Mother-in-Law Day

What the day is

Mother-in-Law Day is observed on the fourth Sunday in October. It exists to acknowledge a family relationship that is the target of an enormous quantity of joking and comparatively little appreciation.

Origin and background

The observance is generally traced to a newspaper editor in Amarillo, Texas, who promoted it in the 1930s, and it was revived and pushed by greeting card interests in the decades afterward. It has never achieved the standing of Mother's Day, which is arguably part of the point.

The stereotype it works against is unusually persistent across cultures, and researchers who study in-law relationships have found some consistent patterns behind it. The difficulty is structural rather than personal: two women often have a long-standing close relationship with the same person, roles are undefined in a way that parent and child roles are not, and advice offered with genuine goodwill is easily received as criticism because the advisor has no formal standing to give it.

The research also finds the relationship is frequently better than the folklore suggests, and that it improves markedly with grandchildren, shared practical work and clear boundaries agreed early. The most reliable predictor of a difficult in-law relationship is a partner who leaves the negotiating to their spouse rather than handling their own parent.

The jokes have their own history. Mother-in-law material was a staple of music hall and vaudeville and carried into twentieth-century stand-up, largely because it let comedians complain about family without insulting a spouse directly.

How to take part

• Call rather than send a card. The card industry has enough credit for this day already.
• Be specific about something she actually did. General appreciation reads as obligatory.
• Ask about her own life rather than only about family logistics.
• If you are the adult child, manage your own parent rather than leaving it to your partner.
• If the relationship is genuinely strained, a low-key gesture is still better than silence, and neither party has to pretend otherwise.