‘Oh she looks so much like you, or me when I was younger or just basically anyone like you, the mother’

[OhDoOne77]

Not said like this obviously, but may aswell be.
Sil has always said and still continues to say how much Dd (4) looks like Dh or failing that, looks like her when she was younger (nothing like her) or their mum etc…or brother…just basically anyone but me.
It pissed me off when Dd was a baby but royally pisses me off now, as she says it in front of her

Aibu to feel rage?

That's a completely normal thing to say though (or does she have form for being a cow?)

My ds looks the spit of my dh's mum, he has the exact same nose and smile. My dsis looks like my dads sister and not like anyone else at all.

Genetics are funny things - children don't necessarily look like their parents and can be throwbacks from other generations. I would take it she loves your dd to bits and wants to have some kind of connection - perfectly natural.

And to say you "feel rage" is a complete overreaction, yes. Calm down.

@Catsstillrock Yes, I get that, could be similar thinking here too as it is all about them also.

@misskatamari I completely get that and people have said things like that and I’ve not given it a second thought. This, she always has to say and also that she’s a *surname of his family etc. I don’t know, I just sit there like ok 🤷🏻‍♀️

@Buythebag40 She does have form

My MIL does this a lot. Then i show my picture when i was small and she said I look similar to my husband 😂😂. Well anyone except my own son. Its annoying.

Before DNA testing it was difficult to prove with any certainty who was the father of the baby. There is some research that shows mothers like to stress how like the baby is to the father to reinforce his paternity

@Abcdefgh1234 😂So weird isn’t it, is it deliberate? By in laws at least? The not so nice ones, not general people making comments

Isn't there also research that shows a couple using donor sperm ( or egg) are more likely to bond with the baby if the baby looks like them. Ditto adoption

🤣🤣🤣Now that is reaching!

@Thewheelsfalloffthebus These are brilliant.
She doesn’t look massively like me, maybe eyes a little and round the cheeks/chin/smile…so yeah maybe a bit 😁I should say this.
My mum actually sent me a pic of me as a child to say we looked similar, I’ll use that if need be 😆

I think the in laws claiming that the baby looks like their side of the family is a positive thing and acknowledges their family in the gene pool

Doesn't everyone do this? We think that new members of the family look like the family members that we've known all our lives, partly because they're the people we knew as babies/small children. So our in-laws will relate the child to their own family members.

There might well also be quite a primitive and subconscious thing going on for the father's family. Paternity can never be taken for granted, so though they don't realise they're doing it, they're binding the child to their family by finding resemblances that 'prove' that the baby does have the fathers genes.

I read somewhere years ago, that when a new baby is born, midwives and doctors are more likely to point out to parents that the baby has a feature of the father's, than they are to say a feature of the mothers, by a long, long, way. Something like four times as likely. And the researcher's theory was the same. That subconsciously they're reassuring the dad that he's the father.

@saraclara It’s really interesting

We did ivf though, so no doubt she’s his

I had this and it used to annoy me too. My daughter DID look a lot like her Dad, I have to admit, but had curly brown hair. Ex MIL used to say she probably got it from his great aunt…..completely ignoring the fact that I had curly brown hair too! Couldn’t possibly have come from her mother 🤣 As it happens she looks a lot like me now that she’s older, scarily so. I’m no longer with him so don’t have close contact with his family, I’m not sure that they would ever say she was like me even though it’s commented on so much by other people now.

Yes, my MIL did that with dd1. Every little thing was equated to her family.

I remember when we were out, and I put my hand out to take dd1's hand to cross the road. Dd1 put her hands behind her back and she said:
"Oh look, she walks with her hands behind her, bil did that all the time."
To which I replied: "She's not doing it all the time, she just did it because she didn't want me to hold her hand."
"He did that too..."

DD2 is unmistakably my family through and through so that stopped that one 🤣

Interestingly ds is absolutely dh's spitting image, to a point that people have stopped each of them when alone in the street and asked if they are dh's son/ ds' dad, and she's nothing like as bad with him.

My response to that is isn't it funny how people see different resemblances as many have said she's more my side than DH. I guess people see different things.

I always get that my DD is the image of DH which is fine but it's annoying when people go on and on. I guess my illogical irritation is that I do the main share of parenting/time with her and desperately want to resemble my child . Makes no sense but I feel your annoyance.

Yanbu !

My poor niece is my double and my mother is forever going on about it. My SIL gets really hurt because she doesn’t have any other family or her own baby photos to compare to. I’ve asked my mum not to say it and to just think it in to herself but she won’t because she thought she’d “never see that same small face again” and can’t help herself (her reasoning).

my nephew (nieces twin) looks like none of us and in a way it just compounds my sil’s lack of family tree because we don’t know which part of the family he takes after.

I always like to point out they look like DNeice and DNephew and no one else and they both love that.

Yes, but it's a subconscious and primitive thing that isn't overridden by anything up to date. And as they're not aware of it themselves, they can't say to themselves 'well of course he's the dad because ivf', because they don't know that some primitive part of the brain is firing in the first place.

What I'm trying to say is that it's unreasonable to get so angry over it, or be plotting ways to combat it. If it is deliberate it'll be obvious that you're rattled, and if it isn't (and that's my guess) then it's pointless. Just ignore it. It's what people do and it's probably only sticking out to you because you don't like SIL. If it was a much loved sweet auntie, you'd barely notice I bet. And that's normal too.

My MIL has said many times how much DS looks like my partner and his uncle and grandfather. Things is, we're a same sex couple and used a sperm donor. Our son is literally NO genetic relation to that side of the family. Also. He's basically my twin 😂

@saraclara I still think she’s doing it deliberately to try to claim her as being fully their family or to piss me off 😁

I completely get where you're coming from, OP. I had this with DS1 - the outlaws constantly claiming him as one of them. One of DP's aunties even said 'You missed out there Clinkey, he's a ...' (insert DP's family name here). Missed out? Alrighty then. Anyway, I love spotting family resemblances, but it's all in how it's said. DP's family were deliberately trying to push me to the sidelines because they are very, very controlling. They hated that I was breastfeeding and hated that I wouldn't let him stay with them when he was just a few weeks old. So it made them feel better to stake a claim on DS. They would rush off and produce photos (on one occasion a tea towel with DP's brother printed on it🤣) just to prove how he was one of them. By the time he was about 5 they had quietly stopped, because he really was the double of my brother. Still is, right down to the mad hair!

DS2 came along a few years later and there was barely a squeak about who he resembled. Funny enough he looks almost identical to DP when he was young. But I reckon the steam had just gone out of the whole resemblance thing by then and they probably didn't want to say too much in case he morphed into me or my brother😃

@ClinkeyMonkey That sounds so familiar!

Oh get this all the time. Both my children have dh colouring so at a glance are like him, but totally have my features, eyes, nose, mouth,face shape. Anyone who knows him says oh they look just like their dad. Anyone who knows me says they look like me. It is annoying that dh doesn't correct them actually.

@OhDoOne77 it does sound pretty annoying, but honestly 90% people are just grappling for some way to engage on the topic of a baby or a toddler. I find parents exceedingly difficult to deal with on the topic of their children in any sort of benign way. It can feel like they’re on a hair trigger of being judged as parents, or they think you’re judging their child.

Parents are great and all but they can be so neurotic, most people are not going to care that much either way about your children, they may love them because they are family but they likely won’t really have any strong opinions about anything- how they look, how the act etc.

Maybe it’s some weird coded message designed to make you feel uncomfortable, or, more likely she thinks it’s a nice thing to talk about the continuity with other members of the family that she knows best. She’s probably saying in her own way “we love your DD, she’s so connected to us and our family, she’s one of us”. Think about how unpleasant it would be if every time you saw her she said “gosh she really is all your side isn’t she? I can’t see us at all, she looks like you, but not her dad at all- or any of us really”. I mean she could just not say the same thing over and over again, but I have some sympathy for people who run out of material on this stuff.