I’ve been married for four years now, and I don’t know what to call my mother in law. I don’t feel comfortable calling her by her first name for some reason. Just doesn’t sound right. I don’t want to call her Mrs. “Smith” as that is to formal. I don’t want to call her mom/mommy/mother/ma or anything like that, because I already have a mother. So what’s left?
Heh I also don’t know what to call my father in law. Bleah. At christmas time it’s funny, because we don’t put tags on the gifts between my mother in law and I. She doesn’t know what I should call her either.
It’s up to her to decide. We don’t poll family members, acquaintances or co-workers on what we should be called, WE tell THEM. I can understand you not wanting to call her Mom, but SHE might really like that, but may be afraid of seeming foreward or insensitive. Barring that, she should consider you using her first name. It’s friendly, inviting and engenders a “just us girls” kind of situation.
I go back and forth with my fiance’s parents. If I’m talking about them, I refer to them as mom and dad… but if I’m directly addressing them, I call them by their first names. They seem okay with it.
I’d feel weird about calling them Mr and Mrs Lastname… but I do call his grandparents Gramma and Grampa Lastname.
Thus far, I have avoided calling my mother-in-law anything.
When I call the in-laws house, I talk to whichever one of them answers-- I never ask for either of them. Whenever we’re in the same house, I manage to always speak to them without using names, and I never call for them if they’re in another room.
Eventually, these little tricks will cease to work, and I’ll have to address her by something at one point or another. It’s cowardice or indecisiveness, I know, and one of these days I’ll be forced to a decision in an instant.
I’m just putting it off as long as possible. Six years isn’t bad.
Married 18 years here, called my MIL by her name maybe once, and my FIL by his name probaly 3 times. Not ever to their faces though. I asked my mother and she never called her in-laws anything but they died fairly early in her marriage. My husband has never called my mother anything either.
I think it’s time we need an accepted separate term for them so we can all stop this nonsense. Let’s start one and see how far it spreads.
I had this problem, so I asked the other “outlaws” what they called them. I wasn’t particularly crazy about calling them “mom and dad”, but I do. It bugs the shit out of my family, for the same reason it bothers you. Another way to do it is to call them “Mom Smith” or “Dad Smith” or whatever their last name is.
My dad never called his hideous mil anything. I think the polite thing to do would be for the MIL and FIL to tell you what they’d like to be called. How 'bout calling them “youze guys”?
I grew up with my parents calling their in-laws Mom and Dad… and if clarification was needed, it was Mom Lastname or Dad Lastname.
Been married 17 years, and about the only time I’ve ever called my in-laws by their first names was to tell someone outside of the family what their names are. I’m very close to my husband’s side of the family.
Married 10 years here. I asked MIL once just before the wedding, and she just looked pained and said I could call her whatever I wanted. (She was not a happy camper at the ceremony either - you should see the pictures!) So I asked my sisters-in-law, and they said to call her what ever our eventual children call her. Well no kids ever here so I tried Mrs Lastname, and she acted as if she was offended. So I tried Mom, and was ignored or “Did you speak to me?” So I settled on talking to her as little as possible, and calling her by her first name. She thinks I’m being rude. She’s right.
My dad called his MIL “Granny” because she said it made her feel old. My sister’s husband calls my mom Miz Lastname.
My Inlaws are Ma and Pa… that’s what my husband calls them. Lately though I’ve switched to referring to them as my daughter does “Gwynee and Papa”
My mother is Mom.
If my mother has a problem with this she has never said so. I believe when you marry someone you are family and so are the people in his family. I refer to my SIL as my sister and when she was alive my grandmother in law was simply Grandma. We were so close that people thought I was her blood granddaughter. No bigger compliment could I have ever gotten as when she told me I was truly her granddaighter.
I call my in-laws Mom and Dad. On packages I address them as Mom & Dad Lastname. I usually refer to them to others by their first names or as “Kevin’s Mom & Dad.” My husband does the same with my folks. I can’t even imagine knowing someone for years and never addressing them by any variation of a name. Maybe I’m strange, but I just don’t see the big deal. There are several choices here:
You could call them by their first names. This is probably the most common thing. It’s what most of the people I know do. As I said, my husband and I use 'Mom & Dad," but both my brother and sister call their in-laws by their first names. My own father always called my grandparents by their first names (although my mom used 'Mom & Dad" for his folks). Most of my husband’s brother and sister in-laws call his parents by their first names.
The second most common solution, in my experience is to use some variation of “Mom and Dad.” If you want to reserve “Mom and Dad” for your own folks, you could call his “Ma & Pa” or “Mother & Dad” or something. If you don’t want to use just the titles, then come up with some variation that works with their last name or first name or initial: Mother Smith or Daddy Paul or Papa D… whatever sounds best with their actual name. Or you could encourage your children to call them some goofy nickname (Meema and Grumpy or somesuch) and co-opt the nickname for your own use.
Use Mr & Mrs with their last name or initial. This is pretty uncommon nowadays – I’ve never known anyone who did this. The initial thing is less formal, but pretty hard to implement out of the blue. I had a friend who called his in-laws Mr & Mrs B, but he had known them since he was a kid (he and his wife had been childhood sweethearts. By the time they got married, he’d been calling them Mr & Mrs B for over a decade and it had become an affectionate nickname on its own.
Invent something. Mil and Phil (for mother-in-law and father-in-law) is cute. Believe it or not, I once knew a guy whose last name ended in -ski whose son-in-law called him and his wife “Skeezix and Skeeter.” Their grandkids ended up calling them that too.
But you ought to pick something. I think it’s kind of rude to go on avoiding adressing them at all.
My solution probably won’t work for you, but just in case…
The last three times we moved, we didn’t tell my wife’s side of the family we were moving. We think we’ve lost them, so we don’t have to call them anything.
My wife, however, calls my parents by their first names.
I call my (Soon to be former) mother-in-law “the bitch” or any numerous variations of the same. She insisted when I first got married (18 years ago) that I call her Mom. I did to be nice for a few years. And the more I got to know her, and the more cute little tricks she pulled, the more I realized there was no way she deserved the kind of respect that that moniker implies to me. So then I called her by her first name. She hated that. Which made me quite happy. But when I’m speaking about her to/in front of my kids, I usually call her grammy, which is what they call her.
My father-in-law and his wife are usually Mom and Dad. They’ve been married a kajillion years and are wonderful people. My husband’s stepmother has been more of a mother to him, a better influence on his life and the most awesome Grandma to my kids. You would never know they weren’t her biological grandkids by the way she treats them. And yes, I’ve been known to call my stepmother-in-law “Mom” in front of “the Bitch” just to watch her squirm. The Bitch doesn’t think my kids should call my step-mother-in-law Grandma, because she isn’t their “Real Grandmother”. :rolleyes:
Bfore I got married I didn’t know what to call my then-future in-laws. My wedding day, we were all working on setting up the reception hall, and I had to shout across the hall to my FIL.
Me: “<sigh, deep breath> Jim!”
That sealed it for me, and now it’s not a big deal to use their first names. I would never be able to call them Mom and Dad, and now that there are kids, I can call them Grandpa and Grandma. Piece of cake.
Are first names so hard? I think it’s the easiest, friendliest way. And I can’t believe that so many of you have such a difficult time with your in-laws. That must make life much harder. Ugh. My condolences.
It’s funny that some of you mention calling them Mil/Millie or Fil. I’ve actually called her Milly once and I don’t think she liked it. She didn’t come right out and say she didn’t, but I got the feeling she didn’t.
Some history here, we aren’t especially close. Husband and I met over the net, so when I moved here, I had to live in her house. During the time, she was a raging bitch. She called me a tramp, she got onto my ICQ and read private messages. She even printed these messages out and gave them to my FIL (they were uh…well private. Talking about things hubby and i did together…before we were married). She told hubby that if she saw me driving his truck that she would call the cops and said I stole it. Lovely things like that.
That’s all been about five years ago, and since then she’s apologized, and yeah, we’ve grown closer. I’ve forgiven, but I could never forget. I think this is the main reason I’m not used to calling her anything but Monster in law. When I talk about her I call her Jeff’s mom or my mother in law. If I call the house and she picks up I say “Hey, it’s me.” heh.
I’ve become good at avoiding situations where I need to say her name, but like Lissa said, it can’t last forever. Bah, I guess I’m making a big deal out of it.
oh by the way…no kiddies here for me to use grandma or grandpa or any variation.
I thought I was the only one who never calls their in-laws anything. Through 5 years of marriage and a total of 10 years with my wife I have never called my mother-in-law anything. Its worked so far so why change?
