Did everyone have those aunts and uncles that weren't your real aunts and uncles but just family friends?

[-]

thecraftybee1981@reddit

We’d call some of our pensioner neighbours Uncle/Auntie.

Two of my mum’s close friends I grew up calling Auntie x, but now I’d just call them by their names but would still consider them aunts like my parents’ many siblings. My mum’s cousins would be called Auntie/Uncle too.

[-]

springsomnia@reddit

All my mum and actual aunt’s friends were auntie and uncle by default. Family friends in my family become part of the family too and often join us at Christmas, birthdays etc.

[-]

pommnoir@reddit

My mates 12 year old was completely flabbergasted that me and her mum aren't real sisters cos she's known me as aunt all her life. The kid has even met my mum and knows my dad's dead (she's close to her maternal grandparents🤣

[-]

Gypzyheart73@reddit

Absolutely!

[-]

Accurate_Prompt_8800@reddit

Yep. In my culture it’s polite to call most men and women that are older than you ‘auntie’.

[-]

SimpletonSwan@reddit (OP)

Maybe I ask what is your culture?

[-]

Accurate_Prompt_8800@reddit

I’m British African.

[-]

KatVanWall@reddit

I’m guessing Indian? I’m British English and my family have always done this, but I know it’s absolutely the done thing in India. (In fact, I’ve heard my Indian friends - in India - refer to a random man on the street who they didn’t know as ‘that old uncle’ in a way we wouldn’t use the term over here.)

[-]

Unlikely-Security123@reddit

Probably British. I am Uncle to a few kids that aren't of blood relative.

It's probably something only people with friends that have kids understand. If you don't have any friends it can seem quite alien.

[-]

SimpletonSwan@reddit (OP)

If you don't have any friends it can seem quite alien.

I feel attacked...

I don't have many friends with kids, and I don't have any children.

[-]

Unlikely-Security123@reddit

I really didn't mean it like that! I didn't understand it until it happened to me. I also don't have children.

I guess it's an easy was of saying to a child "this is X, they are to be trusted and you will be taken care of by them, however to avoid any weird ambiguity we will take the surrogate of uncle/aunt".

[-]

SimpletonSwan@reddit (OP)

Saul Goodman!

[-]

StuChenko@reddit

You call the men auntie too?

[-]

Blue_wine_sloth@reddit

Yes and I still address the Christmas card to aunt and uncle! I saw them more often than my actual aunts and uncles because we lived further away from actual family.

[-]

Blue_wine_sloth@reddit

Also, it’s a small world because when my actual cousin was visiting and my not-bio uncle called and I explained who it was he said “oh I know, his sister was my teacher” even though we all lived in different parts of Scotland. And my mother’s sister ended up moving to the same small town my dad’s mother lived in.

[-]

PM-ME-YOUR-DIGIMON@reddit

No I didn’t growing up but I am now an aunty that’s not really an aunty lol. It’s nice she’s a great kid.

[-]

intangible-tangerine@reddit

I didn't because my parents didn't have any close friends when I was a child. No time or money for a social life and not much inclination either.

But I am Auntie to some of my friends' kids.

[-]

anti-sugar_dependant@reddit

Yeah, I think so. I had an "aunt" who isn't actually family, just my mother's best mate.

[-]

Fit_Rip6292@reddit

Yeah, my mum's best friend who she grew up with on the same street and remained close with for the rest of his life was my 'uncle'. I was actually closer to him than my actual blood relative uncles.

He was the definition of a mad professor and an awful babysitter but all in all a nice and fun man.

[-]

Artistic_Data9398@reddit

Yes. Mostly from my mums friends. I had more fake uncles and auntis than real and i was much closer to them than my own lol

[-]

Massaging_Spermaceti@reddit

Reading the replies here makes me wonder if my parents just didn't have any friends. I'm aware of the concept of unrelated family friends being called aunt/uncle, but have never experienced it.

[-]

BeanOnAJourney@reddit

Not really. The closest we got to that in my family was my actual uncle had step-children and they were always known as my cousins because I guess it was too complicated a concept for me to understand as a young child and by the time i was old enough to understand, it was too much a part of our reality to change the terminology. Even now my uncle has been divorced for many, many years I still refer to his ex step-children as my cousins.

[-]

jasilucy@reddit

I’m an aunty to my best mates kids

[-]

MidnightRambler87@reddit

Yep, my mums best friend and her husband she had known both from age 13.

Like a 2nd set of parents to me, and I still keep in touch now, even though my mum isn’t here anymore.

[-]

ScatterCushion0@reddit

Yup. I had lots of honorary aunts and uncles. I even had a great-uncle non-relative who was my nan's dance partner after my grandad passed.

And now I'm auntie to three youngsters who are the children of mine and my husband's best friends. Cards are addressed to Auntie Scatter.

(For extra fun, my best friend introduced her (real, bio) aunt to me as Auntie Sandra. And so that's who she is - not even a friend of my parents, but to me she's also Auntie Sandra!)

I am happily Auntie to anyone who needs one too.

[-]

FranzLeFroggo@reddit

My mum's best mate has been more of a family member for us than any of her actual brothers

[-]

Dru2021@reddit

Aunt Lisa used to cut my hair from when I was in a high chair until she made me feel all fizzy downstairs 11 years later.

Turns out she was called “aunt” to make haircuts less scary, no family ties, just traumatic teenage confusion in the post.

[-]

AnxiousAppointment70@reddit

Yes. All my mum's friends were "aunty" but we knew which ones were our real aunties

[-]

TripMundane969@reddit

A lot of the time the friends were our “real” aunties that loved us unconditionally

[-]

purrcthrowa@reddit

Yep. It was the default for us: all our parents' friends were called auntie or uncle.

[-]

Valuable-Wallaby-167@reddit

Yes, though with my grandparents rather than my parents. My dad's parents had 4 sisters each and my nan had a lot of friends. It took me years to work out which aunties were actually related to me.

[-]

SwordTaster@reddit

Nope. My parents didn't have friends that were that close

[-]

jelly10001@reddit

Yes, I had several people I called Aunt and Uncle besides my actual Aunts and Uncles: friends of my Mum's, other relatives like my Mum's cousins and my Mum's cousin's father in law.

[-]

Big-Astronaut-6350@reddit

I am that auntie!

My friends and I have dinner together every week, it's been tradition since before my "niece" was born & is still going strong. So she sees us pretty regularly. She has two blood aunties and two bonus aunties.

[-]

imminentmailing463@reddit

Yep. Now me and my friends have children we've slipped into doing it also. I like it, I think it's nice. It's like a signal to your friend that they're important enough to you to merit a 'title', as it were.

[-]

therealgingerone@reddit

Same here, our best friends and aunty and uncle to our kids and we are the same to theirs

[-]

Dry-Supermarket9652@reddit

I have two friends who are like brothers to me, makes sense that they're known to my son as uncles. I'm sure it'll confuse him like how I was confused by my parents doing the same when I was a kid but I'm sure he'll get over it, like I did.

[-]

Unlikely-Security123@reddit

And that the child and parent (obvs) believe you can be trusted. I also do it and love when I head "Uncle [NAME]!" From across town and get greeted with a hug and a grin and the latest drivel about what happened in school. Something quite sweet about it.

[-]

Prestigious_Leg7821@reddit

The vast majority of adults when I was a kid were auntie or uncle

In my 40’s now and some still are - my actual aunts and uncles are just called by their first name now!

At my mums funeral her brother flew in

So my “real” uncle

Us kids were talking about auntie C and auntie L coming and real uncle asked my dad if they were his sisters….

Not sure why he thought these sisters had never been mentioned in 40 years but assume it was grief

[-]

kalimdore@reddit

I grew up thinking everyone had two aunts or two uncles. Let me explain:

Not aunt and uncle pair 1 and aunt and uncle pair 2

But uncle+uncle pair and aunt+aunt pair

Only one uncle and one aunt in these pairs were my actual blood relatives. But I didn’t really understand that as a kid. It was just how things were. They were all family to me, I was excited to see them when they visited.

Took me till I was a teenager to realise what was going on 😅❤️

[-]

Silly-Canary-916@reddit

Yes, my mum's side of the family are Irish. I had so many aunties that weren't related to us. Very often they were older ladies who I loved as they always gave me birthday presents. They would visit and sit at the table in the back room, they would drink tea, chain smoke and chat away with my mum, Nan and auntie. I'd sit listening to it all and bring enthralled by the stories they would tell.

[-]

Abquine@reddit

I adored my Auntie Bet (a WW2 widow who was great friends with my Mum) she once brought me a whole brown paper bag of Cadbury's Creme Eggs - it was like treasure.

[-]

Silly-Canary-916@reddit

They were the best Aunties. I had Auntie Pat, she rode a motorbike and was a Brown Owl in the Brownies. She'd give me her elder daughter's old toys and has a big, gentle golden Labrador called Sandy. I miss that generation of women.

[-]

Poo_Poo_La_Foo@reddit

100000%

The lady who looked after my grandad was aunty. Her kids were uncles.

She'd introduce neighbours as "aunty" and "uncle".

It definitely wasn't odd at the time.

They'd take us to Anglesey as kids and everyone there would call us "aaaahkid"

We were from London, so this slang was new to us.

[-]

FluidCream@reddit

Nope. Can't say I ever did.

[-]

Icy_Obligation4293@reddit

I have two aunties who live together and share a bed sometimes.

[-]

mac194959@reddit

Of course. Simply polite to elders.

[-]

Content_Ticket9934@reddit

My friends are my sons aunts and uncles

[-]

ImpressNice299@reddit

I don't remember it growing up, but I've often been introduced as 'uncle' when meeting friends' kids.

[-]

Rymundo88@reddit

Most definitely.

My late mother was one of 7 kids, with 5 being really close in age, all went to the same school, and so growing up, there were several family friends they'd all known since they were knee-high to a grasshopper so they'd be invited to every family birthday, wedding, funeral you name it.

They were for all but amount of shared DNA, a part of the family.

[-]

devster75@reddit

Yup. From an Indian/Asian cultural background, it was not uncommon to refer to close friends of the family as “auntie”, “uncle” or “cousin”, depending on age.

[-]

Rude-Possibility4682@reddit

Apparently I'm one to my mates kids, as they don't have any uncles in this country.

[-]

anabsentfriend@reddit

All of my friends seemed to have these mystery aunts/uncles. I asked how come their parents had so many siblings....they didn't know.

My mum just introduced her friends as her friends, she didn't feel the need to label them as pseudo siblings.

[-]

misses_mop@reddit

I didn't have any, but my kids do. I don't have contact with any extended family. I chose my family. My best friend of 28 years was always my daughter's aunty. Then I got with her cousin, and she kinda became a real aunty to my kids through family.

[-]

PinkLibraryStamp@reddit

Yep. She came to my grandmas funeral and we cried together while holding hands.

Her and my mum have been friends since high school.

[-]

237175@reddit

I have friends that try this with my kids! I nipped that shit in the bud straight away. It annoys me for some unknown reason 😂

[-]

smileystarfish@reddit

Oh I have loads and still call them aunty or uncle. I always knew who was a relative and who wasn't, but it was sign of respect that they were close friends of my parents. Thinking back on it now, it was also a sign of trust. I was safe with any of those adults.

My little girl will grow up with the same.

[-]

RichardNotJudy@reddit

I am one of those uncles.

I had my daughter young, and my two closest friends have always been Uncle to her, and now they have started having kids I am Uncle to them.

I guess it was something we grew up with, but I think it's nice. I got a strongly worded message from the eldest not-a-nibbling last year for not writing 'Aunt & Uncle' in her birthday card.

[-]

TurgidBeetroot@reddit

Just to clarify, not in the biblical sense...

[-]

TurgidBeetroot@reddit

Yeah. All the Monkees had Auntie Griselda...

[-]

Celery_Worried@reddit

Yes, absolutely. Now I'm Aunty to my friend's three kids.

[-]

wildOldcheesecake@reddit

Very common in ethnic communities! I actually thought one of my favourite neighbour kid from a few streets away was my actual cousin!

[-]

Abquine@reddit

I had a fair few 'Aunts' and 'Uncles' but only one real set. The rest were close friends of Mum and Dads and I guess it was just polite for kids to refer to them as Aunt and Uncle back then. This was in NE Scotland back in the day.

[-]

DoKtor2quid@reddit

In my tiny Welsh village our neighbours were ‘aunty’ and ‘uncle’ whatever. Totally normal, and definitely a token of respect.

[-]

PromotionLoose2143@reddit

My best friend at junior school had a mum who seemed to have a succession of gentleman friends whom she called Uncle. It confused me so much. I feel sad about it now. She was such a sweet girl and her dad was a lovely guy.

[-]

NecroVelcro@reddit

Yep. My Auntie Nesta was my grandmother's friend.

[-]

BeatificBanana@reddit

I didn't have any not-real aunties or uncles growing up, but I think it's a pretty common term of endearment for very close friends of parents. My best friends are having a baby soon and they've already asked me if their kid can call me 'auntie'. I think it's really sweet - I'll definitely be filling an auntie-type role as I'll be in their life quite a lot and plan to spoil them and take them for days out when their parents need some downtime. It's also going to be nice for me because I'm an only child so I won't ever get the chance to be an aunt by blood.

[-]

Or the cousin my Mum grew up with, as if he was a brother.

[-]

Top-level comments to the OP must contain genuine efforts to answer the question. No jokes, judgements, etc.
Don't be a dick to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on.
This is a strictly no-politics subreddit!

Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.