To be furious with MIL for suggesting that having grand-daughters is second best?

[FatherChristmasatemyhamster]

I had my second beautiful daughter 8 weeks ago. My BIL and SIL also have a daughter. My MIL has two sons and has made no secret of wanting grandsons in preference to grand-daughters. E.g when she heard my niece was girl she was openly disappointed. When we found out DD1 was a girl, her first reaction was "I want one of you to give me a girl". When DD2 was just born (we didn't find out the sex beforehand) her first reaction over phone was not to say congratulations, or to ask if mother and baby doing OK, or even to ask if DH was OK, but to shout to her partner "its another girl" with palpable disappointment in her voice. Then at Christmas party last Sunday I overheard her saying in disappointed voice to other grandparents discussing their offspring "I only have three grand-daughters". The weird thing is that she seems to love spending time with our DD1 - she just moved house to be closer to us presumably so she could see them more. Now BIL and SIL have just found out they are expecting a little boy (which is brilliant news - all power to them - can't wait to meet the little chap) but I feel furious with MIL that she keeps talking about my fantastic girls as if they are second rate. And I don't want them to spend time with her if she thinks they are second rate. Is this ridiculous? Could it be PND to feel so very angry about it? Help please!

I should add I feel particularly sad for my DD2 who is still in the eating/sleeping all the time phase. I feel like mil hasnt bothered at all to connect with her (admittedly it is hard when so small), and now grandson is in the offing I cant help thinking she wont bother.

YANBU.

A letter or e mail maybe?

she's a numpty! YANBU to be annoyed/upset by her silly silly attitude. Once the baby boy arrives how long before she starts disparaging her GD's in front of them? I'd be worried about that.

Can I just add it's no fun being the favourite either. I used to cringe with embarrassment as the "favoured" girl treated differently by my gran to my little brother (sadly I reminded my gran of her dead daughter). Luckily my brother was always confident and self-assured enough not to care.

YANBU, what rude behaviour on her behalf, bad enough to think it, yet another to articulate.

I think your DH should speak to them again, along the lines of - we love our daughters and in any case we have no control over what gender our offspring. Your comments are really upsetting us, please stop and note that we will be even more upset if any favourism is shown to the BIL/SIL boy when he is born.

Personally if it was me, I'd probably made rude comments.

Incidentally my friends mums who only had boys seemed to be even more excited to have granddaughters - because they didn't have daughters themselves.

I think if you say in a really calm way something along these lines:
"I understand that you feel disappointed not to have had a grandson, you've made that very clear, but just so you know, it upsets us when you mention it, we adore our dd/dds ."

Then she can carry on mentioning it in her own moronic way or she can take your feelings into account like a grown up. In my experience these people don't change though but if you tell her how you feel then at least she has the option of learning.

YANBU and you should spit in her eye the next time you see her.

I cannot abide this attitude, it's evil and wrong.

YANBU. As a child my grandmother openly told me she prefers boys to girls (and reeled off reasons), but other than that she was always fair to us all

I remember feeling hurt by her thoughtlessness - but no lasting damage other than feeling sorry for her for her narrow minded opinion. I would have a word with her if she acts or says anything to your girls that is marginalising them though.

Yes she is unreasonable, imagine being the 2 eldest daughters of someone who was desperate for (and got) 2 boys.
The last laugh is that the girls both went to University and have successful lives and the boys can't hold down jobs and have random children to various women. Shame but I guess that's what happens when the boys are treated like the second coming of Christ from the day they were born.

MIL is as bad. But in her case, she told SIL that the grandchildren of her sons are more important to her than the grandchildren of her daughters as they will share her surname. Ooooh, I felt like going out that minute and changing the ds's surnames to mine!

Yanbu

we have this with our dd and the Mil, its awful, but I know why she does it...

She is a man's woman, along with that quite manish, she has 2 sons, no daughters, when we had dd she didnt want to know what the sex was, when DH called her to announce the birth, her reaction was "it doesn't matter (that its a girl), anything woyld have been nice"... Anything, wtf!

She knows where she is with men, talks down to them, doesn't have a feminine bone in her body, doesn't have a clue about girls, like yours would be much more comfortab/e with a boy... Bad as it is I was secretly glad we had a girl, as I pity the poor first jorn grandson, she will get her tallons in him no time at all!

at a point when my sister and I were pregnant, (one DB already had a couple of boys) my grandfather told my parents (in front of both of us) that they "could be lucky like [great-uncle] and only have grandsons"

I think he did actually love both of us, despite how it sounds!! and when it came down to it he seemed perfectly pleased with the couple of great granddaughters he acquired before he died....

Just let it wash over you, if you possibly can.

Silly cow. My mum has 3 (soon to be 4) grandsons and just 1 granddaughter - and was I glad when she turned up, mum was nagging for a graddaughter (like it was MY responsibility for the Xness or Yness of DH's sperm ). Really find these sorts of attitudes that one gender is inherently better than the other totally objectionable.

YANBU. V sorry that you are feeling so about it, and don't blame you for wanting to avoid her for a while. Just try to pity her for her narrow-minded idiocy.

My (very lovely and involved) mother rang me afer my brother and his wife had their 20 week scan to scream down the phone that 'finally we'll have our beautiful baby girl'.

I have 2 (fantastic) boys.

I was most bloody put out even though I know she loves my kids to bits.

I can't best the card that my MIL got from her MIL when she delivered her 3rd boy; 'Congratulations but you must be terribly disappointed it's another boy, probably best not to bother having any more just in case...'

Now THAT'S being a bitch.

PS: Still feel the tiniest big aggrieved by the performance over a girl as if my amazing, lovely boys weren't quite enough.

Bit not big

Snail she actually wrote that in a card?

I'm the least confrontational person ever but I think she would have got a big loud FUCK OFF AND DIE from me for that!