Do you call your ILs mom and dad?

[Anonymous]

No. My BIL calls my parents mom and dad and our entire family hates it.

[Anonymous]

First names. My MIL and FIL are lovely people but they are pretty formal and it never felt right to call them Mom and Dad like my DH does. The kids call them Grandma and Grandpa.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Resisted calling them mom and dad because I have my own parents, thank you very much.

I've never really understood this concept. We say that we don't love one child more than another, that we have enough love to spread around for all of our children, but we don't have enough love to spread to other parents? My MIL may not be my mother, but she raised and cared for the person I care the most about in the world and for that I will cherish her and value her and love her. Loving my MIL in no way diminishes my love for my own mother or replaces my own mother anymore than having a second child diminished or replaced my love for my first child.

Why do so many people feel that there can only be one mother? Many people have more than one mother, whether a birth/adoptive mother, a birth/step mother or two mothers in a same-sex marriage. Context means everything and good/bad interactions with those people can determine and unequal relationships (a stepmother who treats her stepchildren poorly or a birth mother who was abusive, etc), but if the new person treats you well, why so much resistence to calling the parent of your spouse, the person who raised the person you love, mother?

My children are all related to me directly. My ILs are my DH's parents. I do not love them as I love my parents, and never will. It's not about diminishing the love I have for my own mother. It's about the difference in the relationship.

Also, while some people have more than one mother (birth mother vs. adoptive mother, mother vs. stepmother), in general people relate to only one of those women as Mother. Mother is by definition a singular role.

Agree with almost all of this. I have a mother who passed and a step mother I call "mom" who has been like a mother to me for the past 28 years. It took some time for me to call my stepmom "mom" and not by her first name. My MIL on the other hand expected to be called "mom" on day one of our marriage, having done nothing whatsoever to develop a relationship with me deserving of my title. And, in fact, actively bad mouthed my family, especially my stepmother, during the entire wedding planning process. Why would I call her mom solely based on the fact that she raised the man I love?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. That's seems strange to me, too. DW calls my parents by their first names, and I call her parents by their first names.

Me too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My in-laws are very old fashioned and I think they would like me to call them mom and dad, but I don't. It just feels weird to me. At first I avoided calling them anything ha, but I now call them by their first names.

This was me too. For years. And years. Until she finally asked me to call her by her first name.

[Anonymous]

Awkwardly.
transitioning towards grandparent names PTL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. My BIL calls my parents mom and dad and our entire family hates it.

What a fuzzy, warm, fun bunch!

[Anonymous]

Nope. Cannot ever fathom doing so. I will call them by the names the kids call them (Grammy, Nonna, Mimi, etc...) for clarity for the kids but otherwise it's first name basis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nope. Cannot ever fathom doing so. I will call them by the names the kids call them (Grammy, Nonna, Mimi, etc...) for clarity for the kids but otherwise it's first name basis.

THIS. Mil is not my mother. I call her by her first name or what the kids call her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I call them Ma and Pop, because I call my parents Mom and Dad.

My husband does a variation of this with my parents but not with their spouses, as the remarried when I was an adult and so I use their 1st names too, so it would be weird for DH to call them mom/dad or a variation. I don't use it for his stepdad either since DH uses his 1st name (same situation, not raised by this man). I use his mom's 1st name too. She is kind of stoic- not touchy feely so I know she could care less.

I always envy my Indian friends who can call their inlaws a specific greeting or say "auntie/ uncle" for elders out of respect and get to side step this issue!

[Anonymous]

My mom has DH call her mom. If MIL knew, she would have a FIT! Even. Better.

[Anonymous]

No, but MIL wants me to. She would be very offended if I said that I wasn't comfortable with it.

[Anonymous]

I asked my inlaws what they preferred after we married. They said they wanted to be called by their first names, do I did.
When my husband asked my parents what they wanted to be called, they said mom and dad. He has struggled with this for almost 30 years.

[Anonymous]

Never.

[Anonymous]

Calling someone who is not your mom "mom" seems weird to me... creepy, actually. Even my have-no-border ILs didn't suggest this (and if they did, I would say no thanks). Obviously there is enough love to go around but I don't get the idea of calling someone a title that they don't have... frankly it seems a little incestuous; I was raised most of my life until marriage thinking that the person who calls my mom and dad "mom and dad" is my sibling, not my husband...