Does anyone ever feel sorry for MIL’s?

[MrsPPP]

I am a Mother to all boys and am nowhere near being a Grandmother or having a daughter in law, so me asking this is nothing to do with my personal situation right now, but it definitely makes me worry for the future.

I see so many posts about imposing MIL’s etc…. Usually in these posts, OP is female, raved about what a blessing her Mother has been and then rants about DH’s family being imposing or coming round to visit too often.
Are DH’s family not equal? Are they not also Grandparents?

I totally understand that this question is generalised and that some people will have valid reasons (abuse, alcohol issues etc).

I just hope that any future DIL of mine will accept that two sets of loving grandparents is surely better for the children. Also, who doesn’t want extra help?

for all the reasons given above. and YOU ARE NOT. You are not the mother, you will never be.

And the aftermath of childbirth will likely have long lasting consequences.

Now if you accept and behave like a respectful human being, why would there be problems? For all you know your hypothetical DIL will have a bad relationship with a pushy and overbearing mother, or one living in another country, and will welcome you.

Give people respect and peace, don't make demand and start a ridiculous competition, and you might have a lovely relationship. If you show yourself as the MIL from hell at the wedding or the birth, you can't escape miracles later.

@AngeloMysterioso I think it depends what you mean by equal. Equal grandmother status, certainly. But I already had a mother-I didn't want or need another one. DP was the same. I had no shared history with my MIL. DP and our children did. So her relationship was with them. That was absolutely fine- my mother's was with them. We were as friendly as two women of different generations, politics, religion, education,background and life experience could be. I think aim for cordiality- anything more is a bonus!

I voted YABU because most of the MIL posts on here seem perfectly valid in their complaints. However, if you take all the posts on here as a representation of how all MILs behave then of course you're going to have lots of negative ideas about your future role as a MIL.

There was a post recently that had the thoery that most women on MN would leave their DHs if that had the financial means. It was proven wrong.

I have a lovely relationship with my in laws. I see them once a week with my toddler DS. It really does depend on what your expectations are. If you want your DIL to treat you like a second mum then you're likely to be dissappointed.

If you regularly criticise her parenting style then she's likely to pull back on the relationship. She might not pull away from her mum so fast for doing the same thing. If you don't respect her boundaries then she might struggle to be as firm and open with you as she is with her own mother. She might reduce her effort rather than confront you.

It also depends how involved your sons are as parents. If they're lazy fathers that would never bother to organise a visit with you then your DILs might get irritated at always being a PA.

So many different issues can come into play. I do like MN for allowing me to pre-empt some future issues in my own life and also to better understand where different people are coming from. Perhaps when you next read a MIL thread you could consider what the MIL could have done to prevent her DIL reaching breaking point. I do this sometimes and my DS is only 2.5 😆.

I think the issue with offering is a lot of newish mums will find an offer as an expectation and being pushy and not welcome it. So it's a bit of a no win. Especially if the mum is sensitive and thinks someone saying "shall i do your ironing whilst you nap' is the same as saying 'you are unable to cope" or someone saying 'ill take them to a baby group so you can rest' is a sign they are trying to take over and havent realised its not thier baby. And in some instances the dil will be right!

But this is yet another reason why I think the man has to facilitate things with between his mother and his wife. My MIL absolutely would have come across as an overbearing cow if she'd asked to babysit when the DC were tiny - because she does have a bit of a "this is how I do it, suck it up" manner to her. But, if I left it to her and DH to sort out, he'd know what lines I would want respected, and was in a much better position to insist on those, then, when she turned up, she knew what was expected and it was fine.

Similarly, when my mother babysat, I was the one who had that conversation and told her what was and wasn't okay. And when she overstepped the boundaries with DH (she did have form for that occasionally -good intentions, poor execution), again, it was ME who stepped in and told her the wasn't okay and why DH wouldn't like it.

Most DILS would love this!
Most don’t want their MILS competing with them, boundary stomping and causing trouble. Which is what some of us (not all) are dealing with.
I’m jealous of the women with great MILs. It goes both ways but as you’re a mother to only boys I suppose you’re focusing more on the nightmare DIL option than the much more common nightmare MIL scenario.
You need to change your perception before it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

I am a mum of a boy, but I absolutely don't think grandparents are equal.

When I gave birth I wanted MY mum. Not DH's mum.

Thing change later, but then it may also depend on your family set up. DH has 3 siblings, I am an only child. His parents already had five grandchildren, my mum didn't have any. MIL has since passed away but was about ten years older than my mum, so had less time and energy for ds.

To be honest, MIL and I had little in common anyway. My mum and DH have much more in common and "gang up" on me on occasion!

DH and I don't teach our boys that organising the social calendar and family is women's work. They will hopefully take their share of the responsibility for maintaining our mutual relationship alongside DH and I that isn't a matter of teaching I'm afraid. DH has always written his own Christmas cards and bought the presents for his family, so DS had a good example, but he's definitely out of sight out of mind when he's at uni! That is about personality.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

But whose responsibility is that? Should a woman - who often comes with the kids attached - spend less time with her own mother just to appease this idea of equality, when her husband doesn't have that level of relationship with his own mother?

Should I have been saying "oh no, sorry mum, the kids and I can't come over for lunch for the second time this week because DH and MIL haven't made any plans to spend time together so it wouldn't be equal". Balls to that, frankly. And balls to the idea that it was ever my responsibility to manage the relationship between my husband and his mother.

MIL relationships can be harder to navigate, particularly if you are close to your own Mum or have similar parenting styles. My MIL is lovely, and honestly just wants to help and be loved. But that said her parenting style is very different to mine so we have had to have a lot of careful consideration of others opinions, she is also more sensitive so when I had been up all night and having an off day id have to put real effort into making sure she didn't get a hint of it in case she took it to heart. On the other hand my parenting style has been learnt from my Mum taught as I raise my children similarly to how I was raised. And of course Mum knew me as a teenager so when I have an off day I can show it, and Mum will give me a hug, or roll her eyes or tell me I'm being unreasonable. Because she's my Mum and she knows. So basically I think in a lot of cases its just a case of it being harder to be around your MIL when your an emotional new Mum because they have the right to closeness to your their grandchild and in many cases the expectation of a close relationship with you. But without the history of building a close relationship you both have to be a little more considerate of each other which makes everything harder. Forced intimacy perhaps.

This genuinely was asked of me! I was asked to see my parents less! I was completely demonised for telling them to get stuffed in response too

I only found out last week that DC3 was going to be a third boy, and I’ve sobbed every day since. I love my boys more than anything but I was desperate for a daughter and am now grieving the daughter I’ll never have. I was flamed in another thread for being open about wanting a daughter and heartbroken at never having one, and here I am being flamed again in a thread proving that some of my reasons for wanting a daughter were absolutely valid.

Mothers of boys just can’t fucking win can we.

I'm sorry that you're sad not to have a dd. But you are allowing that recent disappointment to colour your approach on this thread. You are making sooo many assumptions about DIL relationships and grandparent relationships, assumptions that you even have some opportunity to ensure don't happen.

And even the relationships with your DILs - they could be amazing. I know people who are very close to their MILs. It depends on a lot of things though.

You’re already aiming to blame your future DIL for the fact you are, at the moment, only a mother to boys and so are already predicting what the relationship with your dgc is going to look like? That is not healthy!

I get on great with my MIL and she's included as much as my own Mum in everything. I'd never dream of treating her any different.

I’m not blaming a future DIL for anything. Impressive leap.

I would like to think, all other things being equal, that if I was getting more time with grandchildren than PIL, I would suggest they had some time with them. It's like DMs who insist that they have to host Christmas every year and all adult children have to attend, or have to have family round every Sunday, never giving a thought to the paternal grandparents (or vice versa if it is the PIL who are insisting on this regular attendance). I would like to think I would be as fair as possible

I think the long term answer is to encorage more men to work part time after their children arrive. I think then pop round their parents lots and then it wouldnt all be on a DIL/MIL to work things out.

I’m not making assumptions, but I do have worries that post after post in this thread alone are proving to be very well grounded in common reality. And hopes that are being branded as entitlement with people calling me a petulant MIL from hell.

I had a lovely MIL, I miss her every day.

I'm not her DD and tbh if she'd treated me like one I think I'd have been irritated in the early days but cherished it in the years before she died. As it was, I was treated as a valued DIL and very much part of the family a, long before I got pregnant. When I was pregnant and she was fussing over me it was more funny than anything, because we had an established relationship and I could see it came from a place of kindness.

When the baby was born, she texted DH to ask could they visit for an hour in the hospital and they always asked if I was free for a visit from them when I was on mat leave. She would always offer help, but never started rummaging to do my laundry for example. She championed all my PFB mothering with a straight face, having raised 6 of her own. She never tried to be mummy (maybe the 6 of her own cured that urge!). She never once saw my DM as competition. She volunteered to babysit, and totally doted on DS equally to the rest of the GC.

My own DM strongly favours my sisters kids so we quietly stepped back a little some years ago and she's not even noticed. DM doesn't have a good relationship with her DIL either. Mainly because she made it clear from the start that DIL wasn't good enough for her darling son, that she had notions, openly and repeatedly stated that she adored the exGF. They were together several years before they got married and this was the mantra througout. Every decision they made as a couple was blamed on her, even if it was clearly DBs.

As you can imagine, when the first GC arrived, the criticism went off the scale, contributing in a large part to SIL's PND at the time so the decision to go LC was a wise one. It's improved now but it's taken literal decades and it all could have been avoided if DM didn't treat SIL so badly when they were dating.

I'm glad you do that. And as I loved my PILs I was always very happy to agree to my DH's suggestions of going up to visit them (required staying over a night or more so had to be weekends).

But it doesn't seem unusual for some DILs to put pressure on their partners to keep weekends for their own little family, especially if their partner is (or they both are) working full time. And part of me understands that. But I do feel for those PILs whose DILs do put obstacles in the way of those grandparents seeing as much of the children as her own parents do. I'm glad that my own daughter is happy to enable and encourage visits to her inlaws.

It’s not so much about earning the right to be a GP. It’s about not being entitled to a relationship with your GC irrespective of your relationship with your DIL and son. This applies to the wife’s family too. If you didn’t have a good relationship with your son and DIL and they both were closer to her family, why would you expect to be treated equally?

in terms of the DIL. If she has a good relationship with her family then you cannot expect her to think of you equally. She has a lifetime of working on that relationship and building up trust with her family. When she’s at her most vulnerable and defensive, it is not the time to be thinking about equality.

My Mum’s parents were very jealous of her in laws and made a point of marking their territory and demanding their rights . My Dad’s parents were very respectful, interested but in the periphery. They were there when they were needed, which predominately happens in the toddler years. My Mum is NC with her parents now and says that it was her MIL who taught her how to be a mother.

In my own experience, my PILs have been great with my kids and the kids adore them. If only they had been able to manage their own fears and entitlement when their first grandchild was born, we’d be able to trust them now.

You are obviously worried about this, I would advise that you really take a step back around this time, or seek some therapy to explore your fears.

I think it’s impressive at how your disappointment at the gender of child and imaginary future is clouding your judgement so much. Reading your posts I genuinely believed you were a left out granny, now It’s clear you’re anxious about your own place in your dcs and dgc now you don’t feel like you’ve got the security a daughter would have given you.

I am a mother of 2 boys and can totally see how I could get annoyed with a future partner after all the effort I have put in to raising them! I often get very annoyed with my MIL and have to remind myself that she has obviously done a very good job as my husband (her son) is a wonderful man. Her constant interfering still winds me up although I have to admit that she is very helpful at times.

You are making stuff up. I haven't punished anyone, I made it clear I treat all the GC the same, do childcare for all. I never wanted nor expected to be at the birth of any GC so again you are making things up. I never mentioned hospital, ever heard of home births? Again you are making things up.

I get on with DsIL, particularly one as we have more in common but the fact is their mothers were more involved and I was more involved with my DDs babies. No tantrums from anyone but the fact remains I feel closer to DDs children, keep it to myself, and as I said the children aren't in any way aware of it.

In my experience it is common for the mother's mother to be more involved with GC and as my first six GC were my sons' children I can assure you it didn't bother me in the slightest but at the same time if a new mother involves her mother more I don't think she then has a right to have a tantrum about MIL favouring her own daughter's children although I think the MIL should keep that to herself and not make it obvious.

Yes @saraclara

Maybe I am unusual as my PiLs live closer than my parents, so we can go together for lunch or my DH can take them for the day or whatever, whereas my parents and I visit each other more infrequently but for a whole weekend. If I had both close, I'd probably try to ensure some level of equity - not perfect equity, but I wouldn't plan to see my parents every weekend and then insist on a nuclear family day only for the other day. That would be unfair. I do think many more men don't do much arranging at all though - there are lots of women who see their family whilst their husband does a hobby thing at the weekend and far fewer men who do it the other way around in my experience.