We Not All Big Sis and Auntie
Post-pregnancy loss, I had a clearer and more nuanced reflection on why women like Jackie Aina, Oprah, and Ava DuVernay push back when people call them “auntie.” I’m not suggesting that any of them have experienced reproductive loss, but the truth is we never really know what people have been through or what their dreams and hopes have been. They may have wanted to be mothers. They may have wanted the very thing that’s implied when you label someone “auntie.”
This year, someone called me a “rich auntie” when I showed up to an event just a month after having a miscarriage. I knew it was meant as a compliment, but it felt like a reminder: I’m a rich auntie. I’m not a mother. And I think it’s important not to age women beyond where they want to be aged, and not to automatically define them by roles they didn’t choose or don’t identify with.
Because when I talk about “mammifying” women into the role of auntie, I’m talking about the labor that’s expected of us. There’s this unspoken belief that if you’re not raising children, then what are you doing with your life that’s purposeful enough? And if you aren’t a mother, people quickly pivot to placing you into another caregiving role—someone who tends to others, someone whose energy is assumed to be endlessly available. It becomes, “Well, if you’re not a mother, I need to label you as something. I need to give you a caregiving identity.” As if womanhood cannot just exist without being useful to someone.
I recently saw Jackie Aina share that someone told her, “I feel like I’m on FaceTime with my big sis,” and she pushed back. Some people might think that’s unnecessary, but what she was doing was asking to be engaged with in a way that sees her fully. She said, essentially, “That’s not actually the role I occupy.” And it made me think: why couldn’t it just be, “It feels like I’m on the phone with my friend—my sister-friend, my peer—someone my age who’s living life just like me, who has knowledge to share but doesn’t need to be elevated into a role of responsibility or guidance?”
Jackie has talked openly about parentification—being thrust into deep responsibility from an early age, carrying emotional, physical, or financial labor long before you’re ready. And people who have lived like that often want, more than anything, to be known outside of how useful they are. Outside of how much they can carry. They want to be enjoyed, seen, experienced, and to have love, energy, and care reciprocated.
And just because a woman doesn’t have children doesn’t mean she isn’t deserving of that. And it certainly doesn’t mean she needs additional labor assigned to her to make other people more comfortable with her womanhood. When we see women simply living, thriving, enjoying themselves, or offering perspective, we don’t have to automatically turn them into mother figures, aunties, or emotional pack mules. We can let women exist—free, self-defined, and untethered to the traditional ideals placed on womanhood.
We’ve got to think about what we’re saying when we’re saying it, and learn to respect when someone says, “That really doesn’t describe me, but thank you.” Women don’t have to be mothers or mammies or aunties or big sisters to matter. They can simply be.
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Temptress
