MIL asking DD what is your mummy cooking for tea?

[Veeveeoxox]

MIL regularly face times DD she seems to always throw in a passive aggressive comment such as what is your Mummy cooking for tea? (I ordered a pizza )So she then passively aggressively comments that's unhealthy. Why does she never
ask "What is your daddy cooking for tea ?"
I'm a student nurse doing an integrated masters with two assignments due in I also work on the nursing bank , her dad works from home in a low stress role. The funny thing is I do like MIL just not the expectation that her son should be waited on and not expected to help.

If I ever have a son I will not be asking my GCs what their mother was cooking for tea.

AIBU?

When i was pregnant with DD1 we had a washing machine that didn't heat the water anymore so everything went on a cold wash. It was fine at the time but as I was expecting MIL said to DP "You must buy Fruit a washing machine".

Asking what mummy is cooking for tea wouldn't bother me. The shift from traditional roles is happening for more and more young women now, but for older women it was just their norm and nothing personal.

But she would get a rocket up her arse if she regularly commented on or told my dc the dinner they were being given by either parent was unhealthy.

@stingofthebutterfly

Why, oh why, do people always manage to find problems in absolutely nothing? So she asked what you were cooking, big deal. It's conversation. That's it. Just say I'm not cooking tonight, it's my husband's turn/takeaway/whatever. It's a non-issue.

ah but it is the patriarch at work and internalised misogny and the fact that she "has a vagina" 🙄- let's find this and add on some gaslighting , bullying , financially controlling but while we do so let's treat MILs as if they have "lost their marbles " 🙄🙄

@diddl

I don't think it's generational.

My Dad (91) worked long hours & often Sat morning & always helped out when he could re cooking & washing up even when Mum didn't work.

My parents are both dead now but would be into their 100s if still alive. As a young girl, my mother worked part time and my father was a full time miner, later shift worker in a factory. Mum did the cooking as she was home and it was expected their would be a cooked meal on the table when dad got back from the pit - we would have our dinner at 330pm as he was away at 5am then the kitchen was "locked up for the night".

However, I also recall weekends when both were at home and the house was cleaned. Mum did downstairs and dad did upstairs. So I grew up watching my dad taking an active role in the main cleaning of the house. I think that's why I sub consciously married a man who does about 70% of the housework and 90 % cooking.

I'm one of the older generation on here and I'd certainly never speak to anyone like that and would be well pee'd off if someone said similar to me. Let's not tar a whole generation with the same brush eh?

I used to visit an elderly neighbour. Each time without fail she would tell me how marvellous her son was. The main reason was that he once changed his daughter's nappies when his wife was ill. This was about 20 years earlier, it was one of the marvels of her life seemingly

I mean, if you're literally standing in the kitchen popping the fish fingers in the oven and peas on the hob and she's asking, "So what's mummy cooking for tea?" I see no problem with that (other than visual problems for not noticing the fish fingers). That would be chit-chat/small talk.
But if she's regularly asking this while you're at work or you're on the sofa and your nose is in a book/you're netflix and chilling, or you're just doing fuck all and not donning the apron, ball, and chain, it IS a loaded, passive-aggressive, MIL question.

I've never been asked this, so I don't see a huge issue. But if I were regularly asked this, hell if I had my MIL in my house often enough to ask this... or my OWN mother for that matter... it would drive me up the wall.

My dad is 72 and does everything. When I say everything, my mum won't get her own glass of water or dry a dish
All the cooking, cleaning, life admin, everything - my dad does it all. That's what I grew up with probably why I'm single as I have high expectations

I remember by DGM being horrified when she found out me and DH split the cooking and cleaning and I don't have a meal on the table ready for the hard working man coming home from work. The outrage when she called and I said DH was ironing 😁

I asked if she thought he should have food on the table for me because he was home an hour earlier. I've also had to point out that having a sahp is a luxury, our mortgage is significantly higher than my grandparents and parents (my parents house was £17k, ours £130!) and everything costs more so we need 2 incomes. It's a very outdated view of 'wife work' and definitely doesn't fit with a 2 income family that we all need to challenge.

It's annoying, but remember that DMs and MILs are just a product of their time. I'm sure our future DILs will roll their eyes at some of the things we say. What's the norm to us now will seem dated in 30 years time!

It's worth remembering that, although modern men do seem to be able to cook and care for their children, in the majority of households, women do carry the bulk of the mental load still! We're not as liberated as we may think!

@NMC2022

My dad is 72 and does everything. When I say everything, my mum won't get her own glass of water or dry a dish All the cooking, cleaning, life admin, everything - my dad does it all. That's what I grew up with probably why I'm single as I have high expectations

Your poor dad! Is your mum ill or something?

@Billandben444

Yes, it's a generational thing and will die out when we do. Then you'll be the generation saying something deemed inappropriate to your adult children and reading about it on MN.

I don't think it will.

Maybe it won't exist in such an obvious way, but there's a lot of internalised misogyny on MN and they're not all the 'older generation'.

Some women fall over themselves to blame women for some abuse or neglectful behaviour by their husbands or sexist behaviour by work colleagues. You must have seen on MN, it happens all the time.

It's not much of a stretch to think they'd be telling women to get more organised rather than actually think the DH should step up more.

Incidentally my mother in law used to PA buy me cook books!

This is not relevant really and I get why the OP is annoyed. In our house I do nearly all the cooking (I like cooking, am wfh and have the time, am good at cooking and my DH is pretty dire though willing) and my DM keeps on having a dig at poor DH for not helping me. Even as DH is making her cups of tea and looking after her, he’s spent loads of time sorting her Wi-Fi and teaching her how to use Netflix, doing all her diy, driving her around, doing some shopping, generally being lovely. He has the patience of a saint. We do put up with it though, we do blame it on DM getting frail and a bit quarrelsome with it, she has definitely got worse than she used to be in the last few years.

I think OP and all the posters on here moaning about MIL always assuming that cooking food, getting up to children in the night and doing housework is woman's work, should think about what MIL's life was like and cut her some slack.

I'm of the MIL generation, in fact I'm probably quite a bit older than most posters MIL and I can tell you that in their days all these things would have been their jobs. Whether they had jobs outside the home or not, they still did all the 'wife work'.

I doubt, in the case of most of them, they're saying these things to put you down or in a passive aggressive way, they're just making the assumption that your work/life balance is the same as theirs was; and from what I can gather from one of my daughters, for a lot of women it's still the same.

My exh did absolutely nothing in the home, nothing with the children and the idea of him attempting to cook even the most basic meal is laughable.

He also continued to pursue all his hobbies after we were married, which meant I was on my own most evenings and every weekend; all these things contributed to him being my exh.

I don't make the assumption that my daughters/daughter in law should be the ones doing the wife work because that's not how my mind works; also I grew up seeing my own father cook and involve himself with us children so my perspective is probably different from a lot of your MIL.

In so many ways things have moved on for women in regard to outside working and in the home, but remember whilst you and your DH/DP might split house work, cooking and childcare equally this would very likely not have been the case in your MIL's day and for many, many women it still isn't the case.

My mum and mil are both guilty of making sexist comments and assumptions. Never really noticed until we had kids. Even after 15 years. I genuinely don't think it's intentional, or that they mean any offense but we can't seem to get them to stop.

For instance, if I travel with work, my mum will ask 'and what have you left for DH' s tea?' And if I go away for a week, I get horrified gasps and concern about how he'll manage. Who'll wash the clothes and what will they eat?
Then he'd be invited over for tea and sent back with enough food for an army.

If he travels for work nobody ever says anything to him about how I'll cope.

He started saying no to the teas years ago because he felt so patronised. And that actually made a difference.

These days she offers help to us both equally if we're home alone and we gratefully accept. She still can't help the horrified gasps on his behalf, though

With mil, its the way she asks me everything about the children. Drives us both mad. She'll text me for ideas for their birthday gifts, but NEVER asks her own son, their father. He usually makes a point of sending replies to her. But it never sinks in.

My mil does this too and I find it unbelievably irritating. When we moved into our new house recently she walked around inspecting it and commenting on the cleanliness of it and attributed anything positive or negative to the woman who had just moved out ‘ooh, she’s left your oven very clean’ ‘she hasn’t cleaned these blinds’ etc. Just irritating that she automatically defaults to thinking all of this is the woman’s job.

@Squeezita well she is now (Alzheimer's) but she wasn't... and her legs and arms work just fine let's just say I belong on the stately homes threads about toxic mothers!

My sister in laws inlaws saw my husband make our baby a bottle of milk.

She told my sister in law this a womans job and she didn't like him doing it.

Tell your DD to reply "why do you never ask what daddy is cooking, mummy works very hard and has more to do than daddy".

@kokokokokokokokoko

Tell your DD to reply "why do you never ask what daddy is cooking, mummy works very hard and has more to do than daddy".

Why get a kid involved?

From 3pm daily my mum becomes consumed by the need for me to be ‘home for DH’ and can ‘get a nice tea on for him’ despite the fact I am also working, have children with him, have my own schedule and the fact he does shift work.

She wouldn’t be happy unless we were sat around in the dinner table in our Sunday best staring mournfully at the door with a roast chicken warming in the oven from 4pm waiting for HRH to walk in the front door. He doesn’t finish til the early hours most morning but they doesn’t matter - she’s agog I don’t wait up for him nor do I wake up and have full conversations with him when he gets in.

[quote NMC2022]@Squeezita well she is now (Alzheimer's) but she wasn't... and her legs and arms work just fine let's just say I belong on the stately homes threads about toxic mothers![/quote]
Oh I see! It's a shame he can't put her in a stately care home

I don't think it's a sexist comment if she knows you are actually doing the cooking that evening.

People seem to look too hard for ways to be offended these days.

Friend of mine her DH has not worked since the children were small (now teenagers) - she has a terrific career and has a very high level important job. Her DH does all the household stuff - hosts dinner parties for her girlfriends and caters us all, minds babies and dogs (honestly the man is a dream - I just received Christmas cards that he'd hand made! ). Her family STILL ask Q like this of her/her children and seem incredulous that she "lets" him do everything. Of course she does she's busy doing her own day job. I do think a lot of this is generational and it is such a difference to their own frame of reference its very hard for them to get their heads around.

@Mybalconyiscracking

It’s the older generation. My DM keeps saying how sorry she is that I have to work, She spent my whole childhood going to coffee mornings, seemingly. My DDs are 16 and 18 now anyway, I absolutely choose to work, love my job and can’t think of anything worse than a coffee morning. We were poor as church mice when I was a child, she literally did not know where their next meal was coming from, she used to buy an egg and an apple for me at the end of the month. She literally starved sometimes. Pointing this out to her does not stop the constant pointed remarks about how my sisters and I never seem to sit down and no wonder we are tired!

It is NOT the older generation.

It is certain members of that generation

I love a coffee morning. But I worked. My children work.
My husband cooks and in the past has changed a nappy or two and walked a crying baby in the middle of the night (which a lot of the men mentioned on here don't seem to do)