The Best Gift Ideas For A Mother-In-Law, Ranked By Risk

Buying for a mother-in-law is a problem of calibration rather than money, and almost everybody gets the dial wrong in the same direction. Too impersonal — a candle, a voucher — reads as indifference. Too intimate, too early, reads as presumptuous, or worse, as competing with her own children.

The way through is not to spend more. It is to buy something that carries the one thing you unambiguously have in common, which is her child and increasingly her grandchildren. The five below are ranked by how much of the relationship each one assumes, which for this recipient is a more useful order than price.

What is the best gift for a mother-in-law?

Something about the family rather than about her taste — a photo book, a frame full of the grandchildren, a record of her own life once you know her well enough to ask for it. Those carry personal meaning without requiring you to guess what she likes, which is the trap in this relationship.

The order below runs from lowest risk to highest, which is not the same as worst to best. The gift at number two is the better present; it simply assumes more.

How to read this shortlist: every price and specification below comes from the maker's own product page or retail listing at the time of writing, and this category re-prices constantly. We have not run these against each other in a blind test — this is a comparison of terms, formats and what each one leaves behind, which is a different and more honest thing than implying a testing programme we do not have.

1. A hardcover photo book — lowest risk, highest effort

The version of “personal” that carries no possibility of overstepping. A bound book of the year — the wedding, the christening, the summer everybody was in the same house — with a short caption under each photograph.

It works because it is obviously effortful and it is about the family rather than about her. You are not making a claim about her taste, her house or her interests, all three of which you may still be guessing at. Artifact Uprising sits at the quality end, with softcovers from about $19 and hardcovers to around $165.

Two notes. Include her in the photographs rather than only her grandchildren; a book that is entirely about your children is a subtly different gift from the one you meant. And allow three weeks for printing.

“The failure is almost never meanness. It is buying something that assumes a closeness you have not got to yet.”Tess Armitage, Reviews Editor

2. LifePages — the better gift, once you know her

LifePages sends fifty guided questions over three, six or twelve months, answered by typing or speaking, printed as a hardback with up to a hundred photographs. It is the most generous thing on this list and it comes with a timing caveat we would rather state than bury.

Asking somebody to write down their life story is an intimate request. From a daughter- or son-in-law of eleven months it can read as more familiar than intended, or as a slightly strange thing to want. Given in year three, to a woman who has started telling you the family stories unprompted, it reads as exactly the compliment it is — you have noticed she is interesting, and you would like it written down.

The practical detail that makes it land: choose the twelve-month plan at £69 and tell her it is one question a week, not a project. The word “memoir” frightens people; “fifty questions” does not.

Disclosed plainly: LifePages is operated by the same team that publishes this site — see the box above. It renews at £68, £94 or £192 if the book has not gone to print by the end of the term, and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.

3. Aura Carver — best if she lives far away

The frame belongs to the household rather than to her specifically, which in the early years is an advantage: it is a gift you can give to both of them without doing the arithmetic on who got more.

You load it before you hand it over, so it works the moment it is plugged in. Around $179 — about £140 — with no annual fee and unlimited photo and video storage for the life of the frame, where Skylight charges about $39 a year for much of its functionality and Nixplay starts near $19.99. Giving a mother-in-law a recurring charge in your name is a specific kind of awkward.

What it produces is contact, which is usually the actual subject of any tension about distance. Somebody sends a photograph; somebody rings about it.

4. Storyworth — the name she will have heard of

Recognition counts for more in this relationship than in any other on this site, because whatever you give will be explained across a table to people who did not choose it. A gift somebody has read about in a newspaper needs less defending.

Storyworth is the best-known service in the category: a weekly question by email or text, a hardcover at the end of the year, tiers from $59 to $199 with voice recording and guided phone calls throughout.

The same intimacy caveat as number two applies in full. And check the tier — the $59 option prints black and white only, and page overages beyond the limit are the standard complaint.

5. Meminto — for the one who hates subscriptions

Worth knowing about specifically for a mother-in-law who says things like “I don't want another one of those monthly things”, which is a very common sentence in this age group and is usually meant.

Meminto takes a one-time payment and gives a two-year window rather than a subscription that renews at a higher list price. It is the fairest term structure of anything compared here and the only one with nothing to cancel.

It is the least well known of the services on this page, which cuts against the recognition argument above. If the objection you expect is about renewals rather than about privacy, this is the entry that answers it.

What to skip

Anything for the house. You do not yet know her taste, you are unlikely to improve on it, and homeware is the most returned category in the entire gift market.

Anything addressed to her alone if she is part of a couple, at least in the early years. A gift for your mother-in-law with nothing for your father-in-law creates a small silent problem you did not intend.

And expensive jewellery, which reads as anxiety rather than affection and puts her in the position of having to reciprocate at a level nobody wanted. Overspending here is not generous; it is a request for approval.