mothers and daughters....Big and littles
 

i noticed that many sororities have big sisters and little sisters... we do mothers and daughters, granddaughters.. and so on.... any one else have that?

I think most national sororities had families like that until recently when it was decided that those terms could be related to hazing and the terms were changed to use big sister and little sister.

Alpha Gamma Delta does not use the terms big/little sister.

We still incorporate sister-mom and sister-daughter in our New Member program. AFAIK there are no plans to change the terminology.

I like sister-mom/daughter better. It makes us unique from other sororities who use big/little. I really don't know how mom/daughter could be construed as hazing, especially when they suggest someone caring and nurturing.

You make some good points. In some ways I think any terms that incorporate "big" vs. "little" have more potential for hazing. I think the best point about using big/little terms is that it is constant reinforcement that we are sisters.

I don't think many NPC sororities use big/lil anymore.. I think most have moved to using their stone or flower or something to name the "big sis lil sis" relationship.

zta still uses big/little sister

Kappa Delta still uses big/lil, too.

Alpha Xi Delta still uses big/lil.

ETA: We do use one of our symbols, the rose, to designate the temporary big sis that new members get on bid day - aka "Rose Buddy"

With a few exceptions, most NPCs are still using Big/Lil to describe their sponsor program. A few use mom-daughter. In ADPi, the sponsor sisters AND new members are called "Diamond Sisters."

We still have lils and bigs... and grand bigs and great great grand bigs, etc all incorporated into one big family. Although, incorporating a "mom" in there somewhere might be easier than saying "here is my great great great great great great grand lil sis."

Moms are new member educators currently.

We do it the same way. Our chapter is still fairly young so we don't have great great great great great great great grand lil's yet. We call our new member educators as pledge moms. Though some of the pledge moms gave themselves cute nicknames. And in our chapter, we sometimes kiddingly use "grandma" for the pledge mom of a pledge mom.

we use big- little, grand big, great grand big....to a lesser extent "aunt" bigs. Some pledges have 2 actives from different trees, so some have very complex family trees. mine is relatively simple.

we use mother/daughters technically but we use big/lil terms also, it just depends on the preference of the family

I've been working on a drop-down computerized family tree thing, if I get the programming right, I'll post a link to my tree for you guys to see the craziness that is my heritage!

Delta Gamma still uses Big Sister/Little Sister. A while ago, I made a family tree (we are still sooo small since we colonized in 2002), but we are one of the biggest families in the chapter.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...familytree.jpg

DPhiE does a big/little program but also...

Our founding class (42) did "twins"
We do secret sisters called Guardian Angels - it is a good secret sister program where the goal is to make a new member feel inspired and supported through cards, notes, candy (looooow cost ways), as opposed to big sisters who spend $$ on gifts for little sister.

The "reveal" on finding out who your GA is is sooo amazing!

Denise

When my chapter was a local sorority, we used the big sister/little sister terminology. You found out who your big was on the same day as pledging. (We were a small sorority, so all the pledges had met all the sisters and vice versa during rush, and that was enough conversation time for us to be paired up.)

When we became part of AEPhi, we were told that it was entirely up to us what terminology to use, except that we could NOT use big/little or mother/daughter because it implied that the big was "superior" to the little/new member.

We chose the following:
- Alpha sister: Usually whoever preffed the new member. Gives her little gifts for the first week or so of the NM period.
- Epsilon sister: Usually someone the NM doesn't know as well. Gives her little gifts for the next week or so.
- Phi sister: Equivalent to the big sister. Gives her the $$$ gifts like lettered sweatshirts etc.

Informally, we still used the terms big/little, though (shhh ;) )

Denise - Love the guardian angel idea!

I've always wondered how DG determined that big/little sister was better terminology than mother/daughter. It seems big/little has the same power issues that mother/daughter could.