Tag Archives: family

How do you say “good aunt”?

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Pearls Before Swine is one of my favorite comic strips, and this past Saturday’s strip got me thinking about the different ways and reasons we say “aunt.” (Take a moment to read the strip and then come back).

Sociolinguistic differences
The way we say the word “aunt” depends in large part on where we grow up. Many of us (and I’m talking about the United States, primarily) pronounce it like the insect “ant.” There are others who say it like “ahnt” to rhyme with the way many of us say the word “daunt.” Others say it in a way that sounds almost like the word “ain’t.”

I found a cool map showing regional differences of how we say the word “aunt” that those of you who are word geeks (like me) might enjoy seeing.

Of the women I interviewed (all of whom have at least some connection with the southern United States), here’s the break down of how they say the word:

  • 18% say the word like “ahnt”
  • 9% say the word like “ain’t”
  • 73% say the word like “ant”
  • All of them pronounced the word like “ant” at some point during our conversation, possibly a reflection of the way I was saying it.
  • One women also spoke of “aunties,” pronounced like “ahnties”

Fortunately, as Goat points out to Pig in the comic strip, we’re not all shooting each other over this difference in how we say “aunt.” Continue reading →

Proud aunts

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I’ve written before about the pride we aunts take in our nieces and nephews, and the 10 days I spent in Oregon at the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials brought out a number of proud aunts to cheer on their family’s elite athletes. Today, I’ll share three “good aunt” stories with you from the competition.

Proud aunts follow through on a father’s inspiration
Early into the trials, I saw an article in the The Register-Guard talking about Amanda Smock, an expert in the women’s triple jump. She competed in the 2008 trials, but finished 5th and didn’t get to go to the Olympics that year.

After those trials, her father encouraged her to keep pursuing her dream, though he didn’t live to see her succeed. He died from cancer a year later, but four of Smock’s aunts (her father’s sisters) made the long drive from Minnesota to the trials to surprise her and cheer her on.

Smock finished first in the trials, and because of qualifying requirements to compete in the Olympics, she’ll be the only athlete to represent the United States in her event. Of winning and what it meant to have her four aunts watching from the stands, she said: Continue reading →

When being an aunt isn’t all sunshine and roses

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In Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert writes of aunts:

Often able to accrue education and resources precisely because
they were childless, these women had spare income and compassion
to pay for lifesaving operations, or to rescue the family farm, or to take
in a child whose mother had fallen gravely ill. I have a friend who calls
these sorts of child-rescuing aunties “sparents”—”spare parents”—
and the world is filled with them.

Even within my own community, I can see where I have been vital
sometimes as a member of the Auntie Brigade. My job is not merely to
spoil and indulge my niece and nephew (though I do take that assignment
to heart) but also to be a roving auntie to the world—an ambassador
auntie—who is on hand wherever help is needed, in anybody’s family whatsoever. … In this way, I, too, foster life. There are many, many ways
to foster life. And believe me, every single one of them is essential.
(192-3)

Gilbert’s discussion of “sparents” and their ways of fostering life reminds me of a story I heard on NPR’s StoryCorps back in March. Abby Libman’s life changed forever when her brother-in-law killed Abby’s twin sister, leaving behind two children (ages 7 and 4), whom Abby took in and raised. I encourage you to listen to the brief interview between Libman and her now 23-year-old nephew. For Libman, her role shifted from aunt to mother, and as she navigated through that difficult time, she was most importantly fostering the lives of those two precious young children who would grow up to think of her as “mom.” She was the ultimate “good aunt” to her sister’s children. Continue reading →

When you need an extra set of hands … or clothes for the frog

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In Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Committed, she writes mostly about marriage but devotes some of her words to aunthood and its role in human populations across time and place:

… here’s an astonishing fact that I discovered in the margins of my
research on marriage: If you look across human populations of all
varieties, in every culture and on every continent (even among the
most enthusiastic breeders in history, like the nineteenth-century Irish,
or the contemporary Amish), you will find that there is a consistent 10
percent of women within any population who never have children at all.
The percentage never gets any lower than that, in any population
whatsoever. In fact, the percentage of women who never reproduce in
most societies is usually much higher than 10 percent—and that’s not
just today in the developed Western world, where childless rates
among women tend to hover around 50 percent. …

In any case, the number of women throughout history who never
become mothers is so high (so consistently high) that I now suspect
that a certain degree of female childlessness is an evolutionary
adaptation of the human race. Maybe it’s not only perfectly legitimate
for certain women to never reproduce, but also necessary. It’s as
though, as a species, we need an abundance of responsible,
compassionate, childless women to support the wider community
in various ways. Childbearing and child rearing consume so much
energy that the women who do become mothers can quickly become
swallowed up by that daunting task—if not outright killed by it. Thus,
maybe we need extra females, women on the sidelines with undepleted
energies, who are ready to leap into the mix and keep the tribe supported.
(190-191) Continue reading →