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Father vs Dad and Mother vs Mom


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I know these titles are used fairly interchangeably, but to me they're very different. I think father and mother are more formal and denote a biological sense of relationship whereas dad and mom are the more emotional aspect. What do you guys think? 

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Yeah I suppose I agree for the most part. 'Mother' and 'father' are more impersonal, kind of just denoting the biological connection. 'Mum' and 'dad' are more casual, more personal. As you say, a bit more emotional. Although that doesn't necessarily mean they imply a healthy emotional connection.

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Anomaly Q3Xr

I call my parents Dad and Mother. My Mother I am not at all close with because she left when I was young, we talk now but she's more like a distant aunt, I am closer to my Dad's sister who's more like a mother figure, whilst my Dad bought up me and my four brothers as a single parent. So to me mother/father do have less of an emotional/personal feeling.

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There's no difference in meaning as far as I'm concerned, only in degree of formality.

 

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Lysandre, the Star-Crossed
On 8/20/2022 at 4:29 PM, Wiseman001 said:

I know these titles are used fairly interchangeably, but to me they're very different. I think father and mother are more formal and denote a biological sense of relationship whereas dad and mom are the more emotional aspect. What do you guys think? 

I tend to use them either based on age of the person I'm speaking to or to reference biological vs social roles. Everyone has a mother and father, not everyone has a mom and dad. The two people whom contributed genetic material are your mother and father, even if they never are part of your life. The people who assume the roles of being your mom(s) or dad(s) are your mom(s) and dad(s). I was born to a cisgender heterosexual couple who are my mother and father, but I do not consider the latter to be my dad anymore. I refer to him as my "biological father", sometimes just as my "father". Calling him "my dad" again may never happen, but it would take years of reconciliation before it ever could.

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Alaska Native Manitou

The more universal papa & mama aren't even worthy of inclusion?

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nanogretchen4

Mama and Papa or Dada are easy first words for a baby. In fact, there is a good chance that a babbling baby will say one or more of these easy syllable strings by random chance and then receive lots of reinforcement from am excited parent. So these nicknames suggest that the parent in question raised the child from infancy. Mother and father are words a child learns after they are fluent in English, so these are probably the words they would use for biological parents who weren't around when they were learning to speak.

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I cannot remember ever consciously using mother/father; I was a mom/dad person.  Never thought of it as a personal vs. impersonal respect thing; those just weren't the terms I happened to grow to use as a kid, I guess.  And thinking back on it now, I probably preferred the monosyllabicness of mom/dad.

 

1 hour ago, nanogretchen4 said:

Mama and Papa or Dada are easy first words for a baby. In fact, there is a good chance that a babbling baby will say one or more of these easy syllable strings by random chance and then receive lots of reinforcement from am excited parent. So these nicknames suggest that the parent in question raised the child from infancy. Mother and father are words a child learns after they are fluent in English, so these are probably the words they would use for biological parents who weren't around when they were learning to speak.

Makes sense to me.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Purple Red Panda

Usually use Mum & Dad or sometimes in the case of my mum 'my Ma' as I like it as a colloquialism.

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For me,

Mom = my actual mother

Mum = my MIL, who's European

 

I'm blessed with wonderful in-laws, so we needed some way to discern between the two.  This seemed the simplest way to go about it :D

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I don't actually call my parents anything at all when I speak to them. I just speak without addressing them. This is probably tied to a weird general issue with names that I've had literally my entire life; it makes me feel really uncomfortable to say anyone's name, or a particular term like 'mum' or 'grandpa' or whatever, out loud. Sometimes I'll force myself to do it with certain people's first names, for the sake of appearing... not strange... but I dislike it and my brain does an odd thing where it's like I'm dissociating a bit and hearing myself talk, and I still won't ever say 'mum' or 'dad'. I'll refer to them as 'my mum' or 'my dad' to other people though, no problem at all.

 

Edit: Actually when I was really really little, I called my mum 'Mamam' and my dad 'Dadad', but that didn't last beyond the age of about two. After that I refused to say names for them.

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I kind of have that, but only when speaking directly to the person being named.   If I'm talking about them with someone else, there's no problem with using their name.  Also no issue if it's something that isn't actually their name, like mom/dad.

 

I feel like my brain took the whole etiquette rule of not speaking to your parents using their first names and went haywire with it at some point and applied it to everyone.

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3 hours ago, Philip027 said:

I kind of have that, but only when speaking directly to the person being named.   If I'm talking about them with someone else, there's no problem with using their name.

Oh yeah same, just like I'll say 'my mum' or 'my dad', I'll say... 'Alice' or 'Mike' or whatever... to other people. But when talking directly to my hypothetical friends Alice and Mike lol, I won't call them by their names. When Tele was here, a few times I had to call out to get his attention in public because he was far enough away that I couldn't just start talking, he wouldn't have heard me, and it felt weird. (No I didn't yell 'Tele!' haha... don't actually call him that except on here, or in joking between us.) Doesn't matter who it is, someone I've known all my life or someone I met ten minutes ago. I just find it really uncomfortable to call people directly by their names even though that's how I think of them in my head, of course. I'm curious about the psychology behind why I feel this way, and I truly have no idea. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

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I call my (biological) parents mom and dad. 
 

I just call my mom’s wife by her name when talking to her or talking about her to people we know. When talking about her to people we don’t know I often say she’s my step mother. She’s been in my life for 19 years since I was 12, but I still feel weird referring to anyone but my mom as “mom”, so it’s step mother instead of step mom. Sometimes I also call her “my mom’s wife” since it might be easier since most people would probably assume my “step mother” is my dad’s wife and get confused when I talk about her and my mom hanging around each other lol.

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I've always called my parents odd names that I made up for them myself.  So I prefer neither Mother/Father nor Mom/Dad.  haha

 

What's interesting to me is that my nieces and nephew have started calling their parents Mother and Father on a regular basis.  "Father said ___________"  "Mother asked me to __________" and it seems so unnecessarily formal to me. Their parents never asked them to use those terms, it just started happening.

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  • 1 month later...
Hyacinthus_flami

I call my parents mother/father when I'm bored. Usually, I'll call them mom or dad, then for some random reason I go 'I'm booooooorrrreeedd' and then call them mother or father.

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I call my parents mom and dad (well, mama/mam and papa/pap, or mamaver and papaver if I'm being annoying), but when referring to my parents to other people, I'm talking about my mother and father (unless I know those people well, then it's mom and dad again) 

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Blueberry Pie

I say mum and dad.

 

There are differences in formality. Mother and father are more formal.

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I call my 'father' by a nickname which is an abbreviated version of her first name und I call my mother 'mama' even though she couldn't fulfill that role.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have always used Mother and Father for my mother and father. Step-Father for my step-father and so on. I don't think I have ever used "Mom" or "Dad" even as a child.

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