillion fictive aunts and uncles when we were growing up, along with the “normal” siblings-of-parent aunts and uncles. Oddly, we didn’t consider their kids “cousins”, which may be why I don’t recall any confusion about who was related and who wasn’t.
If none of the other names upthread appeal, may I suggest “courtesy nephew” as another alternative?
I asked exactly the same question here, and got no particularly good advice. It’s weird that just referring to them as “friends” doesn’t seem right, either. Can’t I be friends with a 3-year-old without it making me seem like a pedophile?
