To think its daft to worry about being a MIL to sons wives but not to worry about being a MIL to daughters husbands? (Inspired by another thread - not a thread about a thread)

[Salmotrutta]

Why is it just future/present DIL who seem to cause the angst?

Why do most people on here worry about them but not present/future sons-in-law?

A son-in-law could be just as awful surely?

(Mine is lovely and is a great DH and dad)

Yes, the I don't see my in-laws as my family attitude has popped up more than once on MN.

Presumably it is absolutely fine if their DHs/DPs hold the same opinion and then everyone can just go and visit their own parents without involving their partners.

And then children will hardly ever see each parent visiting/doing anything for the other half of the family?

Disclaimer - I do understand that sometimes there are total breakdowns in inlaw relationships but I'm talking more about the "I can't stand my MIL because she gives my children sweets/criticises my dusting/sniffs at my cooking"

It seems to me from my own experience and that of friends, that when you get married the woman (unless she is very assertive) gets two extended families to manage while the man gets to dump the minimal responsibility he had for his (original) family. That's why the MIL and DIL thing gets fraught - more contact so more possibility for falling out, especially if you have clashing personalities or values.

My DH gets on very well with my DPs but they don't expect a lot from him. They wouldn't expect him to choose and buy them Christmas presents, for instance. My MIL expects quite a lot from me - I'm supposed to know where DH is all the time for instance. My DPs would never dream of calling DH first in order to ask me a question or make some sort of arrangement!

It hasn't really worked that way for me or our friends Phiney - I don't see why I would be "managing" two families.
We pull together to help each other's "sides" out and that's what I see happening with most of our friends.

Basically an equal division of labour.

A woman who is close to her mother will gravitate towards her mother, her relationship with her partner does not necessarily ime totally exclude include his family. Mothers of sons IME are pushed out in a large number of families.
I have 2 'DIL's and 1 'SIL' (they aren't married but I consider them family) I have tried very hard to avoid the pitfalls of being a MIL. particularly after reading threads on here

Eldest sons ex is mother of his 2 children. She didn't meet me before having eldest DGC but we welcomed her, tried to make her feel at home with us. They had only been together for a few weeks months before she decided she wanted DC. Cracks in the relationship started to appear very quickly.

My DS has 'issues' that have been there since late teens. If she had got to know him and his family she would have found this out. He has, and had when they met, no stable job, no permanent roof over his head, no money saved, is emotionally volatile. It became MY fault and I should deal with him and MAKE him deal with his problems...he is mid twenties she is thirties! We have given him support/info but ultimately he is an adult and has to seek 'help' himself.

She then chose to have a second child by him knowing he has problems. and it is STILL my fault he is the man he is
We have offered support, practical and emotional but we, me in particular, still get the blame. She refuses to accept any responsibility for her own situation.
She sees her mother daily we see them once every few months, only when the situation is good between them. or Xmas/birthdays

My other DCs partners have no problem with me, we have a good, open good natured relationship.

I know I am trying very hard to keep lines of communication open and avoid commenting or judging but being verbally abused because of her poor choices gets very wearing. She only rings/texts when DS and her are arguing.
We adore our DGC but we are definitely not viewed as important in their lives as their maternal side by 'DIL'. They are well cared for and she is a good mother to them, I have never and would never criticise her parenting. I would love see more of them though.

I often wonder how she will feel in twenty years time if this happens to her when DGC are grown up.

Oh Boaty that sounds very hard

Sounds like you are steering a difficult course there!

I have a permanent dent in my tongue from biting it!

It was me who said I don't see my inlaws as my family. Sorry, I don't. We all get on absolutely fine, I see them regularly, the DC love them and there have been none of the major fallouts (or even the smaller petty ones) I read on here. The same goes for DH with my family.

However - They are my DH's family and its up to him to organise seeing them, birthday gifts, Christmas visits etc. Its up to him to call them and send photos of the DC and keep them informed of any relevant developments. I cover all the same for my own family. Most women I know take over all that stuff for their partners and resent it, which seems odd, and quite martyrish to me. I can't think of a single couple where the guys takes over these things. I do think this could have something to do with the amount of tension between DIL and MIL.

I feel for you Boaty. There is no way that the things you read on here are always the MILs fault. We meet difficult people in all walks of life and I'm sure there are some nightmare MILs, just as there are brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, colleges etc. But feeling that there is a certain way to behave to a DIL just because you happen to have sons is utter madness.

As in Boaty's case, what if one of my DSs meets a difficult woman, or someone unsuitable.

I fully intend to live a full life outside of my DCs when they are grown but I will always want the best for them, male or female.

I was a great DIL

I am super close to my mum but I had my mil here more than my own mum. I knew how happy she was to have grandchildren so when they were born I let her spend two days with us.

I spent many Xmases round her house when I would rather not have done so she didn't feel pushed out. She had time alone with the grandchildren, I involved her with everything. I wanted to build a good relationship with her and sometimes to the detriment of my own comfort and own family. Even now she still gets invited to all the children's school plays/activities.

Didn't work out well for me. Boundaries got crossed, she began to think that she had rights to tell me how to raise the children as she was such a huge part of our lives. It all went tits up and we all fell out for a year and now only see her when she picks the kids up, although we text now and then since the death of my ex husband, father to three of my children.

Some of it was my fault for not setting boundaries, a lot of it was my husbands fault for not stepping up when it started going wrong and a lot of it was mil's fault for taking advantage of the situation and us.

She said some very hurtful stuff, stuff I won't go into here but things that cut to the core and I forgave her, tried to move on but it never worked out in the end. She didn't treat her step- grandchildren very fairly which caused huge problems and heartache for us all.

It made me sad because I really couldn't have been a better dil. A bit of a mug for sure, but I gave her nothing but love. My husband has pretty much lost his parents now.

So we thought we were doing all the right stuff to build a great relationship but it came back to kick us in the teeth.

Minnie I am slightly nonplussed why you consider stating the bleeding obvious, that the things people like and consume is shaped to some degree by their background as a pseudo intellectualism.

I was not stating one form of comedy was better or more worthy than than any other, merely that the makeup of their audiences are different in demographic terms. If you accept this, why do you think this is?

Quite why my previous post provoked such a rude po

Oops ppsted on the wrong thread! Sunday morning fatigue!

!

Yes, the I don't see my in-laws as my family attitude has popped up more than once on MN.

I have that in RL and I'm female - usually but not always directed by FIL.

I've refused to be pushed out of my DH and DC lives - and that has been finally accepted but every so often there is some comment that I ignore that lets me know that how they feel.

Having said that I now leave bdays, anniversary stuff up to DH and ignore everyone else expectations that it someone how on me to deal with. The result is better for me.

Though I do think the emphasizing on MIL and DIL relationships is incorrect - it's often not the issue though obviously sometime it is.

I also dont see in laws as family. And I dont care how excited a mil is about a baby, I am the one who has been through a vaginal car crash, not my DH. So no, I do not want a woman I have no real connection to as an induvidual to be putting pressure on me to host/hand over baby/make nice when I'm in such a state.

My MIL (Indian) never lived with her inlaws (they died before she got married) but in her head she had this fantasy where all her sons and their wives would live in the same house, where she is the head matriarch and the DILs would take over the cooking and cleaning and basically do as she says (a bit like an Indian drama serial if you have ever had the misfortune of seeing one). My DH told me (after we were married) that she was the number one woman in the house and that she had told him to tell me this.

I had no problem helping with chores as we were living with the ILs to save a deposit for a house but I did have a problem with the massive amount of interference she thought it was her right to have.

Also in some Indian families the DIL's family is considered to have less importance. Both my DH and me are born here and I have not been brought up to be submissive. My family are pretty feisty and we speak our mind but with my inlaws there was lots of underlying seething resentment as my inlaws played off their DC against one another.

My MIL has pulled some horrible shit over the years mainly because my FIL backed her up and her sons never challenged her. Me and the other DIL couldn't understand how another woman could behave so callously towards another. I think my MiL felt threatened by her DILs (she was no longer no.1) and the fact that her sons treated their wives better than my FIL had treated her (that is a credit to the way she raised them).

To cut a long story short my MIL lives by herself now that FIL has passed away. She has had to radically adjust her behaviour towards her DILs. She is still a bit possessive and controlling but I just stand my ground same as I did when FIL was around.

My relationship with her has improved enormously but I don't welcome her advice on how to raise children nor do I welcome the advice from my mum. It's just easier for me to tell my mum that I will do things my way than my MIL who would just go into a strop. Both my mum and my MIL get equal time with my dd and my DH acknowledges that I am fair with both sides of the family. My Mil loves my dd and all her GC and will do anything for her 'blood'. She has in the past tried to supplant the mother in her GC's affections (I witnessed it when I lived with her) and I did keep her a bit at arms length when dd was first born because I did not want to fight with her (my MIL visited me in hospital and at home same number of visits as my mum). My mum also encourages me to be fair and to just rise above some of the more petty things that have gone on with me and MIL. My MIL won't be around forever and I do believe in karma. Just because I have a dd doesn't mean that we are guaranteed to be close when she grows up.

I do prefer if my DH 'mans up' because it hurts my MIL less if my DH tells her things than if I do. If my DH has a problem with my mum I would prefer to tell my mum as she is more likely to accept what I am saying and is less hurtful and defensive than if she had been challenged directly by my DH.

WooWooOwl

woman are more manipulative than men?

why would you say that? it's not true.

I love my MIL. My DH's family are my family too now. I couldn't imagine not having them and actually in 'our' family, when couples split up, the person who is not biologically part of the family is still welcomed to family events.

I think I'm a good DIL. She's certainly a good MIL. We parented initially very differently (she FF, weaned early etc etc, I BF, cloth nappied, co-slept, attachment parented etc etc) but she couldn't have been more supportive and endorsed my methods whole-heartedly. My DM criticised me more, but I suppose she felt she had the relationship to do so?

My MIL treats DH and I the same. She will usually take my side in arguements (because of course I am usually in the right!!). But she's the person I moan to most about DH because she'll love him anyway.

She loves my DSs to bits. Maybe nearly as much as I do. But I don't resent that, it fills me with joy that they get loved by lots of people.

I don't have to worry about being a MIL to a SIL, unless either of the DSs have male partners, but I do worry about being a MIL to a DIL. I love babies to bits and I'm sure I'll want to be far too involved :(

The OP seems to assume that the root of DIL/MIL problems lies with the DIL:
Why is it just future/present DIL who seem to cause the angst? Why do most people on here worry about them but not present/future sons-in-law? A son-in-law could be just as awful surely?

Correct me if I have misunderstood this btw but, judging from the many threads on the topic, MILs are very often the cause of the difficulties and are not the poor victim at all.

I don't see dh's family as mine - but I wish I did. Mil was never very kind and also quite a cold and jealous person. Dh's brothers' wives cleave to their own families and I only ever see them once in a blue moon.

In another family I think I'd be a very good dil. Perhaps I shall offer myself in the small ads.

I think many women/people are just very controlling, whether they be the mil or dil. You see all these weird threads where women proudly state that their dh hasn't been out on his own for 8 years or who must get up and sit with them whilst they breast feed even if he has a 14-hour working day ahead of him, or that they are a stay at home mother and dh must put his own pants in the washing machine. Then history repeats itself and in time you can bet they will become the domineering mil.

TodayIsAGoodDay - that wasn't really my point.

I was wondering why we see lots of threads/posts from mothers of DSs worried about future DIL relationships - but hardly any worrying about future Son-in-law relationships.

So why don't mothers of daughters come on here and worry about what kind of son-in-law they end up with and how to be a good MIL to them?

That's what I mean.

Because problems with son in laws aren't generally relationship type of problems. Whether you like it or not, it's the dil who controls access to the grandchildren. It is she who decides how often to visit, or whether hospitality is extended.

Sil bring plenty of problems, sure: womanisers, wife-beaters, bores, lazy arses... the list is endless. But deciding division of Christmas visits - no, that wouldn't be on their list of crimes.

So you don't think an abusive or controlling son-in-law would be considered as a relationship problem lainie?

Because "your daughter's a daughter all your life; your son's a son 'til he takes a wife". Sad, but true, ime...

Salmotrutta It's because, in the thread you are referring to, the prospective MIL is specifically asking mumsnetters to advise her, based on their experiences of being a DIL and having a MIL.

Given that the majority of people on mumsnet are female, the equivalent situation of MIL/son in law would be more difficult to find.