How old were you when you first started using your parents' first names? Was this as a child, or did it "just happen" in your adult years?
It was NOT constant in my life to call them by their names, it was here and there and in FUN times with them.... They enjoyed it too, we would end up in laughter.... They were Primarily Mom and Dad.....but YES they had names and we used them............ And Thank God they did not OWN me.....guided me, did their best and I was on my own when I was ready,,,,I was working P/T at 16 in a dept store.....they didn't get me t hat job. I got my big advice/opinion/views Stuff from Friends along the way. And Big Time from Science of Mind later in life.....
Joy, you have your reasons for calling your parents by the first name, just like others have their reasons for not doing the same. IOW, you preferred to do it, while other members here absolutely wouldn't do it.
Oh Cody I absolutely know this...So be it....there are so many ways to LIGHTEN UP....thankfully my mom and dad did that, dad with some booze though....
I don't see any controversy here myself, but I am pretty simple. We (my siblings) never used parents' first names. We might have thought it odd when others did, but wouldn't think enough about it to have strong opinions about that.
Us too, Mama ,father was not around but mama thought she was both and she did a great job. She was a strong woman. Raised us 5 kids alone mostly, granddaddy was rich so he helped if needed. Georgia born and raised, part city, part country a wonderful childhood.
The grandkids call us nana and papa, the great grands call us grandma and grandpa, since they call our daughter nana and sil papa.
In certain states, like Georgia, So. Carolina, Texas and other southern areas, parents are called different names, like "ma" and "pa" while in Indiana, where I was raised, it was "mom" and "dad". One thing I found out very fast, So California doesn't like the "Southern" way of speaking, like the word "ya'll". But, I've only ran into that one lady that allowed her daughter to call her by her first name. Apparently it didn't bother the mother, but it sure bothered me. I wasn't taught, or allowed, to address my parents, even step-parents, like that. To numerous members in this forum, it's not right to call your parents by their first name. It's just the way it is.
I called my stepmother by her first name, but she was only three years older than me, and I had already moved out of the house when my dad remarried.
It was Mommy and Daddy when I was little. Later it was Mama or Mom and Pop. Never Mother or Father....that would been cold, man. Maternal grandparents were Grandma (first name) and Grandpa (first name), paternal grandparents were Grandma and Grandpa (shortened version of last name). Greatgrandparents were Maw and Paw and the other great-grandmother was Grandma (last name). I'm Meemaw and Meemom to the granddaughter and great-grands. The other set of sort-of-step-grandchildren (his grands that I've been active and highly involved with for ALL of their lives) call me by my first name, but twice....like Mary-Mary. Why that? Because one of the biological grandmothers decreed that I couldn't be called anything that construed "grandmother"......Nanny, Nana, Gran, etc.....even though I was in all but name. It has never bothered me, we all know I'm Grandma in deed, if not in name. All I ask that is they love me. They can call me The Witch of Endor if they like.