My Question of the Day: Blended families have become more and more common over the years. One of the biggest questions children have is what to call their new stepparent. Should you require your child(ren) to call his/her/their new stepparent “mom” or “dad”?

(this question was submitted by @rahsheen; thanks!)

My 2 Cents: I’ve often thought about this as a single person with no child(ren) who might marry a man who has a child/children. I would not want my spouse to force his child(ren) to call me mom, but I don’t want to be called a stepmom when he/she/they is/are speaking of me. I hope that my husband’s child(ren) love and respect me enough to refer to me as his/her/their godmother, as I would definitely make every effort to treat him/her/them like my own flesh and blood, and if something (God forbid) unfortunate happened to his/her/their biological mother, my spouse’s child(ren) would be welcomed into our home without hesitation or question.

As for what he/she/they would address me as when speaking to me, I would want him/her/them to call me by an appropriate name with which he/she/they are comfortable.

———-

Take a few moments to check out the tweets from Twitter on this subject:

———-

LilMrsPerfect2u should b left up 2 the child, however Mr or Ms. Shld b used @ all times. Chldrn shldnt b allwd 2 call adults by their 1st names.

JoshDamage I’d sit my spouse and child down and we wud figure out what we were gonna use. Mommy I think wud be reserved for the real mom

———-

The commentary doesn’t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.

———-

RULES FOR COMMENTS

1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.