So what do/did you call your parents? I’d sorta like to limit this to people over the age of 30 and how they address(ed) their BIRTH parents, though I know I can’t really enforce that.
Answer the poll, and feel free to reply with the specific details of what you called them if not by their name (i.e. Mom/Ma/Mum) or if you voted “it varies” let us know what situations trigger the variations.
If you switched to calling them by their names, at what approximate age did you switch?
Also, do you find it weird when other people address their parents differently than you do?
Mama and Daddy. Female, 32, with Texan parents, if that makes any difference. I think region does, personally. I’ve never called them by their names, and probably would have been smacked for the cheek if I tried it. Anyone who tries calling their parents by their names weirds me out.
I was even invited by teachers to call them by their names after graduating school, and could never bring myself to do it.
Also called my ex-in laws Mom and Dad (but nothing more familiar). Don’t know that I’ll do that again. Conveniently, now, with a kid, everyone is some form or another of Grandma or Grandpa.
Well! I guess I answered wrong already. I called my birth mother by her name, usually. But my adoptive parents, who had me since I was five, I called Mama and Papa.
By “birth” do you mean “biological parent” or “people you considered your parents as a child, not your in-laws?” Because this seems to hearken back to a trainwreck none of us want to revisit.
A girl that I had a long (ish) relationship with had a great little boy and as soon as he was able to talk he called her Leyla. (her name) I rapidly got used to it. We were friends/fuck buddies/bit more/sometimes less for about 7 years and I never heard him call her anything else.
It weirded some people out but it kinda seemed natural.
Well if you voted “Mom/Dad” I’d say you voted correctly. My reason for wanting to limit it to birth parents was mostly to eliminate muddying the waters for people who (more understandably) called step/foster/adoptive parents by name. Anyone in a similar situation as you should vote however they like and explain it just like you did. Thanks!
I guess the latter, but there are no hard and fast rules I guess. It’s not like they would be enforceable anyway.
And I hereby declare this a trainwreck-free zone.
My parents were Mama and Daddy, as were Daddy’s to him. Mama’s were Mama and Papa. My kids called me Daddy for the most part, but Paw when they’re being silly. Their mother was Mom.
These things tend to run in families, I have detected.
I call my parents Mom & Dad. When I was little it was “Mommy & Daddy”. Calling them by their given names would be unfathomable. :eek: I get vaugly weirded out even using their names when speaking about them to a 3rd party.
A little of both. The default is Mom or Dad, but on occasion I call my dad ‘Mr. Tyger’ because I grew up with my mom doing so. Mom is sometimes a nickname based on her name. If we’re in a public place and I need to get her attention, I’ll call out her name, but that’s because if I say ‘mom’ two-thirds of the women in the store will turn.
Sometimes it’s confusing because my Mom will refer to both Dad and her dad as ‘Dad’.
Boy, I sure didn’t. I had the usual adolescent issues with my parents, but it wouldn’t even have occurred to me to call them by their first names, and I can’t imagine the reaction if I did.
As a child, it was Mom/Dad most of the time, and Mommy/Daddy when hurt or upset. Now, as an adult, its Mom/Dad, unless I’m trying to get their attention, when I’ll use their first name.
I have always called my mother “ma”. My father divorced my mother by the time I was one. We still called him “dad” even though he had almost nothing to do with us. When I was 17 & my brother was 16, we went to live with him during a difficult time (we, mother, brother & myself had been homeless). A few months later my father threw me out of his house (also disowned & disinherited me, that was a laugh) because I wasn’t the son he wanted. I didn’t talk to him for nearly a decade, but since then I have called him be his first name, not that we talk much anymore.
I decided around the age of 10 to call my mother “Mother” and my father “Dad,” irritating some of my siblings who call them “Mama” and “Daddy” and judge anything else inappropropriate.
Adopted from birth. Called my parents ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ as a child, ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ when I was older. I haven’t voted in the poll because apparently being adopted means I don’t qualify?
