<p>Didn’t one of the Peanuts characters call Lucy “sir”?</p>
<p>I grew up in the same rural southern county that my Quaker ancestors first settled in the 1700’s. Many years of tradition there. Saying ma’am and sir was a way of showing respect to adults. Not saying it was a sign of having a poor upbringing…if you were born and raised that there and it was expected.</p>
<p>If I were to address my grandmother or school teacher or any adult with just a “yes”, I’d quickly hear mama say “yes,what?” Not using ma’am and sir was basically being disobedient to our parents because they taught us to say it. It was expected to be done. It was not optional. It would be equivalent to teaching your children to say “excuse me” in situations that called for it (burping in public,etc) and them choosing to not do it. </p>
<p>I now live in a suburb of a large southern city. Due to the huge influx of transplants from other areas of the country, we don’t hear ma’am and sir very often now. I am not offended that all my kids friends don’t call me ma’am because I know it’s not their family’s tradition.</p>
<p>I used to when I was a kid, in public but not at home. We didn’t use those words at home, but I remember thinking it was the right thing to do in public-- like at school. Don’t know where I got that from since we’re midwesterners and those words have never been uttered in this house. I think up north you have to be careful with that kind of thing, I had some middle school teachers get mad at me because they thought I was being sarcastic or otherwise insincere just because it’s really /not/ done around here unless you’re an employee talking to a customer or similar.</p>
<p>I always call my kid’s teachers Mr & Ms, especially when I email them. D2 is a senior in high school, and she calls all of her teachers Mr & Mrs or Ms.</p>
<p>I also taught my kids not to refer to me or H, she or he. </p>
<p>Is this strange that I get upset when H talks to our kids and he says, “Your mother…” What do you or your spouse say? I would prefer “Mom…” Actually the girls still call me Mommie, but to their friends, “My mother.”</p>
<p>I prefer my kids’ friends call me Mrs. Oldfort, not by my first name.</p>
Sure, in the south. This would seem entirely normal, especially if the client is significantly older than the employee. When I worked for a while at a law firm in Norfolk, Virginia, some of the partners in the firm addressed the older partners with “Mr.”</p>
<p>I sometimes address people with the ma’am/sir thing especially if they’re a customer. I’m not from the South (nor have ever visited), but what replacements are there for addressing people nicely?</p>
<p>Generally, we’d use “Dad” / “your dad / your father” or “Mom / your mom / your mother” pretty interchangeably. I do agree it sounds a little bit stiff to say “your father” and “your mother” and it tends to be when we are being a bit snarky about the other parent. (“You know your father, he doesn’t want to turn the heat on.”)</p>
<p>My FIL refers to my MIL as “Mommy” to his three children, who are all in their forties and fifties. Don’t care for that!</p>
<p>Wow, it’s amazing how passionate we are about our own habits being the only "right’ way to do things, isn’t it? I was born in the north to yankee parents, moved to the south at age 5 and quickly picked up that adults outside my house (especially teachers and my friends parents) would find you a bit rude if you didn’t call them “ma’m or sir”. In fact, it would reflect badly on your parents that they hadn’t taught you better manners. Fortunately, I was fairly quick to adapt so as not to disgrace my family, lol.</p>
<p>Oh, and for the record, when I had children I had them call me mama (which they do to this day). I can’t stand the word “mommy”; it always sounds like a whiny brat (with a runny nose) to me and I wouldn’t tolerate it. I also hated it when other adults objected when one of my kids would actually remember to say ma’am or sir and be told not to call them that because it “made them feel old”. I’d be thinking “Listen, my child is seven and to them you ARE old ;)”</p>
<p>I feel like I’d get yelled at at my job if I DIDN’T do that, and I’m not in the south. And this is the same office that teased me for a while because I wasn’t comfortable referring to clients and higher-up colleagues by their first name the first time I spoke to them. To me, it’s mr or mrs whatever until either a)im told otherwise, b) they set the tone by using my first name-- which is fine with me, or c) if EVERYONE calls them by their first name and I’ve witnessed that personally, (like all my bosses besides the CEO, they are all first name people.) Especially since a lot of the people I interact with are from other places around the world and I don’t want to offend by being too informal, especially as I am younger. But my coworkers thought that was just the funniest thing in the world the first few days, apparently I’m uptight.</p>
<p>It makes me think of the antebellum south and how the elite planter ruling class tried to recreate a feudal society where they’re the “aristocrats” and everyone else had to express “due deference” around them. While I have no doubt that it is much less formalized nowadays, there’s still traces of that that I’ve not only read about, but heard from relatives/cousins living in Mississippi. </p>
<p>It is also a reason I think I’ll prefer to keep my NYC style manners, thank you very much.* It may be seen as rude and abrupt by others…especially old school southerners, but it seems to come the closest to keeping with the egalitarian-minded American spirit! :D</p>
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<li>IRL, I actually tend to be a bit too formal, especially with people whom I respect highly for academic/professional accomplishments. </li>
</ul>
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<p>Funny enough, I’ve had a difficult time with calling friends’ parents or my former teachers/Profs by their first names when they request that I do so. Especially with written correspondence, I still tend to address them as Mr/Mrs/Prof/Dr./laoshi.</p>
<p>This has been quite the educational thread. It never once occurred to me that Northerners would find being called ‘sir or ma’am’ by those younger or less senior than them rude and disrespectful. And I grew up in the North. There were plenty of kids that did use it when I was growing up but it’s definitely more common down here. </p>
<p>I would never judge people’s manners on whether they used ‘sir or ma’am’ because there is a lot more that goes into being a polite person than a single phrase. The one thing I did not like was when my son had an occasional friend call me by my first name and I really hated the ‘Miss first name’ thing, sounds like something they do in kindergarten. I think kids earn the right to call adults by their first name when they become adults.</p>
<p>Very interesting thread from the standpoint that I (raised in the deep south/Texas) of course raised my kids in same way I was. Yes ma’am and yes sir are huge in our family and our town culture. My father was also military so I never saw the negative vibe of it as discussed here. My children would rather be caught dead than be caught not saying yes ma’am or yes sir. It is so driven into myself and my children that simple questions like “are you out of toliet paper” would always be answered with a yes ma’am/no ma’am. You would just never say yes or no without sir or ma’am. The way I was raised really makes yes or no a word that always has an attachment. If a kid around here simply said yes or no, 99% of the adults would say “excuse me?” in which the child would get the clue and answer yes ma’am. I even say this to my customers, tellers, clerks or workers who are younger than me. It is really that planted.</p>
<p>It became an issue with college admissions too. As many of you know, and I started a thread about this over a year ago, my daughter decided against Brown because of the regional differences in manners. </p>
<p>Also, my older kids call me mom and the young kids call me momma. You know when one is completely busted when their father yells and says, “you better go tell your momma what you just did.” It’s never good…lmao.</p>
<p>How interesting. We’re in SF and my kids went to a public school were they called their teachers by their first names - no Miss or anything either. The idea of saying ma’am or sir is just so totally foreign to all of us. S was interested in going to college in Texas, and is still considering going there at some point. I’ve pooh-poohed the many friends and relatives who have said, “are you nuts? how could you send him to Texas?” chalking it up to ignorance and bigotry. But this thread makes me wonder if S would in fact have a hard time. Would people think he was rude because he wouldn’t say “sir” or “madam” and, maybe more significantly, eschews most formality in relations? He is fundamentally respectful, but just doesn’t demonstrate it so clearly and formally.</p>
<p>^ APmaniac might wish to consider that he/she is posting in the parents cafe, and that comments like that are less likely to get him/her called sir or m’am and more likely to get called ■■■■■.</p>
<p>No, it’s expected of kids but not adults. Most colleges have students from all over, so I can’t see the professors holding it against anyone. The harder part is there are major cultural differences. For example, in the South it’s is all about being ‘nice’ over saying what’s really on your mind. People take offense when someone comes across as blunt and without filters. I personally find it very refreshing but I didn’t grow up here.</p>
<p>I will say this…I lived in Texas for a bit and my sister has been there for 20+ years. Texas can be very different…it’s like its own little country. Not saying it’s bad but I found it to be very different even from other parts of the south. ETA: I’m not putting Texas down in the least, as I said my sister lives there and loves it and one of my best friend’s grew up there. But it always feels different from the rest of the south to me.</p>
<p>"It became an issue with college admissions too. As many of you know, and I started a thread about this over a year ago, my daughter decided against Brown because of the regional differences in manners. "</p>
<p>Which is why I posted what I did to explain it. The northern kid who doesn’t say sir/ma’am isn’t being “unmannerly” as you seem to think. He is being polite because it would be unmannerly to refer to your mother, aunt, etc by a term that is used to indicate DISTANCE. I understand that Southerners are being polite in their milieu and that’s fine, but some Southerners don’t seem to know that sir/ma’am is rude and disrespectful in parts of the north when directed towards a friend or loved one.</p>
<p>I rarely hear “sir” or “ma’am” in New England, although occasionally, someone working at my house will call me “ma’am.” I think it creates a divide - I’m the older, superior, owner, and they are the younger, subservient, worker. For this reason, I don’t like it, although I understand that it takes on an entirely different meaning in the south. I think if it were more commonly used here, it would lose some of the negative connotations.</p>
<p>Hmm… grew up in Arkansas and southern Missouri - growing up I was taught to use ma’am and sir for all adults - “aunt” and “uncle” for close friends of the family - Mr. and Mrs. XXX for all other adults. Taught my kids the same - although now that they are teen agers and young adults they occasionally use first names for friend’s parents. </p>
<p>Schools here still reinforce the sir and ma’am thing. And I can’t think of anything else to say to a waiter/waitress or store clerk. “Hey you?” I don’t think so. And I can’t imagine being insulted by being called ma’am. It’s just being polite and as my grandmother always said “Good manners never go out of fashion.”</p>
<p>I bet northern kids don’t go to Cotillion to learn their manners, do they?</p>