agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Care and Feeding,

My stepson’s wife is about to have a baby. Although (obviously) I am not my stepson’s biological mother, I did help raise him (for many years, he lived exactly half the time with my husband and me; as he got older, it was more like 80 percent of the time with us). Now that he is about to be a father, both my stepson’s mother—let’s call her Kathy—and I would like the baby to call us Nana. I have no problem sharing the name and even having the child call me Nana. My reasons for wanting to be called Nana are deep: for generations of my family, as far back as we know, all the women have been called Nana by their grandchildren. Kathy’s reason for wanting to be called Nana? She likes the name. Her parents are Grammy and Grandpa; her grandparents were also Grammy and Grandpa and that’s why her son calls her parents Grammy and Grandpa.

My stepson and his wife are fine with us both being Nana, but they are being pressured into making me feel like I need to give up the name because the child will be Kathy’s first biological grandchild. I’m on the brink of giving up on being Nana for all of my future grandchildren (I have two children of my own, and I want all the grandchildren to use the same name for me! I don’t want my stepson’s future child[ren] to feel singled out or lesser than my blood relations), even though that would mean giving up on a tradition that has meant a great deal to me all my life. Should I give up on it, or should I hold my ground?

—Sad Stepgrandmother

I’m sorry the rivalry between you and your stepson’s mother is spilling over into your soon-to-be grandson’s generation, but I wearily and grudgingly accept that this seems to be a fact of life in many families after (even long after) a divorce. Here is my verdict.

First: Kathy’s reason for wanting to be called Nana doesn’t matter. She is entitled, as we all are, to request to be called whatever she wants to be called. Second: I am delighted that you are willing to share the name with her—good for you! Her refusal to accept this perfectly nice compromise (hardly even a compromise, since lots of people call both sets of grandparents by the same honorific, with or without the addition of the proper name) is churlish—or at least childish—but so is your petulance, as is the drama of your posing this as a question of giving up a cherished, long-held family tradition. It would be nice if your stepson and his pregnant wife were able to say, kindly and warmly, “So you shall both be Nana! Excellent!” but if they can’t (again, I call your attention to the rivalry between the two moms in your beleaguered stepson’s life, and what I imagine is his wish not to disappoint his mother, even if—or especially if—as a teenager he spent only 20 percent of his time with her), why not just stop talking about this? The expectant parents have bigger fish to fry. Don’t get involved in your co-grandmother’s drama. (I find myself wondering, I admit, what the child’s other grandmother[s?] hope to be called. Maybe you can all be Nanas.)

If you want the child to call you Nana, refer to yourself as Nana when you are in the baby/toddler/preschool/etc. grandchild’s presence. “Oh, hello, sweetheart—come to Nana!” and “Look what Nana brought you!” I shall assume you will be spending sufficient time with the child to imprint the chosen name on their little developing brain—and that your co-Nana, if the two of you are ever in the same room at the same time, will not freak out over this and yell at her grandchild: “THAT is not Nana! I am Nana! I am the only Nana!” (If she does, you will win the prize for who-is-the-nicer-Nana.)

And a P.S. verdict: If your stepson actually tells you, now or later, “I’m sorry, but your grandchild cannot call you Nana. It means too much to my mother,” then you must gracefully go along with it, for his sake, and offer a reasonably palatable alternative. This would not mean that you have to give up the title (that is so important to you) for all your future grandchildren. I promise that this particular grandchild will not feel singled out or lesser because of using a different name for you than the others do. The name by which grandchildren address their grandmother, I feel obliged to tell you, is not an important part of their relationship with her. It matters, pretty much universally, only to her.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/01/daughters-fight-wedding-plans.html

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Why the hell do people get so worked up over such trivial things when dealing with small children?

As we all know, you're called whatever the firstborn decides to call you. But if you're so insistent, LW, make one teensy compromise and encourage your grandkid to call you Nana Firstname. (Or Nana Lastname, or Nana Nickname, or whatever.)

For crying out loud, the woman already won, her stepkid chose to live with Dad instead of Mom as soon as he was old enough to exert that choice. WHY is she trying to fight her now?

The letter immediately following this one is hilarious too, btw - adolescents, amirite?

Can we put both Nanas in a Get Along T-Shirt?

Some people are just odd. My sister had her kid before I had mine, and my dad chose Saba (Hebrew for grandfather) for his title. Five years later, I have my first kid and the other grandfather decides he would rather be Opa than Saba Firstname, even though he really wanted to use Saba.

Maybe Nana could be Nanny? That's the grandmother name on my husband's side...

Possibly the child will solve the problem by refusing ever to address you as anything but Gus.

*hopes so*

I mean. Is this a new thing? I don't think my grandmothers ever got asked? But both my grandmothers were Nanny, with my dad's mom getting Nanny Mack (we are thoroughly Irish) as a distinguishing factor -- Nanny was the preferred name/title on both sides of the family. But my dad's brother's kids with his second wife called her Gramma. (My dad's brother's kid with his first wife ended up calling her Ma because my grandparents raised and eventually adopted her.) I don't think (???) there was ever a tussle over it? (Now I need to ask my aunt/cousin to find out.)

The odds that all the cousins will call their mutual grandparents the same names are just slightly better than the odds that the grandparents can decide for themselves what the grandchildren will call them and that those names will take.

My grandparents were, in the third person, Grandma and Grandpa Lastname on both sides; in the vocative they were Grandma and Grandpa on one side and Gram and Gramp on the other. My nephew has no living grandfathers; to him, my mother is Grandma and his other grandmother is PohPoh, which (so my sister-in-law tells us) is Cantonese for "Grandma" (possibly "maternal grandma," I can't remember). My son also has no living bio grandfathers,* and to him, my mother is Grandma Firstname and my mother-in-law is Grandma, because the latter lives nearby and we see her all the time. He specifies Grandma Firstname for her when necessary, but she is the one who gets the default Grandma. (* And my father-in-law, that is, my mother-in-law's husband, is Poppy, because when he was learning to speak the kid tried to say "Grandpa" and that's what came out, and it stuck even after he worked out how to say "Grandpa." MIL was "Meema" for a while, but when he did work out how to say "Grandma," "Meema" didn't last. KIDS DECIDE THE NAMES FOR THEMSELVES. RESISTANCE IS USELESS.)

My parents apparently had a Time getting me to call Dad's mom "Grandma Firstname" instead of "Firstname Lastname" in an extremely accusing tone. (She came to help out when my sister was born, and I did not forgive her for replacing my mother for Quite A While. I remember nothing of this.)

PohPoh is indeed 'maternal grandma' in Cantonese.

Which, yes, would probably complicate things when step-parents are involved.

As someone whose grandmothers were both Nana ... this is so weird.

My cousins* called both their grandmothers Nanny, but they often called the one we shared "Other Nanny", because they saw the other one more often due to proximity.

*technically first cousins once removed, but my generation in age, their Nanny was actually my Great-Nanny, because they were later-in-life children of a younger sibling.

Edited 2022-01-14 00:09 (UTC)

wow, how petty and trivial. if the other 'nana' fights sharing the title and the new parents go along, figure out something else to be called. being called 'gramma' or whatever isn't the end of the world.

when my niece was little, she had multiple grandmothers/great-grandmothers. my mom was Oma, and her great-grandmothers on our side were Farm grandma and other grandma (when referring to them to others) and just grandma to their faces. on her dad's side she had a grandma, and a granny. even with several people called grandma, it wasn't really confusing to anyone

I can understand why people get emotional about these names, but (as many of you have already said) you can’t 100% choose because the kids will mangle or alter your chosen names anyway. My grandparents were Granny and Grandpa (maternal) and Nanny and Granddad (paternal). My son (in a family with multiple step-grandparents) is currently learning 2x Nanny/Nana Firstname, Grandpa Firstname, GrandAl and Grandmama (I don’t think those will stick but what do I know?) and I’m hoping for ‘Granny’ for my late mum because that’s important to me. But it might not work that way and we’ll all cope.

When my one brother's then-wife was pregnant, she said to my mom (at a family gathering) what did she want to be called, because all grandchildren will follow the first one's lead so it was important to know, and HER mom was going to be Mimi....

My mom said, very politely, that Grandma [Firstname] was just fine.

After my brother & his wife left, Mom turned to me & my sisters with EXTREMELY RAISED eyebrows and said "what PLANET is she FROM?" We didn't even have to ask what she meant; to us it was a bizarre assertion.

But I know SO many people who had to negotiate which grandparent gets which nickname, etc etc etc. and it never fails to perplex. I grew up with two Grandmas and two Grandpas (and a Grammy, who was my great-grandmother). No one was weird about it, even though my grandparents HATED each other. The cousins on my father's side called our shared grandfather Pap-pap and no one was confused in the slightest.

My one sister's kids have 4 grandmothers. 3 of them are "Grandma" and one is "Honey" (that one felt weird about using "Grandma" because she has never been legally related to my sister).