Modern mothers know: ‘mom’ is out and ‘mama’ is in, and now fathers want their kids to ditch dad in favour of a newly-preferred paternal moniker – ‘papa’.
The trend toward the more traditional use of ‘mama’ has been on the rise for a while now, and is especially popular among alternative mothering circles, where the term is seen as a more back-to-earth embrace of all things natural.
While the switch from ‘mom’ to ‘mama’ marks out hip mothers everywhere, it now appears dads clued up on the alternative parenting scene also want to get in on the action.
The new/old ‘papa’, might take time to take off here, but of course it’s already been embraced by cool ‘papas’ in the hipster enclave of Brooklyn, New York, according to the Daily Beast.
“I just think ‘dad’ and ‘mom’ are very Saved by the Bell-ish,” said Will Grose, 36, a Brooklyn father of three boys under the age of 5: Axel, Oscar (“Ozzy”), and Balthazar (“Bo”). He estimated that half of the children in his 4-year-old son’s Williamsburg preschool call their fathers “papa.”
History of the sobriquet shows that in the US, peak ‘papa’ hit around 1870. It slowly began to decline in popularity over the next hundred years, until it was displaced by ‘dad’ in the 1970s.
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Dad is still very much the term most kids will use when referring to their fathers today.
So, while there’s still a way to go before ‘papa’ hits the mainstream in the way ‘mama’ has, it seems possible – even likely – the term is on its way to making a cool comeback.
