Mothers of young sons

[saraclara]

How do you feel when you read the in-law posts on here? How positive do you feel about the role you'll have when your son and DIL have babies?

I didn't give it any thought before I joined MN, but now I'm so relieved that I have daughters.

My own MIL has no time for us as she is so focused on her DD and their family
This is will be my main priority to avoid between DS and DD. I will love all my DGC, support them, spoil them equally.
I just hope I'm alive.

I am a single mother. My mother was a single mother. I often forget that it’s statistically likely my children will have long-term cohabiting partners, because that’s not my immediate assumption about families.

Secretly I would prefer my son to be straight and my daughter to be lesbian, because I think female partners are usually nicer. I’d love to have grandchildren. I can’t imagine feeling in competition for importance when they’re grown up though, whether that’s in relation to grandchildren or DILs or whatever. I will still be working full time in a demanding job at that point in time, which I suspect acts as a protective factor in avoiding MIL drama - I think some of the MN horror MIL stories do require the parties involved to have more spare time and emotional energy than I can relate to, for sure.

I had a fantastic MIL. I hope to do/be the same. The older I get the more I value the support if family.

Well my brother is married with a DC and 1 on the way and we all love his wife. She is part of our family. My brother rings my parents nearly every night, he even phones me sometimes. When my parents stay with my brother my mum gets up with their dc so they get a lie in. They will babysit whenever asked. They love all their grandchildren equally. I dont see how it has to be any different for me in 20/25 years when my two boys are grown.

My former MIL is utterly lovely (my ex on the other hand...)

So not really worried - so long as I'm a civilised human being towards DS's future partner, and he picks a decent partner, which he probably will 'cos he's a pretty shrewd judge of character (if he is so minded), then it'll all be fine.

I have two adult DDs and a DS. All are married/in settled relationships and I am equally close to them all. My DIL is as close to me as my daughters.

@purpleolive has it 👏
Poor me and my beautiful sons wonderful MIL and no daughters ( my DD was born sleeping).
Good for you OP but I am totally blessed if they leave me one day and marry good for them. I gave them life to live unlike my DD.

To be honest i think there's enough to worry about (certainly for me) to not focus or think on imaginary situations which may never happen.

I dont think there's that many posts given the amount of people on mumsnet and the amount in the world at all. You're not likely to see many good posts on family/friend relations on aibu because it's aibu, more focused on the toxic and piss takers.

If when my babies grow up we have issues hopefully I'll have encouraged and taught them to voice them and we can work on resolving. Or not have issues at all.

No I’m not worried at all.

My MIL is so manipulative that I am determined not to let history repeat itself. I've seen how her behaviour pushes my DH away & I dont want that for myself.

I’m a normal dil I hope with a normal mil

Me and my husband met when we were 16. It was quite difficult to breach the barrier from being a child to an adult in the relationship.
Mil didn’t like me at first as I don’t drink alcohol and she felt I was stopping her son from going out drinking (I never did it’s always his choice to go anywhere he wants) but we just aren’t big drinkers.

We overcame that blip but we don’t have the same interests or outlooks in life. That doesn’t mean we hold negative feelings about each other it just means we aren’t overly involved in each other’s lives. If a shared interest comes up we usually invite the other person; cinema to see a movie or drinks in a bar etc

Mil also looks after dd twice a week after nursery and has done since she was 6 months old. She offered to reduce her hours, we said she didn’t have to as we could afford childcare but she was happy to do so, so that’s fine. Dd enjoys her time there.

I make an effort to invite mil to things like dance recitals and family holidays. We alternate christmases between my mum and mil as well.

There was a point just after giving birth, I was recovering from sepsis so I stopped being as driven to facilitate contact (if my husband and mil sorted stuff between them then we would go but I stopped being the driving force) . I found that without me arranging visits or offering things to do then we went a good 6 weeks without seeing mil. I think mils sometimes blame the dil when actually it should be the son that sets up contact and visits

Totally agree Sammy!

I am sure I have been talked about as restricting contact to wider members of my in-law families but in the past it was always me that made sure we visited every other month! It's an 8 hour round trip.

Now I have stepped back we haven't been for 4 years. 🤨 He isn't interested in arranging things so why am I?

I'm learning everything from the MIL's on here.

I will wear a white dress to the wedding, and sob loudly about the woman stealing my baby. I will demand to be at the birth, and turn up when she is in labour. I will tell them the name of the baby (obviously named after me) I will tell her she is feeding the baby wrong (which ever way she feeds) I will tell her my precious boys slept through the night from birth so it must be her fault, and if she'd let me have the baby overnight I'd soon have them sleeping. Ditto eating food, no fussy eaters, toilet training, learning to crawl/walk/talk/read etc etc.

In reality my oldest is gay and doesn't want children. (And also says I'm far too embarrassing and he's never introducing me to anyone he goes out with) My second is disabled and not likely to live independently. And my others are still teenagers so I'm not worried about it yet.

My own MIL wasn't too bad, my mum got on well with my grandparents, so I'm hoping it'll be fine, and I'm quite laid back so hopefully it will be ok.

I started a thread in Chat about how my parents didn't seem very interested in my kids. The amount of Grandparents who bit my head off to say why should they be?! So I just hope that when my kids are grown, men or women, I am still interested in them and their families. Just like my MIL is with her son, my dh.

I love my MIL. There was a few teething issues when I had my pfb nearly 11 years later but all is great since.
She is very kind. The DC adore her.
DP loves my DM too.
I know not official inlaws in the eyes of the law.

My MIL has only sons, and she lucked out with me as an awesome DIL. She drives me soft sometimes but DH is close to her and speaks to her throughout the week, we see her at least once a week etc so karmatically I deserve three lovely DIL's and lots of nice grandkids

Never crossed my mind to be worried about it. While I know the established view on mumsnet is that daughters-in-law are overreacting and will get their comeuppance, the stories I've read seem generally like reasonable responses to poor behaviour. I don't really identify myself with that so don't feel I'd have that problem.

I am also sure there's a silent majority who have fine relationships with their in-laws (like I do!), but that's hardly worth creating a post about

I am training my DS to be proficient at all the things his father isn’t. MIL discouraged life skills in an attempt to keep her boys at home. It worked with one of them who moved back home with mum ( with his family).
DS can feed himself, occasionally attempts a bit of ironing ( although we need to work on this skill). He managed to set up his new games console this evening in a calm and stress free manner. We are working on managing his own bank account and is fully trained in digital gadgets.
He can organise his own social life and order cinema tickets online. All life skills his father has yet to master.
Hopefully all this early training will be appreciated by future DILs. I certainly won’t be controlling his life once he’s financially independent. It’s likely I’m going to be too old to be of use as a grandparent.

I'm lucky my MIL is lovely but I'm not too bad myself so we get on well. I hope if my DS chooses to take a DW/DH we get on just as well as i do with mine.

I will be relaxed and not poke my nose in, but if she hurts him I will be laying a new patio 😂😂

I can't believe one or 2 people are seriously getting all offended by the OP original post 😂😂😂 I'm "relieved" I had a boy, it doesn't mean I feel smug, just happy for myself that my preference of a boy came to reality. I wouldn't be saying anything bad about mothers with daughters, or daughters in general, just glad I didn't have ones as it wasn't my preference.

I've never heard of mums giving more time to daughters than sons, it definitely never happened in our immediate or extended family, sounds terrible.

Come to think of it my DM still hangs out with her ex-MIL on a fairly regular basis despite her having been divorced from my NSDF for over 30 years and me not having seen him in 20. So maybe that adds to the not being bothered about it vibe.

Purpleolive it’s so sad. I feel very sorry for my dh as I know it has hurt him terribly particularly how she is towards our sons. I just can’t understand why any mother would value her relationship with her daughters and grand daughters etc more than her sons and grandsons. My MIL reaction to ds3 was pure disappointment when she found out he was a boy. She made it clear she wanted a girl and I think it was because she wanted another little girl to mould into a mini-me, try control, drag around shops and have at her house all the time. She just hadn’t realised me and dh had already had the discussion before we found out our baby was another boy that under no circumstances was any daughter of ours going into her home or spending much time with her. The reason for that was our sons are not welcome at her house and she has made it clear they are not as important to her as the girls so we would never allow a daughter to go either. We can’t and won’t treat our children differently.

I am the same as you I try to show an interest in my boys hobbies. I take them to things, sit with them, read to them etc. I want to have a good relationship with them based on a solid and loving foundation.

Yes I 100% agree...all these women slagging off their mil when there is a 50% chance they have sons ...the mind boggles!! I always ensured that my mil felt as important as my own lovely mum where the grandchildren were involved!!

I have 4 boys. My eldest already has children. I was there when both of them were born

I'm not worried even after being on here for 8 years and resding all the mil hating posts

It doesn’t concern me. My husband/brother/dad were/are very close to their mothers, and have better bonds than the women in the family and their mothers.

I’m not worried because I’ve never actually come across any women IRL who are as mad and selfish as the people on here.