The Auntie Collective Starts Now!

How do you explain your role to outsiders?

Welcome! I’m Lisa Sibbett and this is The Auntie Bulletin, a newsletter for people who are significantly involved in helping to raise other people’s children. You can read my archive here. If you appreciate reading this newsletter, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5 a month or $50 for the year. You can also support my work by “liking” this post below. It only requires a click on the little heart icon, and it helps other people find my Substack.

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Hooooooooo boy, Aunties. I know that in the Substack ecosystem 79 subscribers isn’t that many, but in my ecosystem, it’s miraculous and wonderful. This number represents a blazing hot 7,900% subscription growth since the first person hit “Subscribe” less than three days ago. Wahoo! 🔥🔥🔥

Now, this 7,900% occurred on the strength of almost no marketing. I haven’t used social media in years and I have no following to speak of (unless you count the kids following me around demanding to play “unicorn families”). The Auntie Bulletin has so far been publicized solely through a few down-thread comments in the Culture Study classifieds (hi, fellow AHP fans!), an email to some of my friends and family (hi mom!), and whatever mysterious algorithm happens on Substack itself. 

I attribute our initial growth spurt to a longing among Aunties for a community, for a place to explore and learn and share together, and also a place to be recognized. The time is ripe. The U.S. surgeon general recently sounded the alarm that parents are “at their wits’ end.” There is a need to reimagine family in terms of strong, broad, diverse networks of kinship and support. And childless cat ladies are proclaiming far and wide that we do, in fact, have a stake in the future.  

“Don’t play with your cornbrea — oh. Awwwww.”

Yet it didn’t occur to me until the actual first day of The Auntie Bulletin – two plus decades after I became an Auntie, four plus years since the pandemic made me really think about Auntiehood, and months since I conceived of this newsletter – that aside from my partner B,¹ I know almost no other Aunties. My friends and family include tons of parents and several non-parental primary caregivers, but I can count one one hand the number of childless people in my life who helping to raise other people’s kids. And I really want to talk with people like that. In other words, I really want to talk with you. 

I am so glad you’re here. I’m so glad we’re here together. So let’s talk to each other! Read on for The Auntie Bulletin’s very first discussion thread. I hope you will post and share.

“Which kids are yours?”

My partner B and I typically attend our annual neighborhood block party with our next door neighbors and their kids. A couple of years ago, somebody at the block party went all out and rented a bouncy house. Since the bouncing (crashing) was happening several houses down from the food and drinks and main adult socializing, my partner and I and our neighbors took turns supervising their kids while they bounced (narrowly avoided head injuries), chatting with the other adults (mostly moms) who were also watching their kids bounce (shriek, laugh, cry, repeat). When it was my turn, I got the usual question: “Which kids are yours?” 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got two go-to answers on this. If I’m not feeling up to explaining, I just let the person assume I’m the mom and point out which kids I’m with. (Is there an Auntie Bulletin coming soon about being mistaken for somebody’s mom? You better believe it). On the other hand, when people ask which kids are mine and I’m feeling outgoing, I share that the kids in question aren’t technically “mine,” and I smile “we’re just friends.” One or the other of these responses usually suffices. (Of course when I’m with my actual nieces, it’s more straightforward).  

Okay, but my partner is a cis-man. Now imagine him over there watching our neighbor kids bouncing and getting questions about which kids are his. If he admits that none of them actually are, that’s likely to be perceived as super creepy. At the bouncy house block party, he soon tapped out – which, understandable.

Dominant U.S. culture lacks precise language for people who help raise children we are not related to. To be sure, there’s overlap with more legible roles and categories – many of us are relatives, step-parents, godparents, foster parents, or nannies, and when we’re able to identify ourselves that way, people comprehend that we might be highly involved in the kids’ lives. But friends who have chosen to become part of a kid’s family lack names for our roles. “Chosen family” can work in a general sense, especially in queer-friendly communities where the term is common, but “chosen daughter” and “chosen mother” don’t feel right when the child has an actual load-bearing mom. Those of us who help raise our friends’ kids aren’t contributing in place of their parents, but alongside and in solidarity with the parents. 

The kids in my life often don’t know how to describe our relationship either. Within our co-housing community, we all typically refer to each other by name, or by the shorthand “neighbors.” (As in, “Will you find out if the neighbors have the cord to the Instant Pot?”). Yet in general usage in the United States, the term “neighbors” signifies nothing whatsoever but proximity. It is common in the U.S. not to know our neighbors – not their names, not their faces – even after living close by for years. I recently one kid in my life tell a friend that we’re her “great great great great really great neighbors.” She was trying to communicate the specialness of our relationship to someone with no frame of reference. I know the feeling.

I long to live in a cultural context where the role of Auntie is legible to others. Although I have no kids myself, the kids in my life are hugely significant to my day-to-day experiences, my identity, my interests and preoccupations – they’re where my heart’s at. And I know for certain that I’m equally important to them, a source of stability and support and love and fart jokes that supplements the stability, support, love, and fart jokes they get from their parents. 

Could we Aunties perhaps offer some new language, some new ways of understanding and being understood here and now? Perhaps it starts with making ourselves legible to one another. So tell me, Aunties, Uncles, Aunxies: how do you name yourselves? What are you called by the kids in your life? How do you explain your relationship with these kids to outsiders? Do you feel like the people around you *get it*? Do your Auntie relationships feel legible, seen, and understood?

I cannot wait to learn where you’re coming from on this. I wrestle with it all the time, and I am so grateful to hereby launch the Auntie Collective!

The Auntie Bulletin discussion threads are currently open to all subscribers. We’re starting small, but let’s build the beloved community together.

1.  My partner is a cisgender man. Given the hyper-gendered nature of caring for children in almost all cultures for almost all of human history, I propose that Auntie should be the gender-neutral term. As in, Uncle is to Auntie as warlock is to witch. And I’d love to hear from our gender non-binary comrades about what you like to be called!