Bit of a long one, bear with me. This is mainly about attitude towards money that my in-laws have, and how I'm struggling to deal with it.
Husband comes from a family of six kids (incl. him). We're in Melbourne, Australia. Xmas is spent with my in-laws clan. I don't have much of a family in town, so the past 14 years of our relationship, even before having a kid and being married, it's usually a family event spent at his parents' house.
Xmas almost always involves a mountain of presents. I hate it. A lot of it is wasteful, people just love buying crap and giving it to one another. My mum-in-law and a few of the siblings tend to be quite extravagant about this.
It's starting to create tension now that little ones are in the mix. On one hand, I want to teach my kid restraint. I don't want him to grow up spoiled with mountains of presents. The 3 kids are very close in age (15 months, 2 year old, and 3.5 year old). Ours is right in the middle. While it's very special to have this xmas with his cousins, I can't change how my in-laws behave without causing some kind of crazy fight. Husband and some of the siblings have started a campaign of 'buy less gifts, pool money together and buy bigger more meaningful presents'. So that's ok, I guess, but I still find the whole thing such an ordeal. We also have to go away over the holiday period, because everyone wants to be together, and it's hard to find a house big enough to fit 14 adults (including partners of some of the siblings, etc), its a 4 hour drive away from Melbourne, I'm anxious and nervous about the suffocating feeling I get from being with everyone ovr several days. I have Post Natal Depression and these kinds of situations where I end up feeling like my personal space is being 'invaded', can trigger some really bad attacks.
At the moment the plan is just to grin and bear it...
On a slightly separate issue, one of my sister in laws (the one with the 3.5 year old girl), is a single mum on a pretty low income. I love her dearly and she's been taking our son every Monday, saving us money on childcare/nursery, and my son get to be with family that loves him. She won't take money for all this work, and part of what we're doing in return for her is to keep up with these crazy Xmas traditions, as that means a lot to her.
She also wants to start a 'trust fund' for her daughter, that she can access when she's 15 or 18 years old. I want to contribute but I don't know what level would be appropriate. Myself and husband both get to work a lot more thanks to her help with our son. So we're grateful. But As mentioned above, half the in-laws clan really has a problem with self-restraint. Husband and I work hard and we've denied ourselves a bunch of stuff over the years, hardly ever indulging in anything. Whereas my sister in law used to really over-indulge, especially where parties and alcohol was concerned, right up until she was pregnant with her daughter.
Also, she's really smart, and capable, and amazing, but somehow never ending up with a degree or a decent-paying job, somehow just drifting along in life until she accidentally got pregnant and decided to keep the baby. She's finally trying to get her life back on track, planning to study to become a primary school teacher next year, and we're all so happy for her.
Can you wise mums tell me how I can reconcile my feelings about the matter? What's a reasonable way of helping my sister in law, while still feeling like we have not somewhat be responsible too much for her lack of financial discipline? I really want to contribute financially towards her daughter's trust fund and have a better attitude in myself towards the whole in-laws clan as a whole, but I don't know how. My feelings of love and gratitude keeps mingling with resentment. Thoughts?