Hi Swistle,
I know you sometimes post reader questions, and this came to mind while reading your post about Rob coming home from college and the dynamics between an older child and parents. I also know you had a hard time with your mother-in-law.
I commented that, as the mother of all boys, I have a huge fear—my biggest parenting fear, in fact—that my boys will all marry women who dislike me or don’t care about having a relationship with me, and I will end up not having a close or satisfying relationship with my adult sons (or grandkids, for that matter.). Right now, my boys are all still little enough that they worship me and I am the center of their world, and I know that all goes away and that’s natural, but I hate to think that someday these little boys will end up like my husband is with his mother: frequently annoyed and rather distant.
Let me explain: I have a very annoying mother-in-law. I won’t go into the many, many examples I could share (which are endlessly entertaining to my friends), but she is a strong mix of passive-aggressive and undermining. She also possesses some of my most disliked personality flaws, including being braggy and two-faced. She certainly doesn’t think I worship my husband enough, and that he is above and beyond what I could ever deserve. We are very different in pretty much every way.
As a result, I’m sure I have complained and griped about her to my husband more than my fair share, but he agrees with me on all points and now feels much closer to my family. (I am biased, but I do think my parents and siblings are pretty darn great.) He has actually told me that he feels closer to my siblings than his, that he respects my parents opinions more and prefers to get their advice on things instead, and so on. Which is great for me now, but I fear that karma is going to bite me and I’m going to end up living the rhyme, “A son is a son till he marries his wife, but a daughter’s a daughter for the rest of my life.” It certainly feels true to me now.
So, for debate—this is long, please feel free to cut out all the backstory—what makes for a bad or good mother-in-law? What can we moms do to avoid those strained relationships with our future in-laws? I am heartened to know that my mom had a wonderful relationship with my paternal grandma, and I know there are other cases like that. But—what makes for those good and bad relationships? To be fair, my MIL was not a bad mom—very affectionate and fawning and permissive and special snow-flakey, but not a bad mom. She loves her kids a lot. I feel certain that my MIL believes she is actually an *excellent* mother and mother-in-law, and would be absolutely baffled to hear anything to the contrary. Is being self-aware enough?? How do I know whether I am self-aware? Maybe I, too, am actually a super annoying person?!
Thanks!
I am RIGHT THERE WITH YOU. The discussion has come up often with various of my friends, as our children approach the era of bringing new people legally into our families. How can we avoid being Bad Mothers-in-Law, when surely the bad mothers-in-law we know did not SET OUT to be terrible, and yet they STILL ARE?
(A digression already, when we have hardly even gotten started: I am going to be talking primarily about mothers-in-law, because in our society the mother-in-law relationship is considered the fraught one, and the father-in-law relationship is not. An individual father-in-law can have serious faults, but we don’t talk about fathers-in-law as a group the way we talk about mothers-in-law. This could be yet another area where women are held to a different/higher standard—like when female politicians must be likeable and have pleasant voices and answer questions about how they’re taking care of their children, while male politicians needn’t do any of those things. Or it could be that women in general really do act differently in this role than men do, and/or that fathers-in-law are just as problematic but in ways our society doesn’t criticize/punish them for. It is worth noting that in my first marriage, my father-in-law was difficult and manipulative, and my mother-in-law was pleasant and friendly—and yet at the time, I blamed her for the issues. In my second marriage, my mother-in-law drove me up a wall but on the other hand my father-in-law had almost nothing to do with us or his grandchildren, except to call every couple of years and try to get us to make him feel better about how bad he felt about being so terrible, so I’d say he was actually much worse. Anyway. Back to the post. I had just finished asking how on earth we were going to avoid being bad mothers-in-law, when presumably no one SET OUT to be a bad mother-in-law and yet many of them WERE.)
I was particularly perplexed by the way my mother-in-law considered herself to be an EXCELLENT mother-in-law. She would tell me about her sister-in-law and what a dreadful time her daughters-in-law had with her, and how lucky I was. How LUCKY I was. Meanwhile I was spending huge portions of her visits DAYDREAMING ABOUT UNTRACEABLE POISONS. When she died unexpectedly (NOT FROM UNTRACEABLE POISON), I was SUFFUSED WITH HAPPINESS!! and I still think of it now from time to time, with happy feelings of relief and luckiness at having been spared. We do not want our sons- and daughters-in-law SUFFUSED WITH HAPPINESS and FEELING RELIEVED AND LUCKY when we die! How how how can we avoid this??
(Well, and it’s not as scary as what I’m working myself up to, here. In-laws are for the most part non-chosen family members, and so it’s normal for them to be, er, not what we’d choose. And yet many of us accept that and adjust to it and cope with it and stay polite and everything is basically fine, and everyone is doing their best to get along, and no one is swooning with delight but also no one is daydreaming about untraceable poisons. I had a particularly bad experience with my mother-in-law, but that’s not the usual. Some in-laws feel friendly toward each other! Some of them even love each other devotedly! Some prefer their in-laws to their own actual family members! But it’s understandable that we would worry about the less-favorable outcomes and hope to do what we can to prevent them.)
One problem is that the whole situation is EXTREMELY DEPENDENT on the personality combinations involved. That is, I am willing to conceive of a person who might have married Paul and found his mother delightful. His mother did not like me very much, and our personalities were not a good match; some of her most aggravating qualities might not have been brought out at all if she’d had a different sort of daughter-in-law, or might have been brought out but not perceived as aggravating, or might have been perceived as aggravating but then swiftly and decisively dealt with. There could be areas where neither of us were at fault: our personalities just didn’t work out well together.
But also, my mother-in-law really was an oblivious and difficult person. That is, I can write some of this off as personality conflicts, no one’s fault, etc., but she was the kind of person who, with a topic as minor as “how to cook taco meat,” thought of there as being one Right Way (her way) and a whole bunch of Stupid Ways—not DIFFERENT ways but STUPID ways. She would tell stories about other people (often they were pointed stories about how those people did something I happened to also do), and she’d roll her eyes and make scoffing sounds about any decisions that were different than hers, and she’d say “It was just so STUPID!,” and make closing remarks like “Well, but they didn’t ask me!” as if that made her a reasonable, accepting person resigned to her fate as Cassandra, always right but never consulted/believed.
My hope is that we are starting from a place where we already know not to do this. And that as we get older, we will remain aware that there are many different right ways to live a life, and that those ways suit different people, and that two people can live very differently indeed (even including the way they cook taco meat) and still both be living the Right Way for them. And that we will able to apply that point of view to our daughters- and sons-in-laws as broadly and lovingly and supportively as we would want our mothers- and fathers-in-law to apply it to us. And that we can try not to be actively difficult people. And that our children will not bring actively difficult people into our lives. This is a lot of hopes.
I share your worry about getting a son-in-law or daughter-in-law who actively badmouths me to my child and turns my child against me. Basically I am worried I will get the same thing in a daughter/son-in-law that I had in a mother-in-law: someone who thinks there is one Right way to do things and all the other ways (definitely including mine) are Stupid, and that this should be regularly and scoffingly pointed out to my child until he/she agrees and scorns me for it. I guess this means I am hoping I have children who grow up understanding that just because they prefer to do things a certain way doesn’t mean preferring to do things a different way is stupid/wrong/gross/bad. And that if my children DO understand that, they will not be as likely to link their lives to people who think otherwise. Though attraction is a marvel, and makes all kinds of combinations happen.
Another concern I have is that the very ways we consider ourselves delightfully Not Difficult could be THE VERY THINGS that drive our children and their partners up a wall. My mother-in-law considered herself SUCH an easy houseguest, because unlike her parents she didn’t expect us to give up our bed for her—but “giving the guest the best bed in the house” was not a concept I was familiar with in my extended family, so I failed to appreciate her graciousness in not demanding to sleep in my bed. (Also, she mentioned it every time she visited, which made it seem like maybe she DID want us to give up our bed.) And there was a whole interesting category of things where she would say proudly that she didn’t need to be entertained, she didn’t need special meals cooked—but then she did need to be entertained and she did need special meals cooked, it’s just that her idea of entertainment and special cooking were not the same as mine, so what she saw as low-maintenance (she thought everyone should be eating salt-free and low-fat, so it was not special that she needed those kinds of meals) I saw as high-maintenance, and I don’t know if there was any way around that. Or wait, actually I do know the way around that: I think the key may be to avoid bragging about how easy we are, and to avoid assuming we’re easy and delightful.
I worry too because sometimes I see “Can’t Win” talk going on with relationships like these: it’s easy to do it when we don’t like someone or find the relationship difficult (see also: Bitch Eating Crackers). Like, if a mother-in-law visits, she’s a burden and an intrusion; but if she doesn’t, she doesn’t care about her grandchildren and she’s wrong for expecting people to travel to her. If she sends gifts, she’s sending things no one wants, and/or spending either too much or too little, and/or buying things WE wanted to buy the children, and/or buying things we didn’t want the children to have, and so on; if she doesn’t, she doesn’t even care enough to send gifts to her own grandchildren / doesn’t even care enough to mark their special occasions. If she asks for updates/photos, she’s demanding and needy; if she doesn’t, she doesn’t care and isn’t involved. Can’t win. I tried to correct that with my attitude toward my own mother-in-law: if she did something I didn’t like, I’d think “Would I be any happier if she did something else instead, or would I find a way to criticize her no matter what?” This led me to give credit where credit was due: she visited often and was involved with her grandchildren, which was GOOD; she sent gifts and cards and letters, which was GOOD; she was interested in updates and photos, which was GOOD. I’m going to try to remember to apply this also to my future sons- and daughters-in-law, and avoid thinking of them in Can’t Win ways if we don’t happen to like each other very much.
Okay, do we have a rough plan here?
1. We can emphasize to our children (and model it in the way we speak of others) that there are different Right Ways to live for different people: that two people can live differently and yet both be living exactly the right way for their own lives.
2. We can try to remember this ourselves as we get older, and not fall into the trap of thinking that younger people need us to tell them how to live exactly like we did/do.
3. We can be aware of the odd dynamics inherent to the whole “building family out of people who didn’t used to be family” concept, and expect to need to do our share to make these relationships go smoothly, and not panic if the relationships aren’t all great ones. We can hope that our children will bring dear good nice people into our lives, but we can focus on hoping our children will find the people who are right for THEM, not right for US.
4. We can try to be Not Difficult, and to avoid the common pitfalls (being critical, being intrusive, giving too much unasked-for input, scoffing at new developments and saying “We didn’t do things like that in MY day and we all survived!”), but not assume that we are succeeding, and not brag that we are succeeding.
5. In situations where personalities are not a delightful fit, we can do our part to make sure we are not putting our sons- and daughters-in-law into Can’t Win situations where we manage to think of them poorly no matter what they do. We can hope they will do the same for us.
6. We can hope that our fretfulness and anxiety on this topic already puts us ahead of the people who plow into this assuming they’re the best mothers-in-law ever and that their daughters- and son-in-law can’t WAIT to hear wise instructions on how they should run their lives in every detail.
More things to add to the list? Some of you are mothers-in-law already, and I hope you will tell us everything you know, everything you’ve learned, everything you’re doing. Some of you may have active mother-in-law situations going on right now, situations that are giving you lots of ideas of things to do differently when it’s your turn, and I hope you will tell us all of those ideas.
I’m not there yet, but my take is you should practice being Open. Open to different personalities. Open to different experiences. Open to new things.
Here’s an example. Hospitals have started giving Grandparenting classes. They know that there is a lot of conflict in how baby care practice has changed. I think if your child and their spouse want you to take the class, you should be Open and say that it sounds interesting and you want to be on top of the latest knowledge. Something enthusiastic like that, even if you don’t feel it, and even if you think you don’t need the class. Think of it as a generosity on your part, and feel happy that they know they can bring this kind of thing to you because you are Open.
What a fantastic thing for hospitals to offer–you’d think that taking care of a baby is the same today as it was yesterday, and yet best practices do change and it’s helpful for grandparents to hear that from someone other than Daughter-In-Law.
I have given this a lot of thought already and I am planning to make a list of little things that my parents and my husband’s parents have apparently forgotten and I am going to keep it until I am a mother in law and I will read it yearly. Things like “remember babies need naps and they need naps in the way that they need naps.” “Think about how they will have to store the toy before you buy the toy.” “Noisy toys suck.” “Don’t over-sugar.” “Remember that parenting recommendations have changed and things are different.” “Don’t help the grandchildren do handstands in the middle of a crowded restaurant.” “Don’t criticize clothing choices, even by passively aggressively buying new clothes.” I figure by the time my kids are grown I will have a nice long list.
For the record, my mom has confessed to me that she doesn’t remember my sister and I ever screaming. “I remember that you cried, but I don’t think you ever just screamed and screamed.” My dad, immediately: “oh, they screamed.” So clearly we do have selective memories. I’m trying to avoid forgetting all the things that so annoyed me now.
Oh I totally agree with you! Don’t laugh, but I’m already practicing on my eldest niece! She has two young children. She has quite enough people in her life who tell her they would do it differently, and Have You Tried and so on. I mainly wait to be asked something (and she does ask me!) but most of all, I think of myself as support staff. We’ve always had a sweet bond and I don’t want to lose it over parenting philosophy. I confer with her when I’m choosing gifts, because I don’t know how much space she can afford for them, or if somebody else is already planning to buy or make the thing. I figure it’s enough for the child to be surprised, the mother doesn’t need to be. Once I texted her from a store with a photo of an ant farm, and told her that I loved her too much to ever put that under the Christmas tree; we had a good laugh. (Nothing against ant farms, but Now Is Not The Time in this family’s life and I completely understood that.) I know she appreciates that I think about clothing gifts as well, because she has strong feelings about what she doesn’t want her kids wearing. It’s the little things that are really the big things.
This: ” I think of myself as support staff”! I think it’s very important to remember that as the MIL, you are no longer in charge and no longer the decision-maker for that nuclear family. Whether you agree with how your kids and their spouses do things (manage money, raise children, keep a home, etc.), it’s their life to live; they have the ultimate authority to make decisions. You can certainly help them and they may ask you for advice, which you may freely give, but it’s not your place to judge or pressure or make statements indicating that you disagree with they way they do things. My oldest son is in Montessori school and one of the things I picked up from his teacher was that instead of correcting students who were doing something incorrectly or inefficiently, she asked, “May I make a suggestion?” And the student can say no. I’m not saying that MILs should all go around asking if they can make suggestions over and over again, but I like the mindset of that question. It indicates that the asker understands that the other person is in control.
This is such a good idea!!
“Do not help the children do handstands in a crowded restaurant” !
My mom swears that we kids never whined like my kids do (and shes not criticizing, shes genuinely perplexed and thinks that i have it harder than the general population because my kids are very whiny). Meanwhile I REMEMBER WHINING.
This list is so great.
I started off holding my mother-in-law at arm’s length–we were SO DIFFERENT–but by the end of her life we had developed a wonderfully close relationship and I could talk to her more freely than to my own mother. I miss her very much. One thing that I loved about her was that she never judged me: she never criticized me, she didn’t get her hackles up or blame me when my husband and I had an argument, she listened to me and welcomed my opinions. So even though we were so very different, I never got the message from her that her way was the Right Way.
One thing I see that causes in-law difficulties is the expectation that every holiday will be spent with ME and not with the spouse’s family. I see this in my step-mother-in-law’s family; she expects to see her sons’ families on Christmas Day, full stop, no exceptions. This feels so selfish to me; her daughters-in-law have families also! So I guess the lesson there is to avoid being demanding of your child’s time and recognize they might want to go to their in-laws’ or on vacation at the holidays–it’s not YOUR holiday, they’re a grown person and can make their own plans, and it’s okay to celebrate Christmas on Dec. 28 or Jan. 5 or whenever you can get together.
This is so key, to respect their time. Sometimes a couple wants to start their own holiday tradition right away, and not be with either family of origin on the holiday itself. It doesn’t help anyone to create a script in your mind for how it’s going to go down, just to be upset with them when they haven’t memorized their lines.
Love this post and the comments. So much of this seems to depend on self-awareness and the ability to de-center ourselves (maybe we don’t know it all, maybe our memories aren’t the only true version of the story, maybe what we want doesn’t come first).
One of the most self-defeating things my MIL did was something I don’t think she could help, which was to be just endlessly needy. She wanted us to come over all the time and to emulate her, and wow, is it ever hard to say you’re not going to bottle-feed, quit your job, join genteel clubs, or live in the town your husband chose because it’s where his family has lived for generations, and somehow have that message be heard as, “I love you but I’d rather make different choices that I think will work better for our family.”
Anyone remember that line from Broadcast News: “Wouldn’t this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If needy were a turn on?” There was also a dating coach who used to say that when talking to a man, “I can’t hear you if you don’t validate me.” So what I’ve been trying for raising my kids, and eventually being a MIL (if that happens) is to try to connect with people where they are, rather than to insist on being admired. Even if there will always be a little voice in my head going “Like me like me like me wait do you hate me?”
I love your advice, Swistle, thank you. I have been trying lately to keep a mental list of all the things I like about my MiL. We are barely speaking anymore, and she rarely visits anymore either (because of a sort of falling out between she and my husband) and I AM SO happy, but trying not to show my happiness to my husband, and also feeling guilty about it. But I’m truly relieved! It’s been 20 years of friction with her and I can’t say I’m sad about this recent change.
I’m ashamed to admit that I was a terrible daughter-in-law. For years. The sweet woman bent over backwards to do whatever she could to help us out, and though I felt like we got along great, I was super judgmental and she was in a Can’t Win situation. I don’t know if she knew it or felt it because she is honestly a saint. But I will be telling my girls all about how awful it must’ve been to be my MIL! Don’t be me, kids.
Swistle, this is an amazing post. I have a difficult relationship with my MIL that only became so after I had my daughter. Prior to that (for 8 years!), there were never any conflicts between us. I knew she had flaws, I observed them in her relationships with other members of my husband’s family, but they were never directed at me. But then, oh wow. Once a granddaughter was in the picture, an astonishingly entitled, grasping, jealous, nasty side of her appeared. I spent the first six months of my daughter’s life trying to navigate her temper tantrums (also directed at my mother during visits, because she was jealous of her closeness to me and my daughter and my husband) and my husband’s bewildered reaction. My MIL only had 1 child, my husband, and they aren’t close. He’s much closer to my family now, also because he left the evangelical church he was raised in (and MIL is still in way deep).
In terms of the future…I only have a daughter so far. But I see how my MIL’s gendered expectations come out in her relationship to her son and everyone else in the family. She *always* wanted a daughter, but for reasons that come across a bit shallow now. She’s very into pageants, bows, tea parties, “girly fun.” None of that is bad on its own but it’s paired with some very sexist assumptions about girls and boys and how to raise them. Until we told her we preferred not to dress our daughter that way, she repeatedly bought her dresses and clothes that had slogans on them like “Daddy’s Little Princess,” etc. She also bought HUGE amounts of clothing, we think as a means of control…like so much that if I had dressed our daughter exclusively in things picked by her, she could have worn a new outfit every day for three weeks as newborn. She even wanted to choose our daughter’s first birthday party dress (a very girly polyester number that looked uncomfortable—I already had something, and was gracious about declining, but the whole thing was odd).
I think she felt cheated by fate that she never got to have a daughter herself, and so projected a level of entitlement towards her granddaughter that was out of any kind of healthy range for a grandparent.
I think starting from a point of having fewer sexist assumptions about how boys and girls, and men and women, should act goes a looooong way towards smoothing the terrain from the start!
Oh this is such a good topic. I particularly like your comment about No Win situations and I am really going to try to remember that; if I am being honest with myself I may actually do the thing where nothing my in laws do is right. Sigh.
One thing I want to try to remember is that my daughter’s spouse will become her primary family, and I will no longer occupy that role. Makes me sad to think about but I think many of my problems with my in laws arise from that distinction. And they TRY – they say the words and seem to understand the concept but aren’t quite able to (always) apply it in real life.
Another thing – and who knows if this will apply in my future situation or not – is that I want to try to remember to communicate moreso with my child rather than my child-in-law, or communicate with them equally. Sometimes I am baffled by the things my MIL asks me – it would be much easier for her to ask her son! Some of that may be gender-based expectations but it is annoying.
As an MIL, I would also very much like to remember my child-in-law’s birthday each year without being reminded by my child.
I found this post in the archives and feel a little silly commenting over a year later but…I feel so seen! My MIL approaches things with me that I don’t want to be in the middle of. It is a lot of emotional labor to deal with her and I feel like she is trying to tear us apart as a united front when she asks me about visiting rather than both of us.
Holy cannoli…. I’m not even done reading this post. But I feel like I need to go get a cup of coffee and settle in…. (can’t though – will have to wait til later!)
I am married to a man who is one of 3 brothers, no sisters. Their dad is one of 7 brothers, no sisters. To me there is a big connection with how MILs and families interact when there are no daughters. Or even larger families who are mostly boys (like at least 75% boys).
Yes!! I have said this same thing for years! I think daughters “give it back” to their moms a bit more. I will absolutely tell my mom she is acting crazy; my husband would NEVER. We have been married 13 years now, so I know how to handle my MIL and she has worked hard to be easier too, BUT at the beginning she was absolutely wanting to run the show because she always had (only sons). One particularly memorable time, she had a semi tantrum about dinner plans and stormed off! I was shocked – my mom would never do that but she has her own faults. Both sons and her husband all responded to just go eat where she wants because it’s easier than upsetting her – that told me everything I needed to know about how they were raised. A daughter will fight her mother to get her way. :)
I’m cheered by the idea that my daughter’s dad is ALMOST CERTAIN to be a far worse in-law than I could ever hope to be. He is bossy and judgmental and overinvolved and all of the terrible MIL stereotypes. So maybe I will be saintly in comparison? OTOH, we’ve just reviewed several examples where that was not sufficient. Ugg.
I’m not a mother-in-law OR daughter-in-law, but I think that the key for difficult relationships in general is to just ASK if you’re not sure whether something would be okay, rather than just going ahead and doing it. Examples:
“We were thinking of coming to visit around the holidays this year, if possible. Are there specific dates that would work well for you? Will you have room for guests or should we get a hotel? And please let us know if you already have other holiday plans!”
“I think I know a faster/easier/more efficient way of doing [task]; would you like me to show you?”
“I was thinking of getting the kids [x] for Christmas, but if you have other suggestions let me know!”
This? “I think I know a faster/easier/more efficient way of doing [task]; would you like me to show you?” is unsolicited advice. Please don’t.
Oh my gosh, this is such a perfect example (for me) of the “Can’t Win” situation. Because I feel like a) YES, 100%, the MIL should just ask! Just ASK! But then when she does… I can’t hear the question without feeling pressured/judged/annoyed. Perhaps my in law relationships are simply DOOMED from the start.
A corresponding point here, I think, is that once asked, the asker MUST be willing to accept the answer. My MIL asked me and my husband if she could get my daughter a specific gift for the holidays, and we said no, based on a lot of carefully considered factors. And she got it for her anyway. I mean. Why go through the pretense of asking if you are just going to do what you want anyway? And I could see other situations — like the visiting for the holidays example — where the answer could result in really hurt feelings.
See? CAN’T WIN. ARRRRRGH.
I do think certain people can’t win because they do it wrong no matter how they do it. Like, because they are Very Difficult People, and some people just ARE Very Difficult People. So if for example they do it one way, they will do in the WRONG WAY for that way; and if they do it a different way, they will do it the WRONG WAY for that different way, and it wouldn’t be harsh or unfair to notice that they really did do it wrong both ways. Case in point is your mother-in-law asking ahead of time but then ignoring the answer: this is not you giving her a failing grade no matter what she does, this is her objectively failing the “Ask first” method.
…Er, wait, I don’t mean your mother-in-law is necessarily a Very Difficult Person or that she would do every way the wrong way. What I mean is, there ARE some mothers-in-law (not just mothers-in-law, but people in general) who will manage to be a Difficult Person no matter how they do something, and then the Can’t Win doesn’t really apply to the beholder in the same way. I say this because I suddenly realize that some of us might harshly judge ourselves for unfairly Can’t-Win-ing our in-laws, when actually the in-law in question really is screwing it up whichever way they go and is being FAIRLY Can’t Win’d—in that they cannot manage to do it right, because they are not Getting It, which is part of what makes them Very Difficult.
I think it’s difficult to get into “can’t win” column with most people. I hope, anyway? Any maybe the offer to show someone how to do things differently was imagined as a response to a complaint/observation about a difficulty, in which case, I think Ruby’s phrasing was fine. What needs squelching is the impulse to tell people who haven’t created an opening that you have a better idea or a greater idea.
If you need to broach a topic, like visiting over the holidays, I think you can ask in a way that doesn’t put undue pressure on someone, assuming they have a rudimentary ability to stand up for themselves and you know how to accept that.
“We’d love to see you over the holidays. Do you have plans? Or plans to make plans?”
“Well, we were thinking we’d spend it at home, just us.”
“Oh, nice! Have fun.”
then your kids either think “whew!” or make an additional offer “But maybe you could come for the long weekend in January? I’m just worried about space.” “Would it help if we stayed in a hotel?”
What a thoughtful question and response. I became a (step, but only involved) mother-in-law nearly 3 years ago. My husband and I wished then that they’d waited a while to marry because they were very young and had only met 4 months before getting engaged. However, they are adults, we ultimately supported them. We want them to succeed as a couple. We love them. We communicate with them. We set boundaries and respect theirs. We all have a group text. It helps that our son chose a woman who is an utter delight. We try to keep our unsolicited advice to a minimum, but we did strongly advise that they take some pre-marital classes and/or counseling. They did, and have both said that they are glad they did.
Oh and I meant to say – early on in our marriage, my own MIL was subversive/contrary to us regarding issues that predated me, and it was threatening to our relationship because I was FIRED UP about it. SO, we set a boundary with her that one single time, and she recognized that we were a united front and was a DELIGHT for the next 12 years she lived. I know not all relationships will be set right by a single boundary, but for us, it worked immediately and permanently.
I have a mother in law that actuvelyndoes all of these things younsay bit sometimes it is obvious that she is actively doing these things so I have concluded that you just can’t win! I do love her but is it weird to admit that I am currently in the throes of an adult jealousy hissy fit (internally mind you) because she’s got a new set of bff’s in her own bff’s son and daughter in law?! I guess they don’t have as many kids to work around/cramp their style. I have always gotten the feeling that my FIL thinks we ought to totally disregard the rules of the children to suit him (but then he gets angry when the inevitable explosive tantrum occurs, as if we were better parents it would not happen lolz) I was under the impression that’s one’s own only grandchildren would trump all but that is not the case. Ahhhh people are gonna people!
My grandma — my dad’s mom — is universally loved by all her daughters- and sons-in-law. (She had five kids.) Occasionally, someone will voice a minor irritation with her, but neither my mother nor any of my aunts or uncles has ever had a major complaint with her. So I think about her as my model, especially because my mom’s relationship with her could so easily have been fraught, and yet isn’t at all. I asked once how she could so easily accept my mom: a woman with two kids, four years older than her son, who was 19 when they got married.
Her answer: I just always figured if they could live with the people they chose, I could live next to them.
It’s something I think about a lot, both in thinking about how I want to be as a mother-in-law, and just in life, like when my friends’ husbands are being jerks.
I think something that helps is, as an in law, to have your own life and community separate from your child’s nuclear family. Hobbies, interests, work, school, friends of all generations…keeping grounded in your own reality helps in not needing to take over your offspring’s family creation experience. I bet this generation of incipient mothers-in-law is better set up to do this than our forbears.
Imagine what a formidable MIL Nancy Pelosi must make, except that she is real busy all the time!
I left this on my phone but it didn’t seem to take so apologies if it’s a repeat (but this one will be way better) BUT I will preface this by saying I do love my in laws, but good god they drive me nuts, but probably most people drive me nuts sooo. I mean my husband makes me want to hug and strangle him at the same time so that is where we are starting off. But my MIL is so hellbent on having a good relationship that she must have been from the future and read this post because she actively does all of these things. But it’s kinda obvious that she’s actively doing all of these things and that makes me wonder like how exactly teeth-marked up is her tongue?? She always asks before doing anything regarding the children, which I respect. But is it bad I am having an adult in-my-own-head hissyfit that mil/fil have taken up a new set of BFFs in their own BFF’s son and daughter in law? I mean they are exactly my husband and I before we had kids! So fun! so carefree! So “we only have the one lone kid every other weekend, so we are free to par-tay!” I kinda resent that because a) I always thought your own, only-grandchildren would trump all, but that is certainly not the case here. And While my MIL is very conscious of how she does thins I suspect FIL gets a verbal beat-down in the car the whole way home. FIL seems to have forgotten what it’s like to have children in the house (and I do not buy that he was not involved, FIL was and is an excellent, involved father to his gaggle of kids) and seemed to always think I should forego things like “nursing sessions” and “naptime” when he was around so he could maximize the time with the kids. I usually resisted. After I realized he was bitching to my husband about me I decided, fine, let’s let the shit hit the fan! And I let him do whatever he wanted. And it backfired in a most glorious way. But then his bitching to my husband consisted of, you need to get your kids in line because this is bullshit and they will grow up to be delinquents if you don’t discipline them now! (this was said after one particularly snarky afternoon when I was 12 months pregnant and he’d had my 2yo up for 20 hours and decided we all needed to go out to dinner, and I was in the parking lot observing said 2yo screaming and throwing himself all over the ground while people at the traffic light stood and gawked. and THEY ALL STAYED AND ATE but I digress) So like in laws are gonna people, and I try to respect that and enjoy the time we do have, and just hope to hell my sons don’t marry vapid, shallow women who can’t appreciate that. Granted I myself am going to give them a pass for a while, because they’ll be young and inexperienced at first… So my tale really is, yes FILs can be that bad, and MILs can be overly practical, and it’s not always going to be one or the other. I always thought we’d be close to my family and that has not been the case. Perhaps we are just insipid people ourselves. But what we have always joked about is how completely opposite our families are.. Like mine is crazy but then his is so overly wholesome like can we not meet in the middle somewhere?
I have a mother in law who is fine. She can be annoying person, but not in any fundamental way. I would rather spend my time with my mother than my husband’s, but I don’t mind hanging out with her. She’s basically pleasant. My husband and MIL had a very fraught relationship that has actually been significantly healed since he married me and had kids. Not because I am such a delight and miracle of a human, but just in general, like, my husband having kids and my MIL having grandkids and they are both over the moon about them, that makes their relationship tenable. I will say my MIL annoys my husband SIGNIFICANTLY more than she annoys me. Like I get annoyed that she’s a baby waker upper and that she keeps her house heated to 80 degrees, but Quentin is like fundamentally annoyed with her personality (I don’t find her to be fundamentally annoying).
My mom is who we should all strive to be, although it’s probably impossible (my mom is a saint). As a daughter in law she has been endlessly devoted to and friends with my grandmother (her MIL) for years. Not as close as she was to her own mother, but quite close. She plays bridge with her and goes to lunch with her and my grandmother recently stopped driving and my mom drives her to appointments and picks up groceries and so forth. Well I wouldn’t expect any of that from a daughter-in-law of my own, but I mention it as an illustration of an excellent in law relationship.
My mom also has two sons-in-law, two daughters-in-law, and one nearly-daughter-in-law (my youngest brother’s live in girlfriend, and they both for a period lived with my parents). One of my mom’s virtues is that she is a genuinely non-annoying, wise and kind person, and I know my husband is quite fond of her.
My mom has a whole mother in law strategy though! These are her steps:
1. Never criticize the person to their face or to their partner.
2. DO NOT HATE YOUR DAUGHTER IN LAW
3. DO NOT HATE THE WAY SHE DOES SOMETHING
4. Try to be as unobtrusive as possible
5. (Controversial and eff the patriarchy) you can tell your daughters that they’re holding the baby wrong or they should try cooking meat x way or whatever but you can’t tell that to your daughters in law or your married sons or your sons in law (basically, she doesn’t offer criticism on The Way It Is Done except to me and my sister – I’m not annoyed by her doing it but I can see this being generally problematic I suppose).
Oh! Also! One thing that I ADORE about my MIL is that she fully includes my oldest as a grandkid and a part of HER family. She introduces him as her grandson and never clarifies that he’s Quentin’s stepson and it’s so so important. If my sons end up having step children this is something that I am definitely applying going forward. It’s so important!
This is SO important, and should be a natural response! Include Everyone!
A friend’s MIL is like this. I was startled, watching her interact with the older kids, to remember biologically they weren’t her grandchildren. I found it so admirable and moving.
I thought of one more thing. Geography. My MIL is close physically, so my husband visits her with the kids once a week or more. My sister’s in-laws are out of state, they see them perhaps once a year. However my sister and I both live in the same town as our parents, we see them all the time. So there’s definitely a physical geography element.
My brothers: one lives out of town but his wife is also from our town so there’s no splitting of family visits or vacations, they come to town (they alternate whose house they stay at but we always see them when they’re in town). One lives in town with his girlfriend who is also from this town. The sort of casually come over whenever, nbd. One lives out of state with his wife who is from a different part of our state, so they alternate holidays and so forth. We see the least of this brother, because he lives far away AND his wife is not from where we live. It’s not like, by design, it’s just like….a real thing that is happening.
Oh! Also! Cousins! My siblings and I hall have same aged kids, and we are super into the cousin relationship and getting them together and going on vacations together and stuff, and the FOR THE CHILDREN aspect definitely keeps us close to each other but ALSO keeps everyone looped in. My brother and SIL have three kids, one the exact age of my sister’s youngest, and two the exact ages of my youngest. They’re adorable and she’s into it as well, so they visit a lot.
The geography thing is so true: my mother constantly forgets that in addition to having 2 grandkids, she has 3 step-grandkids. But she wasn’t very maternal and isn’t very grand-maternal, and she lives a 3.5 hour drive away from the steps, as opposed to us who live 30 minutes away and see her every weekend.
Also, my sister and her husband live a 5 hour drive away, and he doesn’t come with her when she comes on her twice-yearly visits. It takes time, effort and opportunity to really build up family-by-marriage ties.
Oh, but when my mom tells me that I’m doing something wrong I get very upset. She bites her tongue around daughters-in-law for the most part, but I hear about what she thinks I’m doing wrong. I wish so much she had the same boundaries with me.
So my MIL died at age 63, before her son and I had children. She was an opinionated, overbearing micro-manager in many ways, and I myself have a strong personality, but we tried to step carefully around each other and not crunch too many of each others’ toes. I try to keep in mind that her two kids both loved her and still miss her terribly, so she couldn’t have been that bad. This makes me hope that my kids’ future partners will cut me the same slack – I might be a little difficult at times, but their partner loves me so I can’t be too awful, right? My husband is quite easy-going, so I’m hoping he’ll be a good influence on me and provide me with any needed reality checks in future situations like these.
My family seems to have a history of the mothers and daughters staying close, but mothers and sons and sons’ wives maybe not so much, but we’re a small family so my sample is extremely limited. My husband recognizes individual quirks and still gets along fine with my father and his wife, and my mother and her husband, but my mother’s husband is my husband’s father (they met through us and got married well after we did) so that situation is kind of unusual.
Love this topic and your take on it! I am very lucky to have great in-laws. The only issues that arise are when they expect me (the woman) to be in charge of the social calendar and food planning. My husband and I have an agreement that he is in charge of his family and I am in charge of my family, so any planning/communication with his family is to be filtered through him. This came about because he honestly wants to be involved in these decisions, and I found the best way to do that was by having him be the first point in contact. It’s amazing how ingrained it is in our culture that women are in charge of all things social/nutritional.
So, my only advice for us would be–treat your sons-in-law and daughters-in-law equally. Don’t put social expectations on your daughters-in-law that you wouldn’t put on your sons-in-law.
I feel ya. We also made it policy that the spouse in wuestion manages that family’s events. It was quite a relief to give that up!
This is such an interesting topic!
My MIL is a mother of three boys, my husband being the youngest. His brothers both married their HS sweethearts young (19-21ish). On the other hand, my husband and I married at 30, and I had two daughters (the girls were 11 and 9 then) from previous relationships. I think a lot of the dissonance between me and my MIL stems from her basically seeing my sisters-in-law grow up/knowing them for such a long time and feeling more “motherly” towards them because of that, and then me, an adult woman who herself has been a mother for a while, being added into the picture. I acknowledge this lends itself into a different dynamic than she’s comfortable with!
However! We just don’t have much in common. When I ask about seemingly harmless things (family recipes, her experiences parenting teens, even what she did over the weekend!), I get very short responses. Conversations are almost exclusively one-sided, and It Is Exhausting. This carries over into her relationship with our daughters, and it’s just kind of shitty. (It’s not a teenager’s job to be the sole person developing a relationship with their grandparent.) It does not help things that she is Very Religious And Conservative, and our family is not, at all. There are racist/bigoted conversations every time we get together, and it’s is quite uncomfortable for all of us. (My husband especially, as he never saw “this side” of his mom until recently.)
In preparing for the day I may be in a MIL role, it’s been very important to me to demonstrate healthy boundaries for our daughters. Yes, my own mother and I are very close (we talk on the phone every day on my way home from work), but there are boundaries in place that help us keep a close relationship. (Holidays are not set in stone! We will spend time together, but when it is mutually convenient! I have no expectation that she should drop everything and help us if we are in a bind, and she does not take it personally when I say no if she offers help!) I look forward to the days when my children are adults, and we can spend time together as a family- but I also look forward to the time of being an adult person who is no longer “actively” parenting 24/7. It’s going to be an interesting dynamic, as my husband and I are younger than most parents our girls’ ages, and will likely not be anywhere near retirement age when our children have serious partners and if they choose to have children of their own. At the end of the day, I think it’s about loving our children/knowing that they are the makers of their own decisions/and accepting that parenting an adult looks nothing like parenting a child, thus adjusting accordingly.
I don’t really have a relationship with my MIL. My husband and I have been together since 1995 and went to high school together. She lives less than 2 miles away from my parents. But, she hasn’t spoken to me since she accidentally called my cell phone in 2012. She’s spoken to my husband maybe 5 times since 2012. She’s just not interested. When she left my FIL, her parting words to the kids were “I gave up my life for the last 20 years, it’s his turn now.” Step MIL is medically fragile and an eternal pessimist. She does call a lot, but only to complain about her latest ailment and how no one wants to take care of her or visit her.
I don’t know how I’ll be as a MIL. I only have daughters. I’ve kind of warned the kids already that I won’t be quitting my job to become Nana Daycare (like my Mom did for my sister and brothers). I want to be more involved than my MIL, but less than my Mom is. My Mom is kind of overbearing, and is part of the reason why I live in Arizona, and they live in Massachusetts- I needed to get out and do things my way and not under her shadow. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Mom, but she’s a matriarchal dictator. There are only two ways to do things in her world- the wrong way and her way.
1) be welcoming of whomever your kids bring home, starting early. I am super appreciative that my in laws have been welcoming even though I’m pretty sure I am not who they would have chosen for their son. I generally assume that they would have been more opinionated when he was in his 20s, but by the time we met they were just pleased he had found someone.
2) remember that visiting someone you don’t know is awkward. Meeting a partner’s parents can be awkward and nerve wracking. Cut the person some slack the first times you meet them.
This! My husband was 35 when we met and it always seemed my MIL was just so glad I showed up.
My husband married me when he was 44. He and his brother were both (at the time) unmarried and childless. I highly, highly doubt my MIL would have been as approving of me, but she had given up hope entirely, and here I am, the glorious bringer of grandchildren. I can do no wrong.
My MIL actually asked my husband if he was suuuuure he wanted to marry me because I had such a strong personality (which is true!). He said “I don’t want to marry a doormat, and anyhow mom, look at yourself. Where do you think I learned to appreciate strong women?”
(Anyhow, we don’t like each other, also she kept trying to probably accidentally poison me with dairy products every time I visited until I stopped coming even though I was like HERE IS MY EPI PEN NO MILK NO BUTTER NO CHEESE NO WHEY NOT EVEN A LITTLE.)
Anyhow, I hit enter by mistake too early, but in conclusion good and appropriate boundaries and respect and being even a little welcoming would have been GREAT.
I’m nowhere near becoming a mother-in law, but:
With each of my sisters-in-law, it was really clear that my mother very much wanted to like them wholeheartedly, but had some reservations. She was good about it: she never talked about the reservations, never bad-mouthed anyone, but it was there. I think that was a stumbling block to her relationships with all of them– that she had a negative feeling about them within herself that she wanted to overcome but couldn’t. With some of the sisters-in-law, the SIL brought her own issues to the table that would’ve been problems no matter what my mother was like, but in the category of “things you can control within yourself,” your own attitude towards your potential daughters-in-law is a big deal.
I feel very lucky in my own mother-in-law. She and I are different, but we both wanted to like each other from the outset, and we do like each other now that we’ve gotten to know each other. I’ve never felt like she was looking for problems in me and I feel like she generally feels like I’m a decent person who means well… which is pretty much how I feel about her.
I should also say, though, that I think all this is helped by our living 2 hours away. The one area where I think we’d have problems if we lived closer has to do with her gifts to my daughter–my MIL has no problems with Disney products, but I do. I haven’t said anything to her about it because I don’t want her to feel criticized, but I think that once kids enter the equation, and especially if you’re nearby, it’s worth being observant and–if needed–asking questions. And if you do ask questions, make sure you’re asking them with the goal of supporting the parents, not with the goal of making them justify their choices to you. Or making them argue against you on the topic. I’ve seen friends’ relationships with in-laws get worse because the in-laws thought that what the parents were doing was foolish or unimportant, and the in-laws couldn’t let go of doing it their way. Unless the parents are doing something actively harmful, you best bet from a relationship standpoint is to be supportive of their choices.
I think establishing a polite, but firm guideline that the primary point of contact for gifts, get-togethers, etc. is your child and not your child-in-law *from the get-go* is essential. It is a mistake my husband and I made and I regret it terribly. The card sending, gift giving and family get-together planning fell to me and since his parents are divorced, this left me with THREE families to keep track of (his two and mine).
I finally gave up last year and told my husband that I was done doing it all for his two families. With three kids of our own, my mental load was at capacity. If his family was going to get Christmas gifts (parents only at this point – we gave up giving gifts to siblings, half-siblings, step-siblings and nieces/nephews years ago), birthday cards, Mother’s Day/Father’s Day cards, etc., they had to come from him. He had to buy them, sign them and send them. If they were getting phone calls on special days, it was up to him to remember and do it.
On the upside, there’s less for me to keep track of, which is good for my mental and emotional health. But on the downside, since we waited nearly twenty years for him to takeover his family communication, they are all confused as to why they no longer receive Valentines and a Christmas day phone call. And of course, I’m the one to blame. My FIL, in particular, thinks I’m poisoning his son against him, and really it’s just that I’m no longer reminding my husband to communicate with him. His father didn’t raise him and it’s always been a strained relationship and this made it worse. Had we started with this policy when we were first married, my FIL’s expectations would have been lower from the start.
I know I won the MIL lottery. Sure, she and I annoy each other sometimes, but overall I am her bonus daughter and she is my acquired mom who Shows Up for me. It did take me some time to adjust to MIL’s and J’s dynamic, but understanding that his dads death was at the core of how close they makes it all click. Things she does/did that got us here: (1) accepting me right off the bat and being a safe place (my family was very difficult about J and I dating and eventually GASP living together for a summer in law school); (2) being interested in me and my life, not just as an adjunct to her son; (3) establishing her own line of communication with me that was appropriate for where J and I were in our relationship; (4) never once demanding grandchildren; (5) encouraging me in my own job; (6) knowing when my family has hurt me that she needs to not say anything but can bring me coffee; (7) Showing Up (last minute kid care, one of us is sick, whatever, she’s there to help); (8) she does not, EVER, hold a grudge against me. ONE time, I was so deep in PPD that I couldn’t see the sun if it was a foot from me, and I accused her of trying to steal my baby. I had lost my fool mind and I needed help. She never held that against me. She knew I needed help and helped make sure I got it and then gave me a huge hug when I was well enough to apologize and told me all the right things.
I’m sure I could talk about the ways my parents are difficult as in laws, but…let’s just focus on the positive example.
Kate, hugs to you. I could have written this pretty much exactly. #2 and #7 are SUCH important tips and are things that I do not get from my own mother that my MIL gives me. For that I am eternally grateful.
In our family it’s my FIL who is hard work – my MIL is a delight. But I think the reasons why I get on so much better with her than him are relevant regardless of gender:
1. The dreaded politics. He voted for Trump (we are left-leaning, I’m British, we live in Europe). It’s just not a mindset we can wrap our heads around.
2. An extension of 1: he’s an adoring grandfather who simultaneously doesn’t believe in paid maternity leave. Words fail me. I can only assume he wants me to be a SAHM and then I feel immediately judged
3. He’s conversationally really awkward. He states opinions as facts, interrupts conversations with totally random non sequiturs and believes bizarre conspiracy theories. He spends too much time at home alone watching Fox News, basically.
4. If he wants to eat at a certain restaurant or have a certain meal he basically sulks if other people don’t feel the same way.
The flip if that is that my MIL is supportive, non-judgmental, willing to adapt to changing parenting (breastfeeding, baby led weaning etc – she’s weirded out but happy to accept things are different now) and a devoted and enthusiastic grandmother. They also live 5000 miles away which probably helps. If she’d only stop buying clothes with ‘Little Princess’ slogans and built-in tutus she’d be perfect.
But I’m not perfect! My FIL is an annoying man but my sister in law handles him much better than me, and he is kind and loving. So I need to work on being less irked by him I think…
So many excellent insights into think about. I have all boys and this has definitely crossed my mind. I really enjoy my MIL, she’s always bent over backward to be welcoming to me. I can see her as a future travel partner. We’re quite similar. Also, we’re the only family/grand kids that live a plane flight away instead of basically next door and she still works hard at having a relationship with my kids. What really works for me is that my husband has a good relationship with his family and deals with all the emotional labor associated with them. I am not responsible for reminding him to communicate with his family, remember their birthdays, or start trip plans. He does it all and I can just focus on being friendly and engaged. If I was in charge of all that labor I can envision a more strained relationship all around. Also, the power of a fun group family text is real. I text daily with all my in laws and my own family. Very light and fun.
I want to point out how much the relationship can change. I’ve been married for over 30 years. My relationship with my MIL was awkward at best — because of distance, and because she was the capital-M Matriarch (everyone must do it my way or they are idiots). But then, suddenly I was living only 2 hrs away, and my eldest child became critically ill with a chronic illness. My own parents went silent — couldn’t handle the issue at all. My MIL was WONDERFUL. She was the mother I really, really needed at a very scary time. I can let go of all the other crap because she mothered me when I really needed it.
This is wonderful to read. I’m so glad you had someone there for you.
I have learned everything NOT to do from my MIL. She is very much a Difficult Personality type and my husband is used to it because he grew up with her, but I was flabbergasted that an adult can behave the way she does and the first 5-6 years of our dating and married life were SO HARD dealing with her. It’s only better now because while the behavior is the same, I can ignore it/shake it off/not take it personally since I have come to know it is 100% HER problem. She’s the kind that friends message me “WHAT THE HELL??” when she leaves one of her classic passive aggressive comments on Facebook. Her MO is long-suffering, no one loves me, why must everyone abandon me, I miss you so much but I’ll never initiate a visit or call myself. The small handful of times she has actually come to us for a visit and we ask a question about her plans (as in a rough time of planned arrival), we are always met with, “Well maybe I just shouldn’t bother.” She constantly seeks approval and reassurance. Her son will always be her baby boy, “why don’t you love your mother anymore?” but she does very little that is actually motherly. It is suffocating. I could go on and on but it’s sufficient to say that she’s been the biggest source of stress in my life at times and has thrown literal hissy fits over the most bizarre things.
I am blessed that my FIL and step-MIL are delightful people who are near-endlessly supportive and manage to be non-intrusive at the same time. My FIL actually calls my husband to check in and catch up, and has cultivated a relationship where my husband wants to stay close to him.
I have two boys and I have been logging things away for years on what NOT to do to their future life partners. I’ve definitely had the same fears as you, Swistle, but I have to believe that my personality is not THAT difficult and that I’m self-aware enough to be a pleasant person to be around. All I really want as a daughter-in-law with very young children who doesn’t have her own doting mother, is for one of my husband’s parents to ask me, “how can I help you?” I think I can manage that when my kids get married and start families.
Did you know that Facebook lets you set posts to “all friends except” and then you can choose to not share certain posts with certain people? This was a game-changer for me! There are friends with opposite political leanings to mine, and instead of gritting my teeth waiting for them to swoop in and tell me how wrong I am, I can just choose for them to not see certain posts! My mother’s relationship with her brother has deteriorated (for good reason) over the last year or so, so any posts about her I elect to not share with my cousins so that they don’t tell their mother, who then can’t badger her husband (my uncle) to get in touch with his sister (my mom).
Oh yes! It was a game-changer when I figured that out. I don’t follow her feed at all, but I’ll check in from time to time to make sure I don’t miss anything valuable. The trouble with limiting my posts so she can’t see them is that she’ll complain she doesn’t know what’s going on with us (especially if she hears something from someone else) coupled with the fact that she makes bizarre comments on the most innocuous, non-controversial things!! Thankfully I can just let it roll off my back for the most part these days.
At one point, my MIL unfriended me on Facebook. When I eventually asked her about it (it was when our children were a baby & toddler respectively and I posted photos for the family in a private album), she claimed it was because she thought my profile was “giving her ads she didn’t want on her feed.” Which was either a) misguided or b) a lie.
She re-friended me, but it was kind of emblematic of our relationship.
She is a very difficult person and very oblivious of other people…for example, despite being an EXTREMELY active member of her church & devout christian, she declined to visit her dying brother in his last weeks of life (also despite them supposedly being close), saying she would come for the funeral and didn’t want to travel to his somewhat-hard-to-reach town twice in one month. She has, in the past, refused to do something with our kids (her grandchildren) like the Children’s Museum because she has “already been there” (her exact words). She claims her kids were potty trained by age 2 (guess what – they weren’t!). She absolutely does not remember what it was like to raise children. She made comments to me recently about our kids doing “too much” (they are both in middle school & do sports & one plays an instrument). I asked my husband if she drove him to Boy Scouts, band practice, and basketball (which he did SIMULTANEOUSLY) or if he always got rides from friends & she didn’t drive…but no, she drove him to all of those activities and in fact he NEVER carpooled with a friend. And speaking of driving, my FIL has glaucoma and other eye problems and probably shouldn’t be driving at all (and in fact, does not drive at night anymore, which is a good thing). She has no eye problems whatsoever but refuses to drive. So when we need emergency back-up with the kids (2 working parents), they can only help during the day or they have to spend the night. Which, again, would be fine, if it somehow wasn’t the definition of “more trouble than it’s worth.” I came back from an 8-hour overseas flight, arriving home at 4pm after they had been watching the kids for a couple of days (Husband also had to travel at the same time) to find that they had eaten all the food in the house, left me with 2 hungry children, and THERE WAS NOTHING TO EAT for dinner. I had to drag my jet-lagged no-sleep self to the store and then make dinner. They left as soon as I walked in the door, so I actually had to decide if I was going to leave the kids alone or drag them with me to the grocery store.
I could go on…I’m trying to remind myself of these things not to ruin our relationship further but to burn into my brain WHAT NOT TO DO if/when either of my boys gets a life partner.
Swistle, as a corollary to point no. 3, I think you are lucky in that you have five kids. If you/they are lucky that means five happy couples somewhere down the line, and that’s enough partners that you will surely really like AT LEAST one of them! Er, I meant for this to be encouraging. One out of five ain’t bad.
I have a MIL whom I adore. I think mostly because she approaches her relationships with her sons (she has four) and DsIL as adults and peers rather than as an authority figure. My husband and I have done many things that I know she disagrees with (living together before marriage) and things I’m sure she’s not thrilled with (I kept my name) but she’s never said anything to either my husband or to me. Why? We’re independent adults conducting our independent lives and she doesn’t have a say in our choices. The most his parents interject in our lives – and it’s really not much – is to give pretty generic advice about things we’re talking about. And sometimes that advice is “it seems like [Kay] already gave you great advice”.
My FIL I have some minor issues with. Not because he’s a bad person, he’s not at all, but just because our personalities don’t mesh. He’s got a little too much of his mother in him for me to ever be really at ease with him. Now, my Grandmother In Law I cannot stand. She’s manipulative (in the “I’m just an old lady who loves her family” way), she’s guilt tripping (every time my husband and I make the 1.5 hour drive to see them we hear about how we should visit more often), silly and unreasonable (when she found out that she would meet our son when he was four weeks old she said “but he’ll be half grown!”), intrusive (“so, [Kay], did you have an episiotomy?”), oblivious (don’t stroke my newborns cheek while l’m breastfeeding!), and boundary stomping (repeatedly – 7 days a week repeatedly – showing up at my BIL’s house after his youngest was born despite being repeatedly told that they didn’t want visitors and that visits must be prearranged). I believe that some of my wonderful MIL’s qualities are just her personality and upbringing and some of them are based on NOT following her MIL’s poor example.
If In Laws or potential In Laws are treated as if they were the new partner of a friend (or the established friends of a partner) I think a lot of issues could be avoided. Take the pressure off of “but they are/could be family!!” and shift it to “let’s get to know this person who may end up as part of our circle”.
Oooh I think you nailed it in the first paragraph; this is exactly the kind of MIL I want to be.
My grandmother lived with us for seven years (I think my parents were married for 10?) and while she did provide childcare, I know my mom would have preferred to pay for it. Her stock line is, “I married your father but I divorced his mother.” Yiiiikes. Grandma wasn’t ill, she’s just Asian. Her children took care of her since she retired at age 40, and were happy to do so.
I’ve managed to find a pretty decent fit with my ex-MIL: polite, friendly, 98% focused on her grandkid. We have surface level pleasant convos, I go to a few events a year (she’s in a women’s choir), and we spend a morning together around Christmas time. Otherwise it’s logistics for my kiddo. We didn’t have anything in common except her son, and now we don’t have much overlap except my daughter. Works for meeeeee.
And as for the future, I don’t know. I mother my little brother pretty hard, and I have to aggressively reframe my thinking around girls he brings home to keep peace. Either they are financial/dramatic sinkholes my brother is white-knighting, or they seem great…and I wonder why they put up with his obvious flaws. Hopefully by the time my daughter is grown I will be able to get perspective, and give her future partners the benefit of the doubt.
My husband and I have been married for over 30 years. We both think it has been a good marriage (so far – you never know what tomorrow is going to look like). That said – if we had lived near his parents during our marriage, we would definitely be divorced, and I am sure that it would be an ugly divorce. The divorce would come not from the impossibility of getting along with his parents (as an example, they are pro-drunk driving – let that sink in), but from his response to their behavior. So – on this one major issue, we agree to disagree. He sees them every 18 months – at their house. They do not come to our house or interact with our children.
To get back to the how to get along with the inlaws topic – sometimes you can’t. Someone way up thread said you should ask them what they want. On our first married Christmas, I asked what they wanted and we did exactly that. It was then declared on Christmas Day that I had ruined Christmas for everyone (note – me, not the two of us), because they never thought we would do what they had told us they wanted us to do, so they made up something to tell us and by us doing the very thing they asked for – I had ruined that Christmas and all future holidays. This was just a taste of what was to come. Life is so much better without them in it.
As far as how this will affect the type of inlaws we become – and we are going to find out in a year – I think it helped me, but has had no effect on my husband. This is part of why we would have divorced had the inlaws been around – he sees any extended family interaction as someone else’s problem and just wants to be excluded from any potential conflict. So long as he is not the target of the venom, he sees it as a nonissue. I get that he was raised by a couple of loons, but as an adult he should have worked through this years ago.
Anyway – about my relationship with my soon to be son-in-law… it’s very easygoing. I do not have the kind of “you must be here for holidays” or “you must vote a certain way” type of expectations. If he treats my daughter well, then he and I will be fine. Can’t come for Christmas – I will mail you the gifts and see you in March. Want to name your kid Shoebox? Well, that is stupid, but have at it. I reared two intelligent children, I expect they will make mostly correct life decisions. I am quick to apologize, flexible and want the best for my children. That’s all I can do.
Such a great topic! Many things above have been covered but one I didn’t see – don’t insist on your child-in-law calling you and your spouse “mom” and “dad”. I’ve resorted to not calling them anything for more than 20 years – they aren’t MY Mom & Dad – and it just feels so uncomfortable.
My IL’s were taken aback when I started calling them by their first names AFTER WE WERE ENGAGED. Note: they are not Southern, despite living in the South.
As a grown-ass adult human myself, I am not sure what I was supposed to call them…Mr and Mrs InLaw forever????
I love this post and all the comments. I can’t wait to read about more in-law experiences!
I think most of the friction between me and my inlaws can be explained by their relationship with my husband as an adult, so I hope to be mindful of this when my sons reach new adulthood. During college and just after graduation, my husband became a bit distant from his parents. They didn’t have a bad relationship and nothing happened to distance them. He was just busy with school and then work, and they were busy working. They had just gotten their last child out of the house and were enjoying their empty nest. When I entered the picture, this is how it was. We had a pleasant, polite, but kind of distant relationship with his parents. I never got the feeling that they were unhappy with the way things were.
On the other hand, I have always been very close with my family. Even as and adult, I would see and speak with my parents regularly. My siblings and I would get together all the time. When my husband and I became a couple, it was easy and natural for him to get incorporated into our family. Also, my husband has always been close with his sister, so we continued to have a relationship with her and her husband when we became a couple.
Things only became strained when we had children, and suddenly my inlaws were much more motivated to see us regularly. Seeing my family or my sister in law has never been an issue. We saw them all the time before, so now we just see them with babies in tow. Since those relationships were already a priority for us individually, keeping them a priority when we were married, and then when we had children was seamless.
But this is very much not the case with my inlaws. And my MIL gets very passive aggressive about it. She fishes for invitations all the time and starts talking about where we will spend holidays months beforehand. She will ask if she can come over and help out but then sit there and expect to be waited upon like a guest. As the keeper of her grandchildren I feel the guilt trip aimed directly at me. In reality, it’s aimed at both me and my husband, but he is oblivious to his mother’s guilt trip. It’s really remarkable. So, I have to point out the ways that she is being passive aggressive and ask him to deal with it. Which, he does.
So, I do insist that my husband takes the lead in our relationship with his parents and this keeps my relationship with my MIL polite and civil. But, I can’t help but think that if my husband and his parents had cultivated a closer relationship with each other as grownups a lot of this could have been avoided.
This is such a good insight and I think that might be part of the issue with my in-laws too. Not all of it (my MIL is a Difficult Person) but definitely a big part of it.
Omg! Letter write here…,so fun to see this posted! Thanks, Swistle!
I love reading the repsonses, but I think, more than anything, I just feel sad. One of the commenters noted that her mom can be straightforward with her and her sister, but not sons or daughters in law, and that seems really true to me. My mom is able to be 100% herself with me and my sister, because we are all close and aren’t going to hold a grudge, yet I see her being more careful with her daughters in law. She gets along well with them and vice versa, but it’s not at all the type of relationship she has with my sister and me.
I love my boys more than life itself, but I felt sad with each gender reveal, knowing that someday it would be me tiptoeing around touchy daughters in law, and without that unconditional relationship between moms and daughters. My MIL is beyond irritating in so many ways, and so many people who know her have shared that they feel the same way about her. But deep down I have to admit she is in a Can’t Win situation with me, and she has become my bitch eating crackers, and I often feel really guilty about the whole thing.
However, I do know there are plenty of women who don’t get along with their own moms, and I am trying to take mental notes on dos and don’ts…these comments help. I suppose the main things I’ve found over the years are to be open-minded and don’t play emotional games (guilt trips, pity parties, etc.).
Sigh. The problem is that I fear I am a particularly irritable person, and I don’t like everyone
I think it’s also just a part of the getting older thing that makes me sad. I am intensely sentimental about how fast time goes by and things changing. It makes me feel mopey and old to think about being a mother in law and what those dynamics will look like.
Unless they are gay. Then you might get a SIL. Just pointing that out!
So my MIL get along ok. She can be extremely difficult and holds grudges forever. However what make it ok for me is that when my husband and I were dating my MILs sisters cornered me And said “we like you, she is a terror don’t let her run you off.” This was so refreshing- I wasn’t crazy- MIL was challenging! It also let me adjust my approach right away.
Now that we have kids the dynamic has changed. Rather than the interloper, I’m the gatekeeper. I’ve never exercised my power but it’s there.
My MIL loves my kids and would do anything for them, which I appreciate. At this point our conflicts have to do with respecting our time which they are wholly oblivious to (they visited once a month for 4 days each trip one year and I had a breakdown over it they didn’t notice) and age appropriate safety : like three year olds who don’t swim shouldn’t tube behind a ski boat alone (or at all!)
As a MIL in the future I will try to see what my kids love in their spouse – they must be great if my kid like them! I will always keep in mind that people are smart and make good decisions – and if you disagree you may not have known all the facts that went into the choice.
I laughed when I read this comment because the conversation you had with your MIL’s sister, I have definitely had with my SIL (and somewhat with my husband) about my own mom!
My mom seems to bear some similarities to Swistle’s MIL… she is incredibly rigid and as an empty nester/ retiree, seemingly unaware that other people have to be flexible in their lives. (For example, she wants everyone to take a Big Family Vacation but we all work and have various limits on time we can take off, which she takes incredibly personally that no one will humor her to spend 2 weeks in Inconvenient Place.) She has been like this to a certain degree since I was a kid, and we’ve all gotten better at dealing with it over time. And part of that is communicating to the spouses/ partners “hey, we love our mom but she can be A Bit Much and it’s okay if you react to that.” We are all variously close to our mom but this way we can set the boundaries we feel are appropriate to dealing with her.
No relationship is perfect but sometimes acknowledging the friction points goes a long way, and I have never really done that with my own MIL. We get along fine now, but when I started dating her son she was very opposed to me and tried to break us up because she thought I would ruin his life (honestly, who has the time). Somewhere down the line she accepted I wasn’t going anywhere and since then we have been able to get along, but are not super close. I know my husband wishes we were closer, but I am fine with us getting along and have enjoyed spending more time with her since she moved nearer to us.
I had a really nice MIL. It helped we lived like 4300 miles away from each other, but they’d come up to visit every summer for a few weeks. It really helped that we were both huge readers (she died unexpectedly in January of 2018), my husband and his stepdad would head out to go fishing, and we would hit the bookstores. We would sit in the living room and read our books, and it was great. We had fairly similar senses of humor, so we laughed quite a bit. She was easy to be around, and wasn’t critical but instead seemed to be happy I married her son.
My FIL-I have more issues with, but luckily I’ve set boundaries (25 year anniversary yesterday) and we get along for the most part when he is here. He hasn’t been up without her yet, I think that will be tough.
I hope when I’m a MIL-I will keep my opinions to myself, realize that my way is not the only way, and do my best to promote the best relationship between my daughter and any woman she chooses to marry. I would have a very hard time if she married someone who did not treat her well, but once again-I hope I would keep my mouth shut but be there if my daughter needed me.
Now I’ll go back and read the rest of the comments!
I think your advice is excellent. I would add, go into it assuming the best. I have four sisters-in-law. Three of them get along great with my mom and me, two of them actually prefer our family to their own. And one of them decided before she ever met us that we were going to have a difficult in-law relationship, and she has never really cared for any of us. I am going to say it’s not us.
My kids are dating now, my oldest one seriously, and I think about this all the time. I think carefully about how I respond to things I don’t agree with. I put thought into what I say, and make sure I give them nice birthday and Christmas presents. So far so good, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
OOOh this is a good one. I have no relationship with my MIL currently but that is because of widely differing beliefs (her: Catholic / me: Atheist) and politics (her: MAGA supporter and FOX news lover / me:….NOT THAT) and I’m finding them insupportable. Yep, I could “put it aside” and “make polite conversation” but I cannot fake and I really do believe everything is political in a way. Luckily my husband feels the same way and they had a break from talking to avoid saying more that could hurt feelings – but now they are speaking again sometimes AND they want us to go to a huge family event this summer in another country – and I’m not sure I can. Still on the fence.
I feel bad we don’t have a good relationship but how can you have a good relationship when neither of you respect each others opinions or values?
I’m a daughter in law, and apparently I did something wonderful and sensitive right away when establishing a relationship with my MIL: I asked her what she wanted to be called. She likes being called by her first name rather than “Mom.” Years later she thanked me for asking her. :)
I married my husband in a park with strangers as witnesses, just this side of elopement, at age 34. Looking back, I’m so impressed that both parents were supportive of our choice. We had a religious ceremony later, at our home, but the first one was just us, the director of the nature center, a dude with his kiddos Cash and Beck, and the JOP. And a bunch of elementary school kids on a nature trip who clapped for us when we were done!
I wonder if transition of allegiance and autonomy is the root of all in-law stress? Especially as post-millenials pursue family life more slowly, with fewer official milestones like A. Dating Seriously B. Engagement C. Wedding D. First Child.
It can be hard to know when the child becomes a PARTNER, and priorities to family go down a notch. I anticipate that transition will be rough for me!
Your first sentence is absolutely true, at least in my situation. I am the oldest of 6, my husband the youngest of 4. I am a “people-pleaser, respect-your-elders” oldest child and am just learning to assert myself; he is the typical baby of the family, very close to his mom, respects his dad, but no warm fuzzies there. We never established our own independent family unit very well, and it has hugely impacted our marriage. He has unshakeable allegiance to his family, who live 1/2 mile from us (and me with no car, raising kids at home) and we do not enjoy autonomy. My MIL is a peach, my FIL is domineering, and has great Pride of Family. Excellent choice of words you put together. I have actually copied out your sentence and added it to my notebook where I keep Profound Statements to ponder.
Oh wow, thanks for telling me about how you feel! Early in our marriage I didn’t feel like I had autonomy, but with practice I learned how to establish it! And you can start small, of course, if BIG autonomous decisions are daunting at first. It can be really empowering to live close to family once you’ve found your voice. You can do it!
If Cash and Beck were named after the musicians, I am loving this! Well, I love it regardless :-)
The biggest thing I try to instill in my 3 teenagers is this: Don’t let society tell you who you are supposed to be. You get to decide, not them.
LOL! Cash and Beck were two adorable little boys going for a hike with their dad, who was a perfect witness: a wee bit stoner and a wee bit outdoorsy nature-loving father. He took our wedding picture, and as he returned the camera, said to Robert, “Beautiful bride, duuude.”
*I do believe they were in honor of the musicians, based on the dad’s personal style.
OMG this reminds me of a funny story a guy I used to work for told me. Right after his wedding, he put his arm around his new MIL and said, affectionately, “I guess I can call you Mom now.” and she replied, in her stiff British accent, “No. Jeannette is fine.” I laugh EVERY time I think of that, poor guy.
Ha ha! :) I’m so relieved my MIL didn’t prefer “Mom.” I grew up with first names for in-laws.
My husband was a really good son to his parents. He is the youngest of six and we lived 3 hours away. He called every Sunday while they were living. He scheduled quarterly visits. My husband and his parents are both frugal so when I stated I would no longer be spending the night in their house (indoor smokers) with kids, it could have really gone sideways. But he agreed and he handled it with his folks and we stayed in a hotel with a pool from there on out. When their health was failing he visited much more often and did what he could to support the siblings who were doing the caretaking. When they were dying he visited every other weekend, then every weekend. He took our boys without me to visit them. He took our oldest but not our youngest for the hardest visits. All this made my relationship with my MIL and FIL easy. There were hard aspects. The number of times they visited us could be counted on one hand. All visits were on us and there were definitely seasons where that was a hardship. His mom was pretty critical of our wedding, which we paid for 100% ourselves and did not ask for or allow input on by anyone. Maybe we could have been a little more flexible there. ;) They watched too much Fox News. I find the longer they have been dead, the easier it is to remember the good and enjoyable parts.
I have noticed that if women have good relationships with their moms, they tend to be a bit more distant with their MILs. But if they have difficult relationships with their own moms, they tend to have better ones with their MILs. This isn’t universal, obviously, but it seems to be a bit of a pattern with women I know. So maybe I’ll just hope that my son’s partner has a difficult relationship with their own mom?
I noticed that same phenomenon. My aunt has adult sons…the one who married a woman with a distant and emotionally fraught maternal relationship is VERY close to my aunt…loves her dearly and sings her praises, and they spend a lot of time with her. They moved just down the street from them. The son who married a woman who is very close to her mom has almost nothing to do with my aunt and refuses to stay at their house when they come into town..she will only stay and spend time with her own mom. I know my aunt has a very easy and likable personality, so I’m chalking it up to what you just described.
Here’s to my sons finding women with difficult mothers! 😝
I read this yesterday and am still giggling over “DAYDREAMING ABOUT UNTRACEABLE POISONS. When she died unexpectedly (NOT FROM UNTRACEABLE POISON), ”
I’ve had two m-i-l’s. The first was strict and kind of cold. I think she liked me as much as she could. I don’t think she liked much of anybody though. She was direct so I never had to guess. I liked that about her, even if I didn’t enjoy her as a person.
Kev’s mom is ROSE COLORED GLASSES. This can be OMG and lovely. We are not close but we are actively in each other’s lives. She doesn’t want to bother anyone, like ever, so that can sometimes be as frustrating as a demanding person.
As a m-i-l, my mom is pretty non-intrusive. She will totally LET YOU KNOW if you ask and sometimes if you don’t. Mostly, she’s a passive bystander.
I am not a m-i-l but am a pseudo-m-i-l to my nephew’s wife. (she relates to me more than her actual m-i-l, which isn’t soothing, I KNOW) I’ve found that honesty is best *when asked*, otherwise a passive but supportive bystander seems to be the best bet. “How can I help?” or “What do you need?” seems to work the best.
I don’t know if this is helpful or no. It’s a slightly different perspective with that whole no kids thing. :) ;)
As your friend, you’re going to be a great mother-in-law and I will poke any unruly daughter-in-law in the eye on your behalf. :)
My MIL has a lot of narcissistic qualities and I have never and will never be good enough for her. I’ve been with my husband for 25 years and she still does things like introducing him to single women without introducing me even if I’m standing right there. I used to be sullen and angry around her and complain a lot to my husband about how awful she is. I fantasized about confronting her and cutting her out of my life. However, I read all of Swistle’s awesome entries about her mother-in-law and how Swistle was so grateful that when her MIL passed, she had not gone the confrontation route and I decided to do that too. Those entries really helped me.
Currently, we see her about every 6 weeks and I encourage my husband to go see her by himself more often. I have set a limit of 48 hours when I visit her because that is the time frame I can take. I have stopped complaining about her completely to my husband and he now notices her controlling ways a lot more than he used to. When she gets to me I remind myself that there’s no changing her and that she’s not going to live forever. I take her a lot less seriously than I used to. I don’t need or expect her respect and it’s made my life easier. When she does something nice or compliments me (rare but it happens) I really notice it and remember it.
I think the type of person who is concerned about their relationship with their future DIL will be a great MIL. Mine would never have been worried about this issue. She would say that it’s the DIL’s job to make sure the relationship is good because the DIL is the “intruder”.
Swistle, this is my favourite post and comment thread since the one where we all talked about our fights with our spouses, and you broke the laundry basket.
My relationship with my MIL is just fine, we are very cordial to one another and she does many kind things for me – knits warm things, doesn’t get pushy or demanding of time, etc. I will say it has taken some effort to get there. My husband was almost 37 when we got married and his sister never had kids, so I was kind of the, as someone said above, glorious bringer of grandchildren. She’s always been accepting of me, for sure, but as I said it’s taken a bit of effort. We are, in many ways, very different people. There are things I find very annoying but I’m sure she feels the same way. For example, although I’ve been vegetarian for 11 years, she will not budge when it comes to making meals, and by this I don’t mean I would like a separate meal, but some side dishes to eat might be nice. Honest to god, once she had made a huge meal with essentially meat in everything, and offered me a carrot for dinner. So that doesn’t feel great. But I just deal with it now by bringing my own snacks and realizing that she won’t change. When the kids were small there was a little bit of interfering with parenting, but not too terrible. There was a lot of buying crap from the dollar store that broke right away, but as they are teens now, she just gifts them money at Christmas, which is nice. I think what bothers me most is just a part of her personality – she’s kind of adult ADD but unmedicated, and she literally never listens, only talks. So if the kids try to tell her something interesting, she immediately interrupts and goes on a big monologue about something else. She talks AT me all the time, never with. But we can’t have everything, and like I said, I just kind of go with it. It’s actually a running joke now in our house with the kids. But other than that she’s a pretty doting grandmother.
I am the one who always buys cards and gifts for occasions, which I occasionally resent my husband for, but I think it’s good karma.
I think the most important thing to being a mother-in-law is just being accepting, and trying to be helpful but in a non-intrusive way. When the kids were little MIL/FIL would visit and be no help at all, but the opposite. But life goes on and here we are. Observing my own mom with my two SILs, I think it’s important to a) not be demanding of time on holidays, and b) realizing that no, your sons are not perfect and neither will your DILs be. One thing I am ever grateful my MIL never did was think that “no one is too good for her son” which is a real danger – he’s the only son and as I said, he was older when we got married (I was almost 26).
Also, it’s so important to remember that your children will be adults when they get married, it’s their own journey, and our job is to support them. Whew! Long comment :) This thread is awesome.
My question would be: did the adult children of the “bad” MIL have amazing relationships with their mothers growing up that *only* grew distant when the child got married? Looking at my own family and history, we are very distant from my MIL and she is often horrendous BUT growing up the relationship was always somewhat strained between her and my husband. We get along wonderfully with my own family BUT my relationship has always been wonderful with my family. My mom’s mom was the “bad MIL” BUT AGAIN they had a very tumultuous relationship over the years whereas my father and his mother were always incredibly close and my mom fell into that family dynamic nicely. I have other examples like that amongst a number of close friends and family so I’m wondering if that pays a large part in all of this…?
Oh! Swistle! I thought of a few more things. I have a lot of HOPE for our generation as we start to veer into MIL-hood. I know a lot of MILs of our MIL and mother’s generation can be very difficult, and one thing that occurred to me is that they were (probably) younger when they got married, younger when they had kids, and younger when they became MILs. So perhaps it was more difficult for them to give up their role as “central/ leading lady in life.” I know a lot of women of that generation who really prided themselves on being the Number One Woman in their son’s life. Yes, as mothers we are, to a point – then it’s time to give it up. I think it’s easier (or will be easier) for women of our generation to do that, as we likely had some time being adults before we had kids. Example: my mom was 18 when she had my brother, so she would have essentially grown up as being a mother. It would have been harder for her to step away from that central role.
Second, it occurs to me that there is a regrettable older woman/ younger woman dynamic happening as well. For those women for whom it is difficult to step away from Leading Lady, so to speak, it might be even harder to do so for someone young and perky, if you know what I’m saying. It’s icky but it’s kind of a fact, that there are many women who resent younger women simply for being younger.
Third, smash the patriarchy, but here it is, most women of our mother’s generation have gender-based roles in their minds. So, if a house is kept a certain way, it’s the woman who is keeping it that way. If the children are behaving in a certain way, it’s the mother’s fault for that behaviour. I think our generation will be less finger-pointy about that, as we are more accepting of fluid gender roles/ division of labour.
Fourth and last: it seems to me that as we age, we can settle into our roles more easily. It can be hard marrying into a family but it seems like time can soften things. Hopefully, anyway. There were many more conflicts with my MIL earlier in my marriage, and when the kids were small. When I look back on it, I feel like some of those conflicts were things that upset me that really aren’t a big deal. But with age comes wisdom :)
Cosign suggestions above: expect yourself and your child, not your child-inlaw, to do the bulk of the emotional work of maintaining good relationships.
I carry some guilt about my relationship with my inlaws and how it has weakened. I actually hit it off really well with my MIL right off the bat. We have a lot in common. Really, they are wonderful, wonderful people and we got along famously for years until the grand/kids came along. I miss those times. I even invited my MIL to travel overseas with me for weeks. And we had a grand time.
Then babies. The only grandchildren (so far, oldest is nearly 12) They, very wonderfully, did childcare for us and even came to our house every weekday for half a day for about 7 years but that was just a little too much time together, y’know? I married their son, not them. They were in my space a whole lot. And while they usually bit their tongue about our parenting choices, they didn’t always. And about twice I clapped back. And it became apparent that they were WORRIERS. Vastly over-reacted to news of very minor ailments (rash from a new soap…) in the children and so we felt the need to switch to a need-to-know basis only for some information. That in and of itself put some distance between us. And I came to realise that I could not tolerate my FILs politics so I ignored his FB friend request (and those of everyone in their generation) because I do post my opinions and I did not want to discuss them with him.
Plus like a commenter above, I gradually “withdrew” a lot of the emotional work I was doing for social expectations/to maintain the relationship and expected my husband to take it up. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he didn’t. But they certainly didn’t raise him to participate in those things (gifts, cards, calls, plans) so I like to think that he is disappointing them rather than that I am disappointing them. Now that they aren’t around so much and because it would be because I wanted to, I could put in more effort to renew the relationship and probably should. They are wonderful people and I definitely miss the closeness with my MIL.