“Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.” – Voltaire
I registered the domain “thefavoriteaunt.com” well over a year ago. For at least a year before that, I starting thinking about creating a resource for aunts. As Voltaire said (more or less), “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Most writers suffer from this problem.
I finally decided that despite the fact that I had not…
a) decided on the perfect blogging setup
b) designed the perfect logo
c) figured out the perfect template
… I would just get started.
I’ve officially been an aunt for nine years now, although my first “unofficial” niece just turned 18. (Gasp! I told her there was no way she could be 18 now, as I have definitely not done 18 years worth of stuff since she was born…) Like many of my girlfriends, I’m an aunt but I’m not a mom. I don’t know how one would find the statistics, but I am sure there are more and more women, like me and many of my friends, who are progeny-free aunts. We have more time (and often more disposable income) to lavish on our niece/nephews. (I will definitely need to invent a gender neutral collective noun for a group of at least one niece and one nephew. Suggestions most welcome!)
What we don’t have are resources that tell us how to be a good aunt. Or, even better, how to be the favorite. 
I skim Parenting magazine in the doctor’s office for good tips on handling the niece/nephews, but the material there is not really relevant. Parenting (the activity, as well as the magazine) is about being the full-time (as in 24/7/365) adult in charge.
Aunts are not full-time. (And whether I am ever really in charge seems to open to debate with my nephew…) We can spend hours or days taking care of the niece/nephews, but we do get to hand them back to the parents and go back home to some peace and quiet. We have to be good role models, we need to enforce some degree of discipline, but not on a consistent regular basis.
To put it another way, when I’m being besieged with earnest requests for a visit to the gelato cafe before dinner, I can give in, thinking “Hey, I’m not the one who has the power to ruin them for life. Why should I have to spend the rest of the evening with grumpy children?” Like Bill Cosby, I believe that chocolate cake is good for breakfast.
I’d like to have some kind of handbook for aunts that tells me whether this is just really horrible and irresponsible. I guess I have to write my own. I am inspired by the motto of the podcast/blog Jumping Monkeys motto: “Pretend you know what you are doing.”
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I suppose I should say something about this blog’s title. I have two wonderful sisters: one is the mom of the niece/nephews, and the other is, like me, a doting aunt. We are not in competition with each other. I mean, we got over that one-year-apart-sibling rivalry ages and ages ago. I just thought “The Favorite Aunt” had a nice ring to it. Really.
