...to wonder if we’re the first generation to stand up to MILs?

[BlairBass]

Just an idle thought as I’ve seen on quite a few threads others who have decided that low-contact or no-contact were called for with MIL (and for totally valid reasons!)
But do you think we’re the first generation to have the strength of mind or defiance of social norms to do this?
It seems to me that historically If you got a dodgy mother in law you just had to put up with her... it would have been so far outside of society/family values to simply refuse to see her.
I think it’s wonderful and the way of the future - but I wonder why so many MILs are so determined to be intrusive, judgemental, rude, etc. Would they do this if it was a very real option that they’d lose contact with their son’s wife and children? Hmmmm...
also, I am sure there are many ghastly daughter in laws too, I just don’t hear so many stories 😉

Nc is too easy. People do it more of a punishment for doing something they deem outrageous. It's splitting up a 2 parents from a child. Gp from gc. Perhaps other people rolled their eyes and got on with their life.

Hassled that's really unfair. I follow most Mil posts on here and I have never ever seen a poster write that. I have seen a few posts where mils crimes are petty but mostly I read women like me, non of us perfect who have unwittingly walked into a Mil spider web of control and jealousy and bitterness. This manifests itself in odd behaviour, rude comments, boundary over stepping, ridicule.. And more.
We are suddenly in twilight world where nothing is at it seems. How many truly lovely people out there? I know mils friends are.... How many horrid people out there, how many mums of sons become over whelmed with jealously when their sons marry?!

No it's not a new thing, my gran went lc then Nc with her mil with granda's support - she'd be late 90's if she were still alive, by what I've heard granda's mother was a nightmare! Had no friends and her children those that stayed in any contact barely bothered with her, she'd fallen out with several of her siblings too.

My mum (late 60's) barely saw my gran (her mil) but they resolved things when my gran got older. Blame on both sides I thought.

I'm 45 and very lc with my parents Nc with sister.

I think it's just discussed more openly now where back in the day excuses would be made - "too busy" "hard to match up schedules" "they live so far away we don't see them much".

"You'd know if someone's mother was as mad a sack of wet weasels well before getting involved with them."

Also true to a degree but maybe applies more to more rural and less mobile communities than eh large industrialised cities.

DH's mum died of breast cancer when he was 18. I've always felt really sad I don't have the experience of a mother in law. I think she'd have loved our girls and it's broken DHs heart that she's not here on a fair few occasions.

He did have a step monster mother who was frankly the vilest woman imaginable, and as a result we had very little contact with his father until she passed away. She was never my stepMIL, she was the woman that my FIL chose to marry.....

Married, in law issues can actually split up man and wife, mother and father. Is it more important for the immediate family unit to remain intact or for the parents to split solely due to in law issues?

In Italy legislation was brought in to protect daughter in laws from their mother in laws!!

madupfam Are you sure you are on the right thread?

I think hassled is right. Of course there are some unpleasant people out there who are MILs. There are some unpleasant people who are DILs, too. I do think that society treats older women in quite a shitty way, and I certainly know women my mum's age who are bitter because they are aware they've somehow missed out. But then again, there's also a huge culture of vilifying MILs, and it is misogynistic, basically. People on here often mention, briefly, horrible attitudes or actions from FILs, but we just don't dwell on it. It's not such a cultural power struggle.

Nope. My dad's DM was unbelievably racist and I didn't know until after she died because my mother told her that if she ever spoke that way in front of us, she'd never see her grandchildren again.

My aunt told us some crazy stories at her wake and I swear, if my DF hadn't corroborated, I would have thought she was talking about a different woman.

I think there might be something in the fact that marriages/LTRs are moving towards more of a state of equality, and so an unhealthy dynamic between DIL/MIL is now expected to involved the husband/son.

Woman have always stood up to their mother in laws. I like to read history books about the monarchy and it’s a long running theme amongst the aristocracy!

BUT, I do think there was also a kind of feeling that the man involved was above it all. Woman do the social labour of maintaining family ties - where the wife falls out with the MIL that often meant many of the niceties of social contact fell away (Christmas cards, regular letters / calls) however the son/husband would be welcomed by both. And probably both would be saying that the other ‘evil woman’ wanted to tear him away! Sometimes the son would welcome the chance to distance his mother but it would still be characterised as a very female dispute.

I think we are perhaps moving to a time where, in the phrase beloved of mumsnet, there’s is no such thing as a MIL problem, only a husband problem. Women can stand up to their husbands in a more meaningful way now - it is not legal for husbands to beat or rape their wives anymore. It’s only fairly recently (although more than one generation!) that this change has come about.

I don’t know if what I’m trying to say makes sense... I’m hopeful that actually what we are starting to see is the total dismantling of the evil MIL story, as men are forced to mediate these social/family relationships themselves.

There is an odd lack of MILs in my family. My husband's mother died when he was a teenager, so I never had a MIL.

My mother never had one either. My father's mother died when he was 4 from a ruptured tubal pregnancy.

Neither of my grandmothers had one either. They had died in childbirth years earlier.

In looking at my family tree, a lot of women died young from childbirth. I think that MILs may have been fairly thin on the ground for much of history.

May be the surviving MILs are part of the reason so many people left the British Isles and settled other places. May be that's how we ended up with so many people in the US, Canada, Australia, and so on. Their MILs were that bad!

@mumonashoestring The first English came to North America in the late 1400s. The ability to say "sod this, I'm leaving" has been around for a very long time.

I find it interesting that, these days, it seems to be the MIL/DIL relationship that gets the attention.

When I was growing up, I remember the MIL/SonIL relationship was the one that was fraught, with the copious Les Dawson type MIL jokes. My uncle hated his MIL so much, my cousins learned to call her The Witch instead of Granny!

That’s the big change that I’ve noticed, don’t know if that’s the same for anyone else?

My MIL is hard work, she wants to be involved far more in our lives than I want her to be, but tbf she has a great relationship with our DDs and I've learned to tolerate her. She's actually not so difficult to cope with as my own DM, when I think about it. If I'm honest, I only really persevere with them because of my DDs' relationship with their GMs (they don't have GFs), and my DH's relationship with his DM.

I'm realistic enough to know that it won't get easier to deal with them. They're 77 and 78 years old and they're not going to change now.

@Tanith : hadn't considered it, but, upon reflection, think you're spot on. What a fascinating shift.

Er.. social mobility isn't moving to a different town, it's moving into a different class eg from working class to middle class by means of education and type of employment.

This reminds me of my DSD trying to teach me about dance music because obviously, it was invented in the early 2000s and before that we all just listened to the Bee Gees and Bucks Fizz

in the phrase beloved of mumsnet, there’s is no such thing as a MIL problem, only a husband problem.

Which excuses the poor behaviour that people have to suffer.

I've had 3 MILs! First one was OK (if a little weird) and I stayed in contact until she died a few years ago. Second one announced to a large family gathering (funeral) that my marriage was a waste of time as I couldn't give my ExH children and current one is an emotionally illiterate control freak - DH went NC three years ago for the sake of his mental health and our lives are better for it. My mum had an awful MIL - I only met her a few times but the lack of contact was her choice, not my DM's (she's nice to everyone).

Completely agree with Hassled.

OP, I just think you've read too many threads on Mumsnet. In my real life I don't know a single soul who is "NC" with their mother in law, or indeed whole branches of their family. Some might be more distant than others, but no one has taken the decision to cut relatives out of their lives. I think it's rarer than MN would have you believe.

My mum has almost no contact with her mil. I don't know why. They haven't fallen out, but she stopped visiting my paternal grandparents years ago.
It's not particularly noticeable because she doesn't live nearby.

I think in our case (we are NC with MIL) it has much more to do with changes in societal attitudes to abuse. We are NC with MIL because her partner is a convicted paedophile and she condones his behaviour and tried to facilitate his contact with our dd (who thankfully was not abused!). Even within the older generation of our family (well, my dh's family, not mine, they think she is insane), there is a bit of discomfort with us for not being more 'British' about all of it (an actual quote), sweeping it under the rug, and keeping up appearances by allowing them contact with our children. Obviously, in that generation, abuse was never something talked about and if you were a decent person you kept your mouth shut and didn't bring shame on the family by making a big deal about it and airing family secrets. No way in hell we're doing that, and I do think that's probably a generational thing, just because people talk more openly about abuse now and setting appropriate boundaries.

Is it time to bring back Bernard Manning? Thought the hating MILs was seriously sexist.

In some countries it seems to be expected that the mil will even bully the dill, when the custom is for the couple to move in with the man's family and the mil is the mistress of the house. I think European women get it easy really. There's a consensus that a person's spouse and children come before the family of origin, which I don't think is the same all over the world.

I think women now like to believe that they are strong and powerful. But it is still a very traditional kind of focus on power in the home to make up for relative lack of power in the wider social sphere. (Austerity is affecting women particularly badly, and the increasing casualisation of employment and decreased unionisation means that power in the work place is very shaky indeed.

So my perception is that women are clinging more fiercely than ever to the idea that they can have power in the home. They can bring up children according to their theories and will also devote considerable energy into getting their partners to fall into line.

Within this context it makes sense that mothers-in-law - who have their own ideas about childcare and how houses might be run - are the enemy. Taking on inequality and male power in the wider world is too big a project. Dissing your partner's mother seems a lot more manageable.

" I don't know a single soul who is "NC" with their mother in law, or indeed whole branches of their family. "

How would you know though?

argy - I think she means social, geographic and economic mobility when she says 'social mobility - geographic and economic'. They are interrelated when you're thinking of ways people might be distanced from their in-laws.