{"id":14028,"date":"2016-07-21T13:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T17:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.oviahealth.com\/guide\/14028\/what-should-baby-call-me\/"},"modified":"2021-12-17T14:32:22","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T19:32:22","slug":"what-should-baby-call-me","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.oviahealth.com\/guide\/14028\/what-should-baby-call-me\/","title":{"rendered":"What should I have my baby call me?"},"content":{"rendered":"<link href=\"\/css\/webview.css\" rel=\"stylesheet\">\n<div class=\"row-fluid\">\n<div class=\"span12 analysis-feedback\">\n<div class=\"media\"><a class=\"pull-left\" href=\"#\"> <\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"media-body\">\n<p>Long before <span class=\"pronoun-baby\" data-pronoun=\"baby\">Baby<\/span> can talk, new parents dream of hearing that sweet little voice cry out for them, calling out \u2026<em>what<\/em>? In the deliberation about what to name <span class=\"pronoun-baby\" data-pronoun=\"baby\">Baby<\/span> when <span class=\"pronoun-they\" data-pronoun=\"they\">they arrives<\/span>, what <em>your<\/em> name is going to be can sometimes get lost in the shuffle for a while, but as soon as <span class=\"pronoun-baby\" data-pronoun=\"baby\">Baby<\/span> starts making sounds, it becomes a pretty important topic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"resource-content\">\n<div class=\"row-fluid\">\n<p>What children call their parents is both a highly emotional, personal thing and hugely culturally influenced, both in terms of time and space. This means where you live and where your family comes from plays a part, and modern associations do too, as some names cycle through phases of sounding old fashioned.<\/p>\n<p>In the US, there has been a movement, starting in the \u201890s and moving through to the present, that presents \u2018mama\u2019 as an alternative to \u2018mom,\u2019 \u2018mommy,\u2019 or \u2018mother,\u2019 for example, as a kind of signpost for alternative parenting styles, and has since spread through the parenting-blogger community. In that vein, Strong Families, a nonprofit from the California Bay Area made a move starting in 2011 to rebrand Mother\u2019s Day as \u201cMama\u2019s Day,\u201d complete with its own set of more customized cards designed to celebrate family structures not usually depicted in media or mass-culture. This includes young parents, single parents, same-sex parents, immigrant families, and families with incarcerated parents.<\/p>\n<p>Depending on whom you ask, what they grew up with, and what their associations with their own parents is, both \u2018mom\u2019 and \u2018mama\u2019 can be considered frumpy, or can be thought of as the more modern-sounding choice. There is, confusingly, both more and less variation when it comes to names for fathers, though there are certainly less heated debates around which they choose. The variation comes from the consonants: mothers, at least in English-speaking cultures, are pretty much always stuck with the \u2018m\u2019 sound, while fathers generally get their pick between \u2018d\u2019 and \u2018p,\u2019 and the word \u2018father\u2019 itself throws another consonant entirely into the mix.<\/p>\n<p>Whether mom, mommy, mama, mami, ma, madre, mum, or dad, daddy, papa, papi, or pops, the important thing is that the parental \u2018name\u2019 you end up with is one that both you and <span class=\"pronoun-baby\" data-pronoun=\"baby\">Baby<\/span> are comfortable with.<\/p>\n<p>No matter what you decide, just remember that it won\u2019t be too long before <span class=\"pronoun-baby\" data-pronoun=\"baby\">Baby<\/span> is out in the world and able to make <span class=\"pronoun-their\" data-pronoun=\"their\">their<\/span> own decision about how <span class=\"pronoun-they\" data-pronoun=\"they\">they chooses<\/span> to refer to you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some parents have known they were going to be &#8220;mama&#8221; or &#8220;dad&#8221; to their future offspring since they were kids themselves, but for other families, the answers aren&#8217;t quite so clear-cut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235316,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ovia_author_name":"","ovia_author_prefix":"","ovia_author_image":"","ovia_content_type_id":"177","ovia_product_mode":"13","ovia_days_from_signup":"","ovia_days_from_lmp":"","ovia_days_from_baby_birth":"306","ovia_days_from_enroll":"","ovia_health_module_days_from":"","ovia_article_for_email_days_from":"306","ovia_health_module":"","ovia_legacy_id2":"","ovia_ttc":"","ovia_article_subtype":"slideshow","ovia_health_symptom":"","ovia_partner_id":"","ovia_partner_custom_group":"","ovia_legacy_category":"12","ovia_legacy_category2":"230","ovia_content_url_id":"14028","ovia_include_share_buttons":"","ovia_fertility_goal":"","ovia_secondary_module":"","ovia_trimester":"","ovia_child_age":"","ovia_share_image":"","ovia_more_menu_image":"","ovia_button1_url":"","ovia_days_from_postpartum":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"fert-category":[],"preg-category":[],"parent-category":[112,115,122,119],"fert-tag":[],"preg-tag":[],"parent-tag":[428],"class_list":["post-14028","article","type-article","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","parent-category-babys-development-and-growth","parent-category-language-and-communication-development","parent-category-parenting-styles","parent-category-raising-baby","parent-tag-speech-development"],"yoast_head":"<!-- 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