I’ve been married for eight years and love my in-laws – but I’ve never called them Mum and Dad

My mother, noticing this, asked: “Why did you have to get up? Why not just call to her from where you were?” This observation was followed with: “Oh my God, Jillian, what do you call his parents?”

My very frank reply was: “I don’t.”

You would have thought humanity as we knew it had ended with how my mother reacted. “What do you mean! How can you not call them anything?”

Very calmly, I said: “I don’t know? I just wait for eye contact. Or tap them on the shoulder?”

PERHAPS “AUNTY” AND “UNCLE” IS ENOUGH

I spoke to a couple of my newly married friends and was truly surprised to hear that most of them addressed their in-laws as Ma or Pa.

It was beginning to look like I was the problem. 

Reaching outside my social circle, I found a British and Singaporean-Chinese couple who, like me, don’t call their in-laws anything, or still called them Aunty and Uncle, like when they were dating.

But their situation is unique. His family is based overseas, and he grew up mostly independent of them having gone to boarding school at a young age. She has strained relations with her own parents. As such, his parents are Aunty and Uncle, while he just relies on good ol’ glance-catching – like me.

I wonder then, do titles really reflect family ties and closeness?