Do you call your in-laws Mom & Dad?

[Anonymous]

I am supposed to which means I generally avoid calling them anything

[Anonymous]

I am not close to my in laws but very close to my own parents, so the thought of calling my in laws mom and dad just sounds absurd. I would never. I can't imagine DH calling my parents mom or dad either.

[Anonymous]

No way

[Anonymous]

No. Because they are not my mom and dad. Weird.

[Anonymous]

Absolutely not

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I prefer to be called Mom because it's how it's always been for people in my generation and in our lives. When I sign a card to my daughter and SIL, it's, Love Mom & Dad, not Love Mom/Name & Dad/Name.

It used to be a sign of family welcome when you were asked to start calling your in-laws Mom & Dad. I'm guessing it's not the same anymore, though. I completely agree that no specific title is more indicative of the closeness of the relationship.

I'm Vietnamese and this is culturally similar. My white DH call my parents mom & dad. My in-laws prefer their first names; and think it's odd if they hear my DH address my parents differently.
Honestly, I had to get used to calling them by first names at first - it all works and we're all close.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH and I both call each other’s parents Mom and Dad. They both invited us to and I thought it was sweet, though admittedly it was very weird for me for a while. I’m used to it 20 years in.

We also do this. It is sweet, but it turns out that both sides of the family get together more often than expected. It causes confusion, I don’t think either set of parent likes their own child calling another person mom and dad, and I do not like it either. But everyone is very sweet and gets along so it’s not worth rocking the boat over. So we continue on and I mostly avoid calling my in-laws anything. It has been too many years to change now. I will recommend something different for my kids, although I personally won’t mind if my SIL calls me mom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, call them by their first names.

Me too. I never even considered calling them Mom and Dad. My husband is the same with my parents.

Same here. I truly never considered it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We call each other’s parents by their grandparent name. Mimi, Papa, Gigi, G’pa Don. The irony here is that our own children call us parents by our first names more than half of the time.

I don’t know what we did before we had kids! I think just avoid it.

New poster. Wait, what? You mean you own (presumably under 18 years old?) children call you "Sally" and "Bob" more than half the time, rather than whatever version of mother, father, mom, dad, etc. your nuclear family uses? Interesting. Not judging it, though I find it different, as I did when our niece would call her parents (my SIL and her husband) by their first names. Sounded so strange coming out of a little kid's mouth. She also called them mum and dad (UK, so "mum") but more often used their first names. Again, it was what SIL and BIL actually liked and preferred, so not judging, it just was odd to my ears until I got used to it!

I was raised in the US in a region where calling an adult, any adult, by a first name unless very clearly asked to do so (and separately, allowed to do so by one's own parents) would have been a big deal at the time I was growing up. So calling a parent by a first name would have been far beyond the pale in my childhood, for sure--it would have been seen as mocking and disrespectful. But again, times and places and generations matter.

I called my late, beloved in-laws by their first names and my DH called my mom by her first name. Can't remember how it began, even. All are gone now and to be honest, when I see people getting huffy about what to call in-laws and bristling at the idea of "I'm not about to call them mom and dad! They are not my parents!" as if angered by it -- wow, you don't have to call them mom and dad, just settle on something else and choose not to focus on it or be angry. Not worth it. I miss my in-laws all the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We call each other’s parents by their grandparent name. Mimi, Papa, Gigi, G’pa Don. The irony here is that our own children call us parents by our first names more than half of the time.

I don’t know what we did before we had kids! I think just avoid it.

New poster. Wait, what? You mean you own (presumably under 18 years old?) children call you "Sally" and "Bob" more than half the time, rather than whatever version of mother, father, mom, dad, etc. your nuclear family uses? Interesting. Not judging it, though I find it different, as I did when our niece would call her parents (my SIL and her husband) by their first names. Sounded so strange coming out of a little kid's mouth. She also called them mum and dad (UK, so "mum") but more often used their first names. Again, it was what SIL and BIL actually liked and preferred, so not judging, it just was odd to my ears until I got used to it!

I was raised in the US in a region where calling an adult, any adult, by a first name unless very clearly asked to do so (and separately, allowed to do so by one's own parents) would have been a big deal at the time I was growing up. So calling a parent by a first name would have been far beyond the pale in my childhood, for sure--it would have been seen as mocking and disrespectful. But again, times and places and generations matter.

I called my late, beloved in-laws by their first names and my DH called my mom by her first name. Can't remember how it began, even. All are gone now and to be honest, when I see people getting huffy about what to call in-laws and bristling at the idea of "I'm not about to call them mom and dad! They are not my parents!" as if angered by it -- wow, you don't have to call them mom and dad, just settle on something else and choose not to focus on it or be angry. Not worth it. I miss my in-laws all the time.

My husband calls his parents by their first names, so I do too and so does my son. I think it’s less weird than all the made up grandparent names I hear now.

[Anonymous]

I have zero relationship with my mother and haven't seen or talked with my father in over five years. So I don't feel it's "disloyal" to my parents to call someone else who treats me like a daughter, Mom and Dad.

That being said, I call them by their first names. That's just where I'm comfortable. Mid 30's woman here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I call them Mom and Dad and DH does the same for my parents.

Unlike 95% of dcum though, I actually like my inlaws and we genuinely all get along.

Same on all counts.

[Anonymous]

I call them by their first names and my husband does the same.

My parents both call their in-laws Mom and Dad. My paternal grandmother would probably be upset if my mother called her by her name instead of calling her "mom." On my maternal grandparent side, while my dad called them Mom and Dad, my aunt called them by their first names. So I assumed that was my dad's preference to do so and not my grandparents'. Probably has to do with what he was used to seeing when he was growing up. He definitely does not care that my DH calls him by his first name, though--or if he does he has remained silent about it all these years!

[Anonymous]

Not only no but hell no.

When we got married, I kid you not, as they came up to us after the ceremony, the first thing they said to me was “you may now call us John and Jane.” Prior to that I had to call them Mr. and Mrs. Smith. We dated for 5+ years before we got married.

He calls my parents by their first name and has since they met as my parents immediately said “call us Jack and Jill.” Like normal people.

[Anonymous]

I love my MIL dearly and have only ever called her by her first name. When my children were very young, I'd call her 'Grandma' when referring to her.

My late father had a very fraught relationship with his own mother and called my maternal grandmother 'Mom' which was very sweet - they loved each other a lot.