Treating grandparents "fairly"

[roarfeckingroarr]

I read a lot on here about how it's unfair to favour one set of grandparents. All fair, sounds good.

But how does that work in practice when you are on maternity leave and also the planner in the family? On mat leave I spent a couple of days a week with baby and my family and I will again when DC2 is born. If DP's family asked to do something I would say yes of course, but I'm not inclined to proactively spend as much time off with people I'm not close to. Likewise if DP made plans I would either go or support him taking baby to see them, but he doesn't because he's not a planner, so now toddler has a much closer relationship with my side.

Should I be doing more? They're nice people but we're not close, mostly down to DP not making plans with his side often. I do worry that when my sons grow up they might be just as useless and I won't know my (as yet non existent) GCs well.

I don’t think it’s unfair for you to be more proactive about seeing your own parents. That’s just natural. It’s up to your DH to sort seeing your in laws.

Your DH is setting an unhelpful precedent to his kids. If he wants to see his children when they are adults, he needs to demonstrate now that it is normal and part of adult life to arrange seeing your parents. Not just for women but for men too.

@minipie he isn't as close to his family and, after being smothered a bit by his mother as a young adult, is firmly of the opinion that parents should be grateful if adult children want to contact them at all. It's very odd and couldn't be further apart from my experience/feelings.

Ok, so he won’t be bothered if he never sees his kids once they hit adulthood?

Of course he will, but he can't picture that right now and is convinced the most important thing is to not be an emotional tie on your kids. Highly dysfunctional. By contrast, I speak to my dad a few times a day and treasure our relationship, I feel actively grateful for his love and support throughout my life and very happy to provide him with the same now he's much older and can get lonely

Neither of our perspective are necessarily wrong, but they heavily reflect the differences in parenting, unconditional love and non-judgmental support we received/receive.

It depends on the grandparents imo.

My ex was utterly useless after we split up and his parents didn’t see our girls for months because he didn’t.

His mum got in touch with me and from then on I facilitated the girls relationship with them. Not for the grandparents sake but for my girls sake. They have a wonderful relationship now.

I guess what I’m saying is it depends on the benefit to your kids. You’re under no obligation to do so and many on here will tell you not to bother as it’s his job, but it’s entirely up to you and if you think your DC will benefit then there’s no reason not to. Equally if you don’t then you don’t have to go out of your way at all

It really depends on a number of factors but it really is up to your DH to sort contact with his parents. My inlaws complained that we saw my parents more by my parents were retired and lived a 2 minute walk away so of course I went there a lot during maternity leave whereas MIL and FIL worked full time and lived 30 mins away so not comparable at all. I wasn't going to avoid my parents just because it 'wasn't fair' to my inlaws.

I was always available when they wanted to visit me and DH and I would stop by on the odd weekend to see them.

Now my DC are older they often stay over with MIL and FIL, while my parents are too old to want them overnight so it has balanced out.

You're overthinking. Would this even have occurred to you as an issue without MN? "Fairness" only comes into play if the less visited family feels hard by. Treat the 2 different relationships as different relationships, and worry about this constructed issue of fairness if it comes up.

I suspect your ILs wouldn't want you suddenly popping round a couple of days a week, or dream of expecting you to avoid seeing your own parents for this spurious reason.

Is there a chance you're making this more complicated/worrying about it more than you need to? Yes of course it can be damaging or confusing to DC if there are particularly poor relationships with one side of the family and 'unfairness' if for example they spend every weekend with one set of GPs and their parents actively discourage them seeing the others (and yes, I know before I'm leapt on, sometimes going low contact or no contact with toxic or abusive people is the least bad option). But equally people are different, they have different preferences, ways of interacting with family and ways of showing love/care. We're probably the opposite way around to you, we spend more time with DH's side of the family as geographically they are closer, there's more of them (DH has something like 20 first cousins and they all have kids so probably hundreds of 2nd and 3rd cousins by now) and also personality-wise are more social and extroverted, they love nothing more than a huge family dinner with hoards of kids running around. Whereas my family are smaller, further away and quieter/more introverted, we'd tend to meet up less frequently, in smaller groups and keep in touch more via emails and texts. So while it's different neither way is wrong and its not 'unfair', the DC don't love either side more or less, as they grew up they understand perfectly without it ever having to be explicitly explained to them why the interactions are different and it's interesting to see how they'e grown how they share DH and my family traits and bring this to bear on both family sides. So long as there's good intent and open communication on both sides you can't go too far wrong IMO.

I'd say don't twist yourself in knots, if you like your DP's family and enjoy spending time with them and think it's beneficial for DC too, then don't sit around waiting for him to organise, suggest something yourself that suits you and is on your terms. And exercise a bit of flexibility (a bit, not total self-abrogation!) - e.g.if they suggest a time to meet that doesn't absolutely suit or an activity that isn't your preference or what you would normally do with your family, then perhaps give it a go every once in a while. Or even easier, maintain low key contact with them over email or WhatsApp or put your DC on the phone to them every so often. If despite making this effort you still find yourself not seeing them much OR they're horrible abusive people then just back off.

I do know some women after having DC that complain that their ILs are useless, never see the DC, never babysit, their DP never arranges anything etc. But I'm well aware that the pattern of their lives is totally inflexible, Saturdays are 'little family' time, Sundays are immovable appointments every week with their own family, they won't take the kids out on a term time weekday cos they have clubs or whatever and in holiday time they're away or busy so the end result is it's practically impossible for the ILs to ever get to see the kids at all however much they want to. Or another woman where she absolutely hates long drives and so won't even countenance taking the kids to see her ILs a couple of hours away or even meeting them halfway, so again although she says she's happy for the kids to have a relationship with their grandparents and is disappointed they don't see them more, in reality she is putting up pretty hefty barriers to that happening. Now maybe the reality of the situation again is that there's more to it, maybe they're deliberately keeping ILs away for other reasons but on the face of it that's what I'd call unfair as it does just seem a simple preference for their family and their way of doing things and not much effort or flexibility towards the other side...

We live a decent drive from both sets of grandparents (3+ hours) so there's a natural limit on how often we can see either. DH organises visits to and by his parents (although I do seem to end up getting lumbered with cooking/changing beds etc despite my best efforts 😡) and I organise visits to and by my parents. We probably see my parents slightly more since I put more effort in with them, but that's because they often come to help with childcare rather than just to visit. On mat leave, I saw my parents with DC a lot more because my mother was up every couple of weeks to help (DC was a terrible sleeper and I was quite ill for a while), but we did go and stay with DH's parents fairly frequently for long weekends.

Tbh, even if DH didn't facilitate the relationship between DC and his parents, I would grudgingly step in and do it for him. Firstly, because I like and respect his parents - they're nice, generous people. And second because they're great grandparents and very proactive and energetic when it comes to doing things with DC and taking DC out. If actually they were a bit half-arsed about seeing DC and just sat on the sofa when we visited, then no I wouldn't bother making much effort.

How do you get on with, say, his mum? I got on brilliantly with my MIL as a friend in her own right and so it made perfect sense for me to text/call her/arrange to see her and FIL often without DH (he was away a lot)

If you believed my DH they were pretty strict and not overly loving parents, but my god were they loving grandparents. They were so soft on the kids, adored them unconditionally and my DC gained so much from the relationship.

It's not about what's fair, it's about what is best for DC. If grandparents are a negative influence then don't see them, but otherwise it's worth building that relationship.

My parents were just as loving but older so less able to run around and be silly. The kids benefitted from the different dynamics with each set.

If you want your boys to be more like you when they are adults, I'd show them the value of having loving grandparents. And if you don't want them to believe that only maternal grandparents are important, I'd forget what's 'fair' and do what's best.

@Holly60 sadly both of our mums have passed away. I would have loved to get to know DP's mum.

Depends op where they live too. Yes would have visited them all when kids young. Mine much older now my mam is hard work.. so its social things they see her. Not all families are close

I can totally understand that does make it more difficult.

I think the best thing is probably to keep thinking about what is best for your DC. If it's to have contact with both sides and have a chance to build those relationships then that's what is try to facilitate. If they aren't benefitting that much, then I wouldn't bother.

As I said, forget what is 'fair' as that is pretty irrelevant - it's about your boys, not anyone else.