If in a room full of adults I will normally call my mother by her first name, otherwise every woman in the room that has kids will turn around to respond. If around my family I refer to her as mom. My mother does not deem this disrespectful in any way.
I am rather curious as to why someone would find it rude for the child of someone else calling their own parent by their first name if that was something that the parent/child see no problem with and agreed upon. If you prefer YOUR kids to call you mom or dad, instead of by your first name then that is your decision. I think it is important for the child to know his/her parents first and last name incase they are lost, so that whoever runs across them in a store knows who to page over the intercom.
I address my parents as “Mom” and “Dad”, but I refer to them as “ny Mother” and “my Father”. Maybe if my grandmothers had not been Quakers…
On a related note, when my Father was little, he addressed his Mother as “Cat’rine”. (Baby talk for Catherine.) The only way my Grandparents could get him to stop (this was not at all acceptable in 1940’s Winston-Salem) was for my Grand-daddy to call my Grandmother “Mama”.
Pinky now calls me “Dah-Dah” and his mother “Mbah-Bah” I think he’s still having trouble with his Ms.
I call my parents ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’. My mum dislikes being called by her first name by her children. But when parents don’t mind, I don’t think it is rude to call them by their first names.
My relatives are refered to as Aunty xxx and Uncle xxx etc. Except one uncle, who is such an ass hole he doesn’t deserve the title. I just refer to him by his first name.
My friend S. is the only person I know who calls her folks by their first names.
I don’t do it unless I’m in a noisy public place and I need to get their attention by calling for them by name.
The rest of the time they’re Mom and Dad, or Folks.
My parents’ names are John and Sue. Which are only slightly less common than Mom and Dad. Therefore–and because my dad is REALLY traditional–it’s Mom and Dad. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable saying anything else, really; I think of them as Mom and Dad.
I’m not allowed to call them Mother and Father, though. They think it’s too formal.
Of course it’s ridiculous to assert that children calling their parents by their first names leads to horrible children. But there is a strong association between the two. There’s a philosophy of child-rearing that is anti-authoritarian in the extreme. You know–parents don’t teach, they “co-learn.” Children should not be disciplined, they should be free to define their own boundaries. Etc. etc. Parents who subscribe to this philosophy also tend to reject the titles of “mom” and “dad.” So, it’s not surprising that people have encountered some pretty awful children who call their parents by their first names.
But correlation doesn’t imply causation, and all that jazz.
Me, I don’t think it’s rude. To each his own. I don’t think I’d want my kid to do it, but not because I think it’s rude. I don’t normally use my parents’ first names…but I do confess that I can’t resist calling my father by his first name sometimes. How could I resist? “Hellllloooooo Norman!”