Stuck between my son and daughter in law.

[JingleJingleBelly]

I have had a festive name change, because I am totally ashamed of my son.

My daughter in law is pregnant (they're not married, but I see her as a daughter and very much part of the family) and I could throttle my son for putting me in this position.

So far he is not stepping up to be the man I hoped I had raised, resulting in daughter in law asking him to leave. So he has shown up at our house as he has nowhere else to go.

He has always been quite the drinker. But with him going to be a father, we had all hoped he would pull round. This is not the case so far so my daughter in law has kicked him out until he can prove he'll prioritise their family.

I totally understand her reasoning. He has been drinking on less nights of the week.

However, I am utterly appalled. Last month he brought an ex of his round to our house (myself and my husband were in bed). I heard voices in the morning and saw her leave.

I had words with my son and he really apologised. He said he'd had too much to drink, which I don't think is an excuse. But I didn't know if I should tell my daughter in law.

Anyway, I didn't tell her as I haven't seen her. However last week it has happened again with a different girl.

He claims things are over with daughter in law, but I did ring her to see how she was getting on and she maintained they are together but he isn't welcome in her home until he proves himself.

She has no idea what he is doing. I feel stuck between them. I ask myself if I should be getting involved - I'm 60, my son 30. But I feel as though he is disrespecting both myself and my daughter in law.

The impact this could have on them being a family is huge. Should I tell her or should I stay out of it?

And how can I stop him bringing ex girlfriends back?

So to go to the vote, am I being unreasonable to keep it quiet if I can prevent it happening again, for the sake of their family?

I think back to my mother who was a strong fair woman straightforward with everybody.

I believe I would tell your daughter in law the situation, how can she deal with this not knowing the facts? It is unfair to leave her in the dark, mistakenly believing in a positive outcome.
Your son is immature and selfish (sorry), he needs to get his drinking under control, before he can make any progress.
He can go to his GP, AA, counselling etc.

As for him bringing random women home overnight, if this rally disturbs you, tell him no. Your home, your rules, like it or not.
If he doesn't like it, he moves out.
TBH, allowing you DIL to go on thinking their relationship can be sorted is so unfair to her IMO.
Please be truthful with her, and then at least the rest of the family can have an honest relationship with her. Best wishes

Just read your comment about not telling your DIL because you want further contact with your GC's. If that were me and I found out you chose not to tell me simply because you wanted to maintain contact, I would mistrust so much, you would lose contact. Lies beget Lies

• he's been brought up well, never been short of anything he needs and often given what he wanted. He is hopeless with money, has no savings**

You don't see the link there?

Yeah, if you were my MIL and had told me I would keep a relationship with you. However you've enabled this behaviour, kept his dirty secrets and effectively closed ranks. Your daughter did the decent thing, your actions were selfish im worried she won't let me see the baby
Well congratulations. You've set that up beautifully.

Your DD has done the right thing, leaving this to go on any longer would have only made things worse. It sounds like your son is not going to step up so stop enabling him. I understand you can’t kick him out but tell him no guests allowed. Does he pay rent? Up his rent and contribute to DIL and the baby.

Your son is a spoilt, irresponsible brat and it’s fascinating that you are blaming your “bloody” daughter, who is now the one at fault for this “mess” for telling her sister in law that her brother is a cheating, lying, irresponsible loser.

Sounds like in your family your son can do no wrong. You enable him OP, if you actually want him to have the chance to turn into a half way decent person then toss him out and stop funding him.

Or carry on as you are, blaming everyone else except him.

I don’t think you really deserve the kicking you’ve begun to get here.

Being scared that your DIL will not allow contact with your grandchild was, of course, going to be a factor in how you handled this. I think most people would want to reduce the risk of never being allowed to see their grandchild or form a relationship with them. That doesn’t make you a terrible person.

As for the comment about your daughter, nobody here can say whether your assessment of her as “selfish” and “loving the drama” is accurate. You know her best. Your DIL does deserve to know the truth and, given that your feckless son obviously had no intention of doing the right thing, ideally it would have come from you. Whilst the end result is basically the same, of course your daughter’s motives are relevant to your comments about her. If she’s been practically salivating over all the drama and couldn’t wait to insert herself into the middle of it, without a second’s thought for the fallout, then yes - she is selfish and loves the drama. The fact that she almost inadvertently did the right thing for DIL in her quest to be part of the drama doesn’t mean she isn’t selfish. If however she has been waiting for her brother to do the right thing, and then for you to step up, and finally just decided “this poor woman just needs to know the truth from someone” then YABVU to label her as selfish.

If I were you I think I would make the baby, and by extension DIL, my priority. Give her time to cool off if that’s what she needs but make sure she knows you are there for her. Keep checking in. Offer financial assistance if you are able. I’d be reading the riot act to my son, along the lines of “you have one month to pull your head out of your arse, take meaningful steps to rebuild some kind of relationship (whether romantic or as platonic coparents) with DIL, make some financial commitments to DIL and to me (i.e. pay for your baby, and pay me some fucking rent and cover your bills you man-child) and action these commitments by setting up direct debits. No women in my house. No drinking in my house. The very first time that you break one of these rules, you are out with immediate effect.” He needs to feel the weight of responsibility and your DIL needs to see you take some action.

As I said previously Your post made me think of my mother, a very strong lady.
She would never have enabled an alcoholic, or at least a son with a very strong relationship with alcohol, who deserted his wife and preferred one night stands, to helping the mother of his child.
So your daughter told your DIL, Well done.
You can't expect any loyalty or affection from your DIL now, however much you want to remain in contact with her child your GC.

Going forward, please consider going to your gp for guidance in addressing the situation with your son.
Also please consider counciling Or AA meetings to help you dealing with your immature son.
Best wishes to you

if your DiL were posting on MN asking for advice we would be telling her to stay away from her MIL who is supporting her son to continue drinking and sleep around and to concentrate on bringing her baby up in a more healthy environment.

This is good advice.

1. Tell your son to move out. Tell him the reasons
2. Or tell him he can stay if he pays you rent, pulls his weight round the house, goes to AA and doesn't bring anyone round to your house.
3. Go to Al-Anon yourself
4. Keep in touch with your son's partner and offer her what help you can both for her and her child.

Also go see your DIL.
Tell her what you have done about your son. That you are sorry for his behaviour. That she can call on you if she needs anything and if you can give her money for the pram and offer to go and get it.

"And as for the baby, I don't know what to think for the best."

There's nothing for you to think.

Baby's mother will decide what she thinks is best.

You're enabling your son.

He brings other women back because he can.

He drinks too much because he can.

He treats his parents and DP (pregnant with baby) with contempt because he can.

The only person challenging him and dishing out consequences for his crappy behaviour is his pregnant DP and DSister!

By kicking him out she's told him loud and clear that he needs to sort himself out before the baby comes.

You are undermining her efforts by allowing him to live with you and use your house as his own personal knocking shop.

You have basically been colluding with him against her by allowing this to happen behind her back.

Your DD has exposed the truth by telling pregnant DP what's going on. Good for her. It's got nothing to do with liking 'drama'.Someone had to!

You don't turn a blind eyes to this kind of behaviour OP.

There's a fairly easy answer, take his key off him.

He can stay with you and be safe, but not come in and out whenever he wants bringing randoms home.

From now on your priority is DiL. You give her the money he isn't giving. Charge him rent for living with you. It's time he shaped up.

Your son wouldn't pay £125 for a pram for his child but instead went to the pub and then brought an ex home to your house.
And you JingleJingleBelly are saying his sister is the problem.
Really ?

Kick him out yourself.

The absolute prick. I’m not blaming you but how did this happen?

I don’t underestimate toxic masculinity and how deeply it embeds in our boys. I don’t tell my boy to be nice and kind and take his nice/kind actions as an indicator of his future behaviour as a man. I spend a lot of time coming down on gender based comments and behaviours and we sit and discuss human/women’s rights and how behaviour is subtly influenced by your environment etc and even at the age of 6 my DS seems to be understanding and recognising little things and subtle behaviours without prompting from me. I’m hoping that educating him properly about these things will avoid him ‘othering’ people and especially women in his adult life.

But I don’t know if this will work and OP’s son is doing this useless, lazy, abusive shit to the mother of his child. So I want to know, what has gone wrong here???

so sad - I think she should know however you are running the risk of your son wanting nothing more to do with you for getting involved. I think I would give him the opportunity to tell her first as you are meeting up with her shortly & will be letting her know what's going on.

You really are in a horrible position

OP this sounds really hard, but I think you should give him a hard deadline by which time he has to be gone from your house. He's being a disrespectful little shit, and if you enable him he is not going to improve. Probably the best thing you can do for your DIL and your grandchild is boot him up the arse, and frankly I think the baby's right to expect a decent father has to be the priority here.

As to bringing people back to your house, you can say no to that - it is your house after all. It is up to him if he wants to sleep around, but you have a right to say who is and is not allowed in your home.

I wouldn't kick him out and leave him with nowhere to go, but I would tell your DIL. She deserves to know, and if you want any kind of relationship with your grandchild, she needs to know that she can trust you.

Of course, she will be upset and angry, but I'm sure that you can convey that you're telling her for the right reasons.

She is the mother of your grandchild. Pleased don't lie to her to protect your son. It doesn't sound like the relationship between them is strong enough to last in any case.

Honestly I wonder how many people bother to read updates?

SeaEagleFeather
Obviously not AlexaShutUp.

Can't believe some of the mean and nasty comments on here. Very sorry OP some people's nasty comments here are just horrible.

He is a fully grown man, making his own crap choices. I wonder how people will feel here when their kids grow up and they realize no matter how well you try and bring them up things do not always go to plan!

@italiangreyhound

Very true, but op seems to be enabling her son, rather than dealing with the situation as it as!

Very tough situation this close to Christmas etc. Which parents here can guarantee their adult children are being faithful to their partners?

Or that they wooudl turn them out a week before Christmas.

This son is not winning any wards. It's shit behaviour.

But would the father of the son be getting such a hard time for taking him in, or do we just blame mums when their adult children screw up?

Dont be an arse op your dd done the right thing. Your just as bad as your idiot son and if you were my mil I wouldn't have anything to do with you after this for protecting such a waste of space. Harsh but true

I cannot believe she actually didn't bday anything and blaming daughter for telling her! He could have some disease from the girls and if they would get back together as a family she would have get it too and the baby as well! I have two sons and I would never ever let them get away whit behaviour like this! As I been through worse during my pregnancies and I can tell you no women should be treated like this and you knew it all and keeping her mouth shut it's disgusting. You couldn't put yourself in to her shoes? How would you feel if this would have happened to you?
Protecting the baby and the mother is in the first place as your son is not a baby anymore and no need hand holds! And please, you had plenty advice here what to do and still didn't do shit. This kind of stuff pissing me off extremely as your behaviour is what women do many times excusing their husband, children behaviour because doesn't wanna face the reality and try to keep "peace" at all cost. That's why you are not back here anymore. You know deep down all these people here on Mumsnet are right and you just cannot face it.
Maybe you should grow some balls and face the reality that your son is a asshole.
I might sound harsh but I cannot believe that you haven't told her and therefore the baby and mother were at risk from your own son. This is so similar to one of the threads I read here when mother didn't believe to the daughter in law that the son was abusing her and she choose to believe her son even tho there were many red flags there. She completely cut them out and now she knows the truth and cannot see the grandchild. Grow some balls and kick his ass. If you care about your son I would slap him hard and put him to his place.
Being a mother doesn't mean only to look after the children and love them and be there for them, it means to be there when they fuck up and frankly kick their ass and not let them treat their daughter in law and grandchild so disrespectfully! I'm out.