What Do Your Kids' Friends Call You?

My parents were part of the Silent Generation -- those who were born between 1925 and 1945 (give or take). I grew up with the simple expectation that my parents' friends would be Mr. Morgan or Mrs. Benedetti. The most radical feature of my parents' friends was that Mr. Morgan's (later known to me as Eddie) wife preferred Ms. Morgan. Ms! Imagine.

I don't know if I ever ascribed that to anything other than the idea that my parents were older when my sister and I showed up. What never occurred to me though was the idea that anyone more than 5 years older than I was seemed Old and therefore even if my parents were young when I showed up, they would still have been older.

My friend Lanny's parents were hippies. Man, they were cool. Not only did they let him call them Steve and Ginna, we were invited to as well. Cripes, his grandparents invited us to call them by their names too. That's not to say they were known as anything other than Mr. and Mrs. I did muster up the gusto to call his dad Steve once, and to my surprise...lightening didn't strike and he didn't say anything to me, but, Yes?

I had one friend whose mom had a different last name - she had remarried...and divorced. This caused great consternation for me -- how come Dave's mom has a different name than he does? Interestingly enough, though, she remained Mrs. and not her given name.

On the other hand, it has never occurred to my kids' friends to call me by anything other than by my name. I've got 13 year old girls and 3 year old boys calling me by my given name. The only people who call me Mr. are those looking for a job -- and once they get that job, they're calling me by my given name...how many emails do I get everyday from employees starting with Hi, Mo...

Now, I've got a friend who is about 10 years younger than am I and I asked her tonight how old her mother is. This took her aback for a second -- and once the obvious etiquette breach had been appropriately addressed -- she answered early 60's. That would place her mother in the oldest baby boomers.
I then asked what she called her parents' friends growing up. Her answer -- a not incredibly surprising, but utterly instructive, Mr. or Mrs. until we were told to call them by their first name. My parents' friends NEVER gave me the option.

It would seem a slow evolution began somewhere in that transition between the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers as parents.

Now, I don't know if that was related to loosening norms of the Boomers as parents (for instance the related increase in divorce - what former Mrs. wants to be called, Mrs.?) or not. Based on my super-scientific approach (that would be googling it), it seems that at least some of the advice goes to call them as you're introduced to them.

I know that the term Mr. Morrissey makes me incredibly uncomfortable -- particularly since my Silent Generation dad (age 77 in September) is Mr. Morrissey, which makes it all the less likely that even the children of my most proper friends would call me anything other than my given name.

What's funny, though, is that when I'm not sure what to call my friends' parents, I don't know that I call them anything -- doing my best to avoid that awkward situation where I'm forced to address them directly. Interestingly enough, I've noticed the same phenomenon with my daughters' friends.

The long and short seems to be that we have moved from calling our parents' friends Mr. and Mrs. to our kids choosing to call us nothing if not given direction otherwise. So when they call us by our first name, it's because we've made it okay.

You know what? I'm okay with that.