AIBU to think that is is completely normal to call your parents Mummy and Daddy as an adult.

[MillicentSmythFortescue]

I read a thread yesterday where someone mentioned people calling their parents 'Mummy and Daddy' in parenthood. A couple of people said they called their parents 'Mummy and Daddy too'. I associate this name with young children, when I was a child everyone converted to Mum and Dad around the age of 7. Trivial I know and none of my business but I was wondering how widespread it is?

AIBU - it is normal to call your parents Mummy and Daddy in adulthood in a non-ironic way.

Typical if you’re posh or from Northern Ireland.

Upper middle class and upper class stereotypically use mummy daddy and granny. It’s pretty standard there

@didye

It's just not the done thing past the age of 6 or 7 where I am. As others have said it seems very much to be a regional thing so it sounds quite jarring to me when I hear it used by adults to refer to their parents but crack on if that's your thing.

Creepy with a vom face?

didye I agree it is unusual, but 'quite jarring' is very different from 'massively creepy'.

A 22yr old woman I know calls her parents mummy and daddy. I thought she was being silly at first. She was serious. There again she has bought herself a title so uses 'Lady' then her name 😂

I'm 49 and answer the phone to my elderly mum in a silly voice saying, "hello mummy" because it makes her laugh. Every. Time!

I personally think its ridiculous after the age of about 7.

I am delighted to report that my 80 yr old DM still refers to her long departed DM as Mummy. I find it rather lovely actually. We haven't actually kept up the tradition although as my DM "married down"

We do still call our evening meal supper as that's what we grew up with - had never occurred to me that it was strange or pretentious, probably because when you grow up with words and phrases that describe your life you don't think about their place in the v complicated lexicon of the British class system- and thank God for that!!

I call my mum mum but my dad daddy. I’m not at all posh (or Irish).

I think it’s because my dad left when I was 1yr old and I only saw him once a month at most throughout my whole childhood and less in my teenage years. So I never naturally evolved to Dad. I refer to him as “my dad” in conversations with others, but if I am talking to him it’s always daddy. I don’t really care what people think about it.

You’re calling something that Irish people do creepy and putting a vom face.

Would you do the same if it was a person of colour doing something that is normal in their culture?

No, of course you wouldn’t. Because that would be racist.

It’s the same thing. It’s normal in Irish culture to call parents Mummy/Mammy and Daddy.

And it’s horrible to see something in your culture mocked and called creepy and have a vomit face put at it m

Better than "Mutti" if you're not German.

@Kcar Just saw your first post to me. Fair point. I'm not racist.

I’m Welsh so Mam and Dad, but Mama (pronounced mamma) and Dada when talking about them to DB.

I love the regional differences in language. There seems to be quite a lot of different names for grandmother as well.

I am from South London, and my paternal grandmother was granny (very working class), and my maternal grandmother was oma (She was German)
My cousins called their grandmother in Bournemouth grandmama
My other cousins (Devon born and bred) refer to grandmother as nanna
In Sheffield and Barnsley children call their grandmother nannan
And in Northumberland they also say granny (working class BTW)

My adult dd calls me Mummy but my adult ds calls me Mum.
Does that mean I have one posh child and one working class one??

@Ginfordinner I’ve never heard that re Barnsley- I have 1 parent from Barnsley and 1 from Cudworth and it’s always been Grandma. But yes language is fascinating

I can't stand "nan" or "nanny" for some reason. Urgh.
I sometimes say "mummy" sometimes "mum" and often i referred to my parents as the "agèd parents" but it depends

I think it’s very mean to disparage the affectionate names that people call their relatives. There’s really no need for it.

It's for pretentious upper middle class people in the South East isn't it?

Round my way, you'd have got a hiding round the back of the bikesheds if anyone heard you refering to your mum and dad as 'mummy' and 'daddy' over the age of about 8.

I call my parents “Mummy and Daddy”. Not about them. But to their faces. I’m in my 50s. Not posh. Or pretentious. My DM called her parents the same. My cousin and best friend do similarly. I live in the SW. But my family heralds from Kent and London.

My 19 year old daughter calls me Mummy. My 16 year old daughter calls me Mother and has since quite young. Or sometimes “Mate”. Or “Bro”. 9 year old DS calls me Mummy or sometimes Mum. I anticipate he will swap to Mum full time pretty soon. I’m happy with whatever they want.

My DH, by contrast, calls his mother by her first name. Always has. She is 76 now and, very, very unusually called her own parents by their first names too. At their behest.

We are none of us (at least to my view) odd as people.

I feel rather uncomfortable with the declarations that it’s ok when Irish people do it “with their lovely little accents” - think what you’re saying people!
Or to be more charitable, people associate a language feature with groups that typically use that language feature, but think it sounds silly when used outside of that group.🤷‍♀️

Mummy and daddy in my area sounds weird and childish, unless someone was from an area or background where that's the norm.
One of my relatives had started doing it in adulthood since moving and it's like fingers down a blackboard to me.

It's for pretentious upper middle class people in the South East isn't it?

By pretentious, do you just mean people of a particular social class? Because those two things aren't actually the same, you know. Using language the way you've been brought up to use it is not pretentious.

I thought it was interesting upthread where someone said 'granny' was posh. In N Ireland the vast majority of people use Granny and Granda. I go into places like Clinton cards and see racks of cards etc for 'Grandma' and 'Grandad' and no one seems to buy them, because no one uses those terms. The shops could make a killing if they printed their cards with slightly different versions for the different parts of the country.

It’s common in NI and also vairy posh people tend to do it. I believe Prince Charles calls the Queen Mummy.

I can’t remember how old I was when I stopped using Mummy and Daddy but my eldest is 10 and he still calls me Mummy.