familyvalues

My children come from a sort-of conventional household. (To what degree three adults in one household and two adults in another can be considered conventional.) We let all the adults choose their own titles, and the children choose what to call them. I go by "Mom" or "Mama" because I always have. K. goes by "Aunt" because she feels too young to be called "Mom". Their stepmother is even younger and wants to go by her first name. The elder daughter calls her stepfather C. but her younger sister calls him Dad, as well as both of them calling their birth father that.

Before I adopted my elder daughter, she was in the habit of calling me "Mama" and her mother "Mama S." I've always described family as a wiki — you fit in parts as you need them.