In the local culture (SE Louisiana), kids call their friend’s parents – and other adult familiars, such as family friends – “Mister/Miss FirstName”. In this usage, “Miss” is acceptable for any woman, married or not.
This actually carries into adulthood. My in-laws are “Mister Joe” and “Miss Pat” to me (not real names). Older people in the workplace can be “Mister/Miss” to younger employees as well, but this usage isn’t invariable.
Thailand also. When we visited there my Thai wife explained how the younger ones would act. I was “Pe Denny”, father Denny. In addition to titles it was necessary for the younger people to act “shorter” then the senior visitors. They would walk around half crouched or bowed to avoid being tall. Even here in the US the Thai women in our circle always called the oldest woman “Pe Lec”.
Absolutely the case in my wife’s family (From Guyana, geographically south America, culturally part of British Carribean)
If you are part of the younger generation you absolutely cannot talk to the older generation “full mouth”. They are always Mr, Miss, Aunty, Uncle, etc. you have to “put a handle on it”. and it doesn’t stop when the younger generation are themselves middle aged with kids of their own.
My wife’s uncle has a funny (if quite dark) story from his childhood when there was basically a race war going on between the black and Indian population of Guyana. He got wind of this (as 8-9 year old) and thought that meant he no longer had respect his Indian neighbor by calling her “Mrs so-and-so”. He was very mistaken, she went right round to his mum and told her what happened. And he got beaten thoroughly for the disrespect.
Absolutely in Mandarin, and as far as I understand it, in every related dialect.
Hah. I know someone about 10 years older than me, America, but spent enough of her childhood in either France or Quebec to speak the language very well, if not wholly get the culture. The first time her family moved for a long stay to France, she unintentionally delivered a hearty insult to a teacher by calling the middle-aged woman “mademoiselle,” because she was never-married.
She did not realize that while in the US, you are Miss until married, always and absolutely (unless you are in witness protection), in France, when you reached a certain age, you become “Madame” regardless of whether or not you are married.
I wonder if this is why “Madam” is what is used in the US for women in professional roles-- ie, “Madam Secretary,” “Madam, start your engine”? and of course, the military’s “Ma’am” is just a short form of it, like the military knocks syllables out of everything. This way there is no need to find out a professional woman’s (unrelated to her profession) marital status, and there is consistency. All US secretaries are “Madam secretary,” it’s not that some are Miss, some are Mrs. and then one chooses to be Ms., and you have to remember them all, and people argue over which words have periods.
Kids did that that in my day too, but “Johnny’s mommy” was considered a sort of babytalk-- something a three- or four-yr-old who had not learned honorifics might say. Bigger kids knew Mr. & Mrs.
Zimbabwe: it gets a little strange
For example, my theoretical wife would be refered to by her name until she gives birth to our first child. We choose the name Rekai (a resonably common name)
At that point she is known as “Amai Rekai”, ie, “mother of Rekai”. Even if she has further children, that firstborn name sticks. She would answer to her own name, as well, but “Amai Rekai” is how people would typically address her.
I suppose there is some similarity with the Nordic naming system, just in reverse.
That sounds similar to the Arab custom of referring to a man by the name of his firstborn son, preceded by an “Abu”.
I don’t know the dates when how Mademoiselle , Fräulein and Signorina etc fell out of use. But as far as “Madam(e) Secretary”, Francis Perkins , the first female US Cabinet Secretary insisted on it when she was appointed in 1933. My guess (and it’s only a guess) is that this was because Perkins was not her husband’s name and “Ms” did not yet exist. And that’s really what those courtesy titles turned into in other languages - if all adult women are Signora or Madame they have becomethe equivalent of Ms, not Mrs.
Are you saying that when you wanted to tell your mother than your friend’s mother invited you somewhere, you called her Mrs Soandso? That wasn’t my experience in the 60s and 70s nor was “Lisa’s mother” considered babyish.* Actually addressing her as “Lisa’s mother” might have been considered babyish ,but that didn’t happen .
* At some point before high school ,my mother wouldn’t have known who Mrs, Aponte was. She knew Lisa but probably had no idea what her last anme was.
As far as German “Fräulein“ is concerned, I’d say the 1970s.
I referred to all the neighborhood parents-of-my-friends as Mr or Mrs last name.
Yes, I can attest to that from being a witness during my childhood of the appellation dying out. I’m sure my mother (born in 1939) had been called “Fräulein” a lot when she was young, while my sister (born in 1966) never or if yes, only jokingly.
For my entire childhood I thought that bácsi and néni in Hungarian meant Mr. / Mrs. (usually paired with first names) but it really means uncle and aunt. Although, to make things more confusing I think the technical formal words for uncle and aunt are nagybácsi and nagynéni.
No! That’s a good way of getting killed! 
Girls can be called “older sister”, women can be called aunt or grandmother, but I dare you to read minds on how the person defines themselves. Some women in their 20s and 30s feel really insulted if called aunt by a teenager, because they feel they are being told they are old. Just like the example of calling someone young “wife”.
My friend’s advice is to stay away from those terms except for your own family.
This is also part of the changing Japanese culture. You see it used more in stories about Showa Era, (60s and 70s) with traditional lifestyle. People tended to get married earlier then and have kids at a younger age, so being called wife or aunt was not seen as much of an insult.
I guess that shows that most of my experience in interpersonal address is from 45 years ago.
Children can still use it.
When I was growing up in a WASP family in 1960’s Canada, we kids were expected to address adults as “Mr. Smith,” “Miss Brown,” and “Mrs. Jones.” First names were never used.
So when I was about 6 years old, I met my Dad’s friend, Will Davies. “Hello, Mr. Davies,” I said, offering my hand. Mr. Davies shook it, and said, “Hello, Spoons, and you can call me Will.”
“Spoons, you will not,” said my mother sharply. “You will call him, ‘Mr. Davies’.”
And that became an ongoing joke. Will Davies was always “Mr. Davies” to me, even well after my Mom died, and I became an adult. We laughed about it a lot, when we met, and no matter how much he encouraged me to call him, “Will,” I just couldn’t. Thanks, Mom. Never mind, we had a lot of laughs.
The last time I saw Mr. Davies was in 2015, at my Dad’s funeral. He was in his 90s then, and in a wheelchair with an attendant, but we were still able to laugh over “Call me Will,” and “Mr. Davies, I can’t!”
(For those not in the know, Will Davies, my Dad’s friend, was Canada’s equivalent of Norman Rockwell. A very talented illustrator, he did covers for Harlequin romances, illustrations for magazines, and any number of ads for various companies. I’d see his work in the Toronto subway, advertising radio stations, banks, and whatnot. I’ve got a few more stories, but the fact remains, for this thread, he was always, “Mr. Davies” to me, because my mother, and pretty much all other adults, expected and demanded it.)
Touching story. Reminds me of an incident with my dad and my sister c. 1994-ish.
Sis was about 8 and she had some neighborhood friends playing in the back yard. Dad came out for one reason or another, and SIs said to her friends, “Hey, this is my Dad, Mark!” One of the girls said, “Hi, Mark!” Dad got this look on his face, bent down, looked the girl right in the eye, and said, sternly, “That’s Mr. Jones* to you.” The girl was distraught and embarrassed, as were my sister and I, as that wasn’t Dad at all. Meanwhile he’s laughing his ass off. Long story short, Dad could be a jovial and jocular man at times, and he was just having a laugh. He didn’t expect to be called Mr. Jones* and was fine with Mark.+
*Not our last name.
+Dad was fine with being called “Mark.” Most of the time. I called him “Mark” once. Once.
As an adult, I became good friends with a former elementary school teacher. We attended the same synagogue, and were on some committees together. She and her husband were my son’s godparents. I spoke at her funeral (she lived into her 90s), and still spoke of “Mrs. Weinberg.” She asked me a few times to call her by her first name, and I tried, but just couldn’t. She gave up, and it became like a nickname to call her Mrs. Weinberg.