You’ve probably encountered those children in movies and TV shows who refer to their parents by their first names. Think of the free-spirited child who eschews “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” in favor of “Rainbow and Arugula,” or the defiant kid who looks at his dad and says, “I don’t think so, Steve.” The idea that a child might address their parents in any way other than Mom and Dad often becomes a source of humor, implying that the parents must be overly lenient or out of touch.
This concept has been around for a while; C.S. Lewis mentioned a character named Eustace Scrubb in his Chronicles of Narnia, describing him as “the sort of boy who calls his parents Harold and Alberta rather than Father and Mother.”
I found these jokes peculiar because I was neither rebellious nor peculiar; I simply referred to my parents by their names. From the moment I could speak, this was my norm.
My parents didn’t intend for it to be this way. They expected I would naturally progress from calling them Mommy and Daddy to Mom and Dad, like most kids, but they didn’t enforce it. I picked up their names by mimicking how they addressed each other, and rather than correcting me, they embraced it.
As I entered school, I realized I was different from my peers. During playdates or birthday parties, friends would ask, “Why do you use their names? Why not Mom and Dad?” Sometimes, they asked with a mix of awe and fear, almost as if they couldn’t fathom being so disrespectful. Some even inquired, “Are they your real parents?”
For the first time, I had to justify what felt completely ordinary to me. “It’s his name! It’s her name!” I would argue. How could it be disrespectful to use their names?
In my mind, it was the other children who should explain why they needed to address their parents with formal titles. It felt absurd, like the kids on Leave it to Beaver saying “Yes sir” or “No sir” to their father, as if the family was some sort of military organization with ranks. I reasoned (in my youthful vocabulary) that it was more egalitarian and fair for everyone in the family to use names.
Yet, when pressed to explain, I sounded like the stereotypical characters depicted on screen. But those weren’t my true reasons; the real answer was simply—just because.
As I grew up, I became less open about this aspect of my life. When we worked on memoirs in sixth grade, I crafted stories that were nearly accurate except for the parts where I referred to my parents as Mom and Dad. While I wasn’t ashamed, the constant need to clarify became tiresome.
Then, in seventh grade, we read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, where the revered father figure, Atticus Finch, was called by his children by his first name! This was a small victory for me, as I finally found a fictional family that mirrored my own. The Finches were good people, not exactly “normal” by Jim Crow-era Alabama standards, but they weren’t disrespectful or odd in a negative way.
In class, my peers asked the same questions they had directed at me for years: “Why do they call him Atticus? Why is that allowed? Is he their real father?” The teacher suggested various reasons, like the absence of a mother or Atticus’s progressive views on equality. These were valid points, yet I knew the true answer was simply that’s how it was in their family—just like mine.
When I became a parent, I didn’t have any plans or intentions. I never specifically chose for my kids to call me by my name. Sure, I had experienced a lifetime of people using my name, but I also had a lifetime of needing to explain it. At times, it would have been simpler, even nicer, for them to say Mama or Dada.
Initially, they did call me that as babies. But as they grew, they transitioned to my name, which is quite similar to Daddy, making it a natural evolution from Dada to Dah-dee to Dah-ee to Dah-nee. (My own mother’s name, Linda, may not sound like Mama, but it has the same energy, as the kids would say.) They also began calling my wife, their mom, by her name. No matter how much we encouraged them to use Mommy and Daddy, they caught on to us calling each other Linda and Alex, and that was that.
What do you do when your kids first pronounce your name? Do you reprimand them, scold them, or make them feel it’s unacceptable? Is that why kids often seem hesitant to speak their parents’ names?
Without pushing too hard either way, my children naturally gravitated toward calling us by our names, just as we address each other. I wonder if I unknowingly led them in this direction. My wife and I joke that it must be in my genes. In the end, just like in my seventh-grade English class, the answer is that there is no real explanation. It’s simply the way it is in our family.
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Summary:
The author reflects on their experience of calling their parents by their first names instead of traditional titles like Mom and Dad. This practice, which felt entirely normal to the author, was often met with curiosity and confusion from peers. As they grew older, they realized the difference in family dynamics and later found that their own children naturally adopted the same practice. This article highlights the uniqueness of familial relationships and the absence of a need for formal titles within them.