{"id":2523,"date":"2024-09-27T13:30:06","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T13:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/life-style\/successful-godparents-have-become-a-status-symbol-my-friends-daughter-has-37\/"},"modified":"2024-09-27T13:30:06","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T13:30:06","slug":"successful-godparents-have-become-a-status-symbol-my-friends-daughter-has-37","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/life-style\/successful-godparents-have-become-a-status-symbol-my-friends-daughter-has-37\/","title":{"rendered":"Successful godparents have become a status symbol \u2013 my friend\u2019s daughter has 37!"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more<\/h3>\n

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more <\/h3>\n

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more <\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

W<\/span>hen a mum friend<\/a> told me she\u2019d chosen 37 people to be her seven-year-old daughter\u2019s godparents, I was taken aback. \u201cThirty-seven?\u201d I asked, thinking that surely I\u2019d misheard her. I\u2019d struggled to whittle my children\u2019s<\/a> godparents down to six!<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a cracking great idea [to have 37],\u201d Caroline* told me, adding that she had approached the procedure much in the same way as selecting a board of trustees in her day job. \u201cI can\u2019t recommend it more highly. She has godparents in North America, South America, Europe, Eastern Europe, Australia, and Asia. She has godparents everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Caroline didn\u2019t specifically want 37 different godparents for her daughter, she says, but asked people \u201cwho would be brilliant\u201d \u2013 and, as she explains, \u201cthat amounted to quite a number\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just an incredibly good principle: you quadruple the number that you think you need, because immediately, 50 per cent fall away from the time of the christening \u2013 and another 50 per cent a year later.\u201d Her long list of godparents \u2013 who are highly influential, with their own \u201cspecialisms\u201d \u2013 can offer her daughter<\/a> a \u201cwealth of expertise\u201d. \u201cOf course, you always need the billionaire, the head of a FTSE100 company, a lawyer, an artist, a writer, an architect, a designer \u2013 also somebody who is just a wonderful person, but who doesn\u2019t fit into any of those [specialist] categories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now she\u2019s left with a core group of four to six godparents, with the others being \u201cunderstudies\u201d she can call upon if needed. \u201cYou can\u2019t predict who the core will be at the outset,\u201d she says. \u201cOr how good anybody will be as a godparent.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this has made me rethink the whole godparent topic: should we be widening our godparent networks to epic proportions to max out on our children\u2019s potential for enlightening conversations, lucrative internships, fabulous job offers, and places to stay all over the world? Why stick, as I did, to a handful of best friends and a few family members? Are godparents outdated, or should we be aiming to bestow them in high numbers?<\/p>\n

Having a christening was always on my to-do list for each of my daughters. But it\u2019s a dying tradition: in 1980, one in three babies was baptised in the Church of England. By 2011, that had dropped to just over one in 10. There were 79,600 baptisms in the UK in 2022, down from 140,000 in 2011. There\u2019s a similar decline in the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

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I had one godparent I never met, and then she was on TV one day and my mum said, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s your godmother. She\u2019s a famous TV presenter\u2019 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Unusually, though, numbers of godparents seem to be increasing. Prince George has seven; Elizabeth Hurley\u2019s son has six godfathers, including Elton John; and Cara Delevingne has 16 godparents, including Joan Collins. But 37? \u201cPeople sniff at it, as it sounds eccentric and ridiculous,\u201d Caroline tells me. \u201cBut for single mothers like me, it makes perfect sense to extend godparent circles to the size of three or four football teams \u2013 whatever system we\u2019ve devised, it\u2019s not robust. Families are unpredictable in terms of support. Until you have a child, you don\u2019t know how it\u2019s going to work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everybody has endless high-profile and well-connected friends to call on \u2013 but that doesn\u2019t stop us from looking for the best ones in bulk quantities. Too many of us have had token godparents \u2013 as another friend recently disclosed to me: \u201cI had one I never met, and then she was on TV one day and my mum said, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s your godmother. She\u2019s a famous TV presenter.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

I had four godparents. Apart from my uncle, who didn\u2019t need to do anything as he was already on the scene, they were lousy. I can\u2019t even remember their names. One was my mum\u2019s obstetrician \u2013 he delivered me and then vanished. Another was a Mary Quant model in the 1960s, and sent me short stories she\u2019d written in tiny doll-sized books \u2013 but she was too zany to be of any solid guidance. I still valued her as the best, though.<\/p>\n

According to the Church of England website, godparents are traditionally meant to answer \u201cthe bigger questions in life; questions about faith, hope and love\u201d. But the role is now far more versatile. About 10,000 non-religious baby-naming ceremonies, costing between around \u00a3150 and \u00a3450, take place each year in the UK. These, according to Humanists UK, involve the naming of \u201cguide-parents\u201d, who take on the typical responsibilities of a godparent but without the religious underpinning. Deborah Hooper, director of ceremonies at Humanists UK, tells me that these particular events are more freewheeling than a traditional christening \u2013 but are fundamentally about surrounding a child in \u201ca circle of love [in] a parents\u2019 friend group\u201d.<\/p>\n

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