[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]
Of American-English origin, the expression mother-in-law joke designates:
– a joke made at the expense of the joke-teller’s (real or fictitious) mother-in-law;
– this type of joke considered (especially depreciatively) as a genre.
—Cf. also the expressions little Audrey joke and dad-joke.
The expression mother-in-law joke occurs, for example, in the obituary of the U.S. producer Norman Lear (1922-2023), by Kevin McDonough, published in The Republic (Columbus, Indiana, USA) of Saturday 30th December 2023 [page B6, column 4]:
By injecting topicality into sitcoms, producer Norman Lear (Dec. 5) helped rescue the genre and perhaps TV itself from cultural irrelevance. At a time when pop music dominated the conversation and Hollywood was poised to embark on a revolutionary period of creativity, TV was rightly dismissed as “the boob tube.” Before “All in the Family,” TV comedy was confined to mother-in-law jokes (on series like “The Mothers-in-Law”!). After the arrival of Archie Bunker, nothing was off limits, much to the delight of audiences.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the expression mother-in-law joke that I have found:
1-: From the Whig and Tribune (Jackson, Tennessee, USA) of Saturday 21st March 1874 [page 2, column 2]:
“But woe to him, his wife had brought
His mother-in-law along.”
The disease of “mother on the brain,” so prevalent during the war, has been succeeded by that of “mother-in-law coming home with the wife.” The doggerel nuisance is as inevitable as the opening of a paper. If the thing had breath and physical organization we would kill it outright. It is like the uniform dropping of a water-spout at night, a dismal tinkling when the world’s asleep, or the contrivance by which criminals have been punished in some countries, by fastening the head in one position and causing drops of water to fall upon the forehead at intervals until the sensation became like that of a blow from a hammer. If Solomon were alive to-day with the heart and appliances of an inquisitor, it is reasonable to suppose that he would surpass Alva in dealing with our funny newspaper men. It is about time to permit “the mother-in-law” joke to rest.
2-: From The Cleveland Leader (Cleveland, Ohio, USA) of Monday 11th May 1874 [page 5, column 3]:
A Mother-in-law Joke.
All good mothers-in-law will laugh with us at this funny story, which comes to us from Chicago. Amelia Donnerscig sued August Behrens for breach of promise, and the case was heard by Judge Banyon, damages being laid in the sum of $200. The defense was that Amelia insisted on bringing her mother-in-law [sic] to live in her new home. “Now,” said the defendant, “her mother is a woman of lordly and unpleasant habits, and would insist upon feeding me too much upon cabbage—a vegetable for which I have a great dislike. I am ready to marry Amelia, but I am not ready to marry the old woman.” The Judge: “My young friend, which would you rather do—marry the woman and take the mother to live with you, or pay the $200?” A fine sarcastic expression illuminated the visage of Augustus. Firmness, also, was to be noticed in his accent as he answered: “I will pay the $200!” When he had said this, the Judge congratulated him, and observed: “If I had only had the moral courage that you possess, it would have saved me about twenty five years of misery and unhappiness,” and then his honor went on to tell the old, old story about his mother-in-law. But the best was yet to come. “The order of the court,” concluded the Judge, “is that the defendent [sic] stand discharged, and that Amelia, who has been trying to bring a man into slavery to a mother-in-law, be fined $10 and costs.” It would be rather hard to find authority for the Judge’s decision in any authorized work on contracts; but we suppose that he went behind precedents to “principles.”
3-: From The Daily Journal of Commerce (Kansas City, Missouri, USA) of Wednesday 17th February 1875 [page 4, column 3]:
Recently the Chicago Times devoted over a page to a vivid description of the burning of a theater in that city, which was entirely without foundation. And even the staid and sober St. Louis Republican horsewhips Storey in an approved manner, and perpetrates the mother-in-law joke, as follows:
It appears that Mrs. Steitz, whose name appeared in the list of dead, was the mother-in-law of the enraged gentleman, and his anger at discovering the report a hoax was but natural, and the cause of his resort to the surest means of getting immediate satisfaction. The affair has created intense excitement.
And if the above dispatch was not received from Chicago, being itself a fabrication, it is but what might have come as the result of such a hoax as the Times perpetrated upon its readers.
4-: From The American (Nashville, Tennessee, USA) of Wednesday 10th November 1875 [page 2, column 3]:
A PLEA FOR THE MOTHER-IN-LAW.
It is a stale and thread bare joke, at best—that about mothers-in-law. Why it should not long ago have run to seed, from its sheer inanity, is inexplicable. One runs up on it perpetually—in the poorly rounded paragraph of some one of the dullest of paragraphists; it is the “gag” of the clown and the end man, who roll it, ad nauseam, under their glib tongues; the printer humorist of the essentially funny village weekly, makes it the dismal climax of his dreariest anecdote; the low comedian of the stage, and the cartoonist of the cheap pictorial press, hold it ever in reserve as their most potent rib-tickler, at which the whole generation of idiots laugh, for no other reason than that it is the fashion to be hilarious over some exceedingly stupid and vulgar attempts at wit. It is the unmistakable indication of a lack of originality in whoever adopts it. It was never a first-class joke, from its birth. As applied to the average of mothers-in-law, it is the grossest exaggeration. […] We do not doubt that here and there one must encounter in the lottery of life and marriage unexceptionably bad cases of mother-in-law. But they are only sporadic cases, and the infliction by no means as yet is assuming the threatening aspect of an epidemic. […]
[…]
But our objection to this species of wit is not the sentimental one. We enter protest against the mother-in-law joke because of its tiresome stupidity. It presents too palpably the poverty of our native humor to permit its perpetuity. If the inventive humorists of our time would but “give us a rest” on it, they might possibly evolve something more striking from their inner consciences. There is no telling what field of humorous discovery might open to the aspiring perceptions of the modern makers of second-hand bon-mots, if this patiently endured dollar-store gem were entirely removed or rendered a little less conspicuous. If we are in order, we move to “cheese it.”
5-: From the Lyon County Times (Silver City, Nevada, USA) of Wednesday 11th April 1877 [page 3, column 2]:
SOCIETY STRATA.
In Irregular Order—Number 6.
MOTHERS-IN-LAW.[…]
The poet hath said “a baby is a well-spring of joy,” but we would substitute “mother-in-law” for “baby” in the poet’s sweet-sounding but mistaken line. A good mother-in-law is a well-spring of joy, peace, quiet, law and order the year round, and we don’t wonder that many house-holds are unhappy where this very necessary appendage is wanting. To make a cosy and comfortable home, a mother-in-law is almost as indispensible [sic] as a wife. No domestic establishment is complete, if this important adjunct is not provided.
But seriously, we condemn the brutal mother-in-law jokes going the rounds of the press. They are daily doing great harm by undermining and destroying filial love and respect. The same spirit that prompts these jests causes the little hoodlum of eight or ten to call his mother “the old woman,” and it is this disposition to jeer at everything good and sacred that is fast destroying the best feelings and sentiments of our civilization. How soon at this rate will the people of the United States be a nation of hoodlums?
word histories 