outside the school gates the other day a kid asked a parent what their name was and they replied Mrs Surname

Really? That is so odd. Were they an older parent by any chance?

My wife and I are in our 30s but, even when I was a child, addressing your friends' parents as Mr/Mrs was increasingly being abandoned in favour of first names. I'd say maybe 50% did first names from the outset, 25% did surnames initially but progressed to first names once the relationships had moved from acquaintances to friends, and 25% stuck with surnames....and the surnames tended to be the older parents. But that was like several decades ago and I would have thought the ratio had shifted.

I don't know anybody that goes by their surname to the kids, and would never think to introduce myself as Mrs so-and-so to anyone's kid either. I might say "I'm Child's mum" just for reference (like at a birthday party if briefly meeting a child) but otherwise I would just expect to be addressed by my first name.

I think it's a tad outdated that teachers go by their surnames, even. Our kids' nursery has all the staff members go by their first names (apart from the owner, irritatingly, who is Mr Someone even though he refers to all the other staff by their first names 😡 I find it disrespectful.- but he's not really involved with the kids) and I think it will be a bit of an adjustment when they start school and have to use surnames. Because there literally isn't anybody in their life that they call Mr or Mrs. There's Dr but they don't really address the doctors and nurses by their names (irritating also that the nurses go by their first names but the doctors don't...), they just sit there in petrified silence 😂

I also find it super icky that the TAs get called their first names and the teachers get called Mr/Mrs/Sir. Like, again, I find the implied hierarchy really disrespectful.

And don't even get me started on the sexist implications. Most of the nurses are female and so are the TAs, so the kids are usually only using titular addresses for the men, which carries the connotation that they are more important somehow. And then you have the Mrs/Ms/Miss distinction that you just don't have for men. That our very identities should be distilled down to our marital status 🙄 right from the get go, when they start school, they're learning that a woman's marital status means something different than a man's.

It's all terribly old-fashioned if you ask me.