Yeah, this, @partyof5. I’m black and Southern and so is my husband and his parents, and I call his parents Mom and Dad even though I wasn’t initially 100% comfortable with it because the only other alternative would’ve been Mr. and Ms. Firstnames, which felt stilted. Calling them by their first names would not be an option. (I also call his grandmother Grandma).
To this day, I still have a difficult time calling older black women and men in the workplace by their first name. In my graduate school department the departmental administrator was an older black woman named Winnie. All of my professors were Jack and Sally and Theo and Catherine, but that administrator was Miss Winnie. I…I just couldn’t do it. LOL!
I feel like when I get older I’ll just want older kids (like 14+) to just call me by my first name. It’s weird when people call me Mrs. Lastname - I’m looking around to find that person, lol. This is compounded by the fact that I still use my original name professionally even though I legally changed my last name, so I almost never hear my legal last name unless I’m at the bank or something. (Even weirder when they call me Dr. Lastname. Then I really don’t know who they’re talking to.)
Ugh, I did premarital counseling before I got married and while I wouldn’t say it’s a complete waste of time, I will say that it’s mostly stuff that husband and I had figured out long before we got married (we dated for 11 years before we married…we started dating in high school).