To dread becoming a M-I-L

[Partridge]

I'm sure this has been done to death, but as the mother of 3 ds I feel incredibly disheartened (and sad) about the utter intolerance shown towards MIL on mn.

I adore my boys (hopefully not smotheringly) and try to teach them to be compassionate, gentle and to look after themselves. I aim not to spoil them and to teach them how to be wonderful husbands and fathers. The majority of mil threads on mn are very negative and many are spiteful and generic about evil mil.

The only time I have felt sad about not having a daughter is when I read how little mil seem able to be involved in the lives of their ds and gc - do these posts come from mums of girls? Do these (often harsh) rules extend to their own mothers?

In this time of equality it seems wrong that the mil seems often to be required to be a doormat to be allowed access to her family. (By that I mean accept being merely "tolerated" by her DIL).

Obviously there are exceptions to this - and clearly there are some monstrous mil out there - but the prevailing theme is of total disdain and inequality towards mil. Please tell me I am being totally over sensitive and ridiculous. I really feel very sad at the thought of being "the enemy" by virtue of having 3ds.

OP, I don't mean to be rude, but this is completely bonkers.

It has not happened yet, and may never happen.

What if future DIL's parents live on the other side of the world? What if they have already died by the time she has children?

Come on- what's the real issue here? Cos this aint it.

Another one here with a fantastic m-i-l. She has four sons no DDs and every single one of her D-i-ls love her to bits. l often bemoan to her how we cant make the usual m-i-l jokes about her as none of us have any issues with her whatsoever. We all even go to her and slag off her DSs over a cuppa when they are getting on our nerves and she even joins in and agrees that her youngest/middle/whatever son has always been grumpy/lazy/stubborn or whatever the misdemeanour is one of us d-i-ls is moaning about at the time.

She says when asked that her secret is never ever to interfere, to only offer advice or help if and when she's asked for it. But she is always there to talk to and is a great listener.

She is nearly 80 now and not in the best of health and l can very easily get tearful even at the thought of her not being around, l would be lost without her .

airforceone you poor poor thing!!

i didnt have the physical in capacity you describe but mentally did as I had just lost my brother and had to organise a funeral and deal with my own squabbling selfish family, as well as care for my disbabled difficult father and we were in the middle of a house renovation!!! ( DD came early).

MIL came in - to " help" and did nothing but moan ( not at my invitaion), and was obvioulsy looking around for cobwebs and stuff to then attack me with a few days later....saying why hadnt i been ....." nesting", i said i was fucking NESTING but had a funeral to organise and lots of people coming into our house - on the day of the funeral WEDNESDAY, i went into labour on THURSDAY and had the baby SUNDAY!

she wasnt intereted in me at all - i was simply a conduit for her grand child.

the very first thing she said when she came to the ward hours after DD was born, was " ooohhh nooo she looks like you" then lots of comments to DD " when you come to MY house I will give you DECENT food" and remarks about her lovely much cleaner house.

sadly air force - some of us are just cursed with immature - emotionally stunted sad cows basically who are totallly selfishly self obsessed and its no wonder thier own sons cant be bothered with them or cant deal with them and its no wonder they then dont go on to see or have a relationship with their GC as they would like too.

I totally agree with you re : looking after the mother too, sadly I lost mine and didnt have that support at all...i would have gladly let MIL have some of that role!!! But it was clear just how lilttle she thought of me, after that birth!

This time round - she doesnt even know I am pregnant - and if she does know after stalking us at the school gate - she wont know anything else about it, i have had to cut them off this time for my own sanity! She doesnt know or have a good enough relationship with her own son to ask him.

i think reality hits home - have a shit crap relantionship with your son - what do you expect when they marry or GC come along???

From my experience and my friends I think you have valid concerns - I do think it is a difficult relationship. My own relationship with my mil is not great BUT having said that I do my best to respect her, organise all birthday/Xmas gifts and encourage DH to contact her. However we are in no way close, have nothing in common and I share very little of myself with her. For geographical reasons we don't see a lot of her and I have to say that the effort and thought I have put in in the past has not been reciprocated and age makes her preference for her son in law very obvious. I would never ask her advice on anything DC related and a lot if my friends relationships with their MILs are the same - on fact I know several who would never consider spending Xmas with their in laws, or even taking it in turns because they just don't see the need. Personally I don't think that is fair but the balance does seem, rightly or wrongly to be weighted in the maternal families favour.

Oh and fwiw I don't think my mil and I would have gotten on if we had encountered each other outside of me marrying her son - complete personality clash and literally the only thing we share is the love for son/DC.

Luckily I find exactly the opposite in RL to steben. My mother sees much more of my SIL and brother and their DCs because of geography -they get on fine and have gone away for the weekend, just the two of them. I can't think of any of my friends who are unfair over Christmas-it is always taking turns.
In my experience women who have good relationships with their own extended family are quite happy just to extend it further. The secret to me seems to be to mix the families. My mother has been on holiday alone with my ILs. PIL from first marriage are friends with PIL from second marriage, my mother spends a lot of time with her DIL's mother. I think that if your DCs are brought up in this way they just take it as normal. There must be some very wet men around if they only see their ILs at Christmas. We have already had DSs girlfriend for several Christmases-she actually enjoys it!

airforce I had a baby last year . He was in nicu on a ventilator for a week, I had horrific spd and had just had my. 3 rd csection. I had to be on my feet 6 hours after the csection as they wouldn't let me take the hospital be into nicu to see ds. This I have experience of traumatic births, so please don't patronise me as if I have never experienced childbirth.

I am not talking about the birth or immediate aftermath. The gc life will obviously encompass slightly more than this. And funnily enough I would like to maintain relationships with my own sons too - not just the DIL and gc. I am postulating that some DIL can be divisive in this respect and I am heartened to read that lots are not. You are also extrapolating a lot of rubbish from my posts - pitying my future DIL and suggesting I am tit for tat. I have said that I will try my utmost to bra good mil. But I do have experience of being a DIL and a mother - so please stop patronising me.

Sorry for typos. On iPhone. Hospital bed and thus obviously.

And yes, it is barmy. I suspect it is a reaction to the premium put on having daughters in the media, on here and in rl and also the palpable disappointment hat people showed when 3rd dc was another boy.

I have 3 MILs

My father in law married 3 times. My OH is from 1st marriage and always lived with his father and what/who ever was the latest wife plus there was a "partner" of some years also, who turns up occasionally.

As a result my OH loves all these women and refers to them all as his "Mum". They all are at every family event because they are all mothers of some half brother/sister. It left me baffled and confused. I didnt know who to form a relationship with. In the end I am very close to "mother" no 2 because we have a similiar personality. I am polite with No1, but cant fathom her on top of which she is Gay so I am not sure what her partner is to me in the set up and my OH calls her his step-mum! No 3, I am wary of as I think she clearly thinks I might run off with my FIL, who yes is quite lecherous!!!

Sometimes I am heartily sick of them all because they all want to bend my ear of how awful my FIL was in the 60s, whilst OH and FIL are convinced thats its all one big lovey dovey set up.

I would dearly love to just have one MIL that I can go to lunch & shopping with like my sister's lovely MIL.

Fwiw very few posts are proving that iabu to dread mil-dom.

Sudaname-don't even get me on what I would be like come the day we don't have my mil. I just hope enough of her patience and wisdom will have rubbed off to enable me to cope. I had a weird thought the other day- this is how normal people feel about their mothers. I have never felt that about mine .

I got on quite well with my MIL pre kids, but then she did get my back up once I had had children by giving unwanted advice and being quite insulting about it. If she had followed the advice that sudaname's highly thought of MIL gave, it would have been much better ie. "She says when asked that her secret is never ever to interfere, to only offer advice or help if and when she's asked for it."

My mil is sooo lovely and kind, her taste isn't my taste when it comes to presents or ways of doing things but I always remember that she does everything from the best of intentions.

Sometimes its best to bite your lip and keep quiet, I'm sure I am annoying in multiple ways but she would be too nice to say so!

Molehill me too - l never got on with my own mother and my m-i-l is more like my mum really.

Oh and did l mention she is mad as a box of frogs. She once bought one of my s-i-ls a sexy santa outfit for a Christmas stocking filler for a joke and then asked her 'how she got on ?' I was sat next to my DS-i-l and she sprayed tea all over me when she asked her .

Then there was the time we were sat on her bed late one Saturday night waiting for the doctor as she had taken ill with stomach pains and had 'forgotten' she had recently been diagnosed with gallstones. She had for some reason phoned Childline for advice instead of NHS direct (the wrong number off the TV must have stuck in her head) and 'even they didnt know she had them' so it couldnt be that (it was).

Then there was the time the whole family went out to an Indian restaurant (including DCs) and the waiter brought out a very large most phallic shaped Naan bread you have ever seen and put it on the table right between me and DM-i-l sat opposite. Well we took one look at each other and that was it, absolutely crying with laughter and obviously we couldnt say why because of the DCs who kept asking what was wrong. The more we tried not to laugh, the more hysterical we became, right through the whole meal
Have never been so relieved to see plates cleared away in my life, could hardly breathe.

partridge it really is fairly simple if you treat the baby like a doll try and undermine the parents or go for oneup manship or act like a cunt you will have serious problems.

if you dont then its fairly likly you wont have problems

sudaname you sound lovely and your mil sounds amazing. Pissing myself about childline.

Get well soon partridge. Try and relax and enjoy your new baby instead of thinking about being a mil

It is all down to personalities and the individual-it is like wanting a girl so they can be best friend-the girl may not want to be your best friend! Don't get huge expectations and you won't be disappointed.
Your DCs may emigrate, not have DCs, be gay, any number of possibilities-therefore not worth worrying about. Enjoy them at the time and leave the future to take care of itself.

Just try not to be a pain in the arse and you'll be fine. My MIL is difficult, but I will always be polite and kind. However my DH prefers to spend time with my DParents although he looks after his own. That is the reason we see more of them. They moan less, and are helpful and fun. That's my advice, make sure your sons enjoy being around you.

My dmil has her mad moments too. She recently told me that early on in dh and my relationship she used to find the containers from my daily disposable contact lenses and thought they were condom packets . Two a day, every day! That's the thing-if my dm had said that to me I'd die inside but she can get away with it, along with her not so great cooking and taste in furniture and jam my mother wouldn't give house/fridge room for. Feel sorry for my mother making all the effort in just all the wrong ways. And sad that it's taken me fifteen years to truly learn what makes a home one that you just want to go home to. I digress. Give everyone oodles of love and space to grow, allow them to leave and form relationships their way and you'll be a great mil. Feel like starting a sister thread in the style of Rudyard Kipling's "If"z

thing is OP, nobody is gonna start a thread saying "AIBU to think that things are ticking along fine with the MIL, she's annoying at times but generally nice and we get on fine"

If you look there's probably as many threads about toxic parents as there are about annoying MILs, so I'ld say the answer to:
"Do these (often harsh) rules extend to their own mothers?" = probably yes

As a mum of boys I do not think there is anything UR about restricting the amt of access a MIL has if they cause more grief than life-enhancement.. but I think that applies to everyone! I don't think being family is a licence to be a shit! I don't care if its my family or DH's family or even DH himself.

I don't expect acess to GCs just because I'm family, I hope I will continue to be an asset to my son's lives and work at building relationships with their future partners and kids. I don't think it should be an automatic right

Is Mumsnet prejuidiced against MILs?
How old fashioned!

OP I wonder if you know what it's like in the first couple of months after a baby? Unless you know how to cook and clean silently, producing huge dinners on whatever you can find in the shop around the corner, you'll find there's just no no time to even think about things like this.

Relax! The autumn leaves are beautiful. Your future DIL are children. Pray for them :)