A son is a son until he finds a wife, a daughter is a daughter for life

[Eminemmilkshake]

AIBU to find this comment offensive, sexist and untrue?
Its something DH family say often, suggesting I have ‘taken’ him from them and that my son will be taken one day too. Apparently my DDs will never leave.
My eldest DD is a teen and spends a lot of time with her boyfriend. I rarely spent time at home as a teen and I eventually went NC with my parents for various reasons. I know plenty of men who spend more time with their parents than their sisters do. Outdated comments like this need to stop being spouted, have any of you been the focus of this statement?

Kind of... it seems women are on average more active in keeping active family connections including gifts, cards, messages, ...

I understand keeping contact with his side of family to be my partner's job. As a result, the contact is different.

None of my peer group or social circle would dream of trotting out weird sexist sayings like that.

Well, from my own family and observations of other families, I see more women being proactive with their relationship with their parents (their mother's in particular) and the men are more reactive (their mum calling them, initiating visits etc...). It's not all sons and not all daughters of course, but a trend / pattern that I've observed enough to think that I can see where the saying came from, even if it's an exaggeration of what tends to occur.

I really hate this phrase. My mother quoted it for years, and it felt like her giving my brother permission to live his own life whilst I should remain obligated to her. (I know this isn't the point of the saying, but it's how my mother used it). I'm in my late 40s and still feel my life will never be my own whilst she's alive.
Meanwhile my brother is the prodigal son who sees her twice a year, but can do no wrong.

Lots of mixed experiences! It’s sad to read some of you have experienced this as true in your family. I know it dates back to when women would stay with the family, cook, clean, look after siblings etc while the boys grew up and left for their wives family, I just would have hoped in 2024 there wasn’t still people bleating this nonsense and blaming women for everything a man does wrong!
I get on great with MIL, don’t get me wrong, she treats me like a daughter and I enjoy time with her. But she still views me as stealing her son, as if he’d still be living in her house, sleeping in a single bed and playing with his toy cars otherwise. Some MIL are treated awful I’ve read a lot of threads on here, but some of them really don’t help themselves.
Like a PP I don’t have anything to do with my mother but my brother has never left her side. perhaps me never experiencing that sort of mother daughter relationship has affected my views. If the saying is true in some cases then I’d always assume it’s because of poor behaviour on the MIL side more than the assumption the DIL stole the son. I find a lot more men are living at home with parents for longer these days too.

Absolute twaddle. My partner's family are actually closer to him now that we are together than when he was single!

Sure. But how can you never have heard it?! There are plenty of crappy sayings that need to die a death; doesn’t mean I haven’t heard of them!

Surely their wives are ' daughters' to someone. So instead of ' bringing the shit ' to their door, they are sweetness and light to their own mothers and are just being nasty bitches to someone else's mother are they?

This saying really does need to die a death, yet it just refuses to die!

It’s wishful thinking to pretend that the saying isn’t largely true. How many men do you know who DON’T leave it to their wives to buy presents for their own family etc? A man is expected to put his wife first once he gets married. A woman is expected to stay close to her own mother.

We can cry ‘sexism’ all we like. Doesn’t make the objective truth not the objective truth. Anecdotes don’t change that, neither do exceptions to the rule.

Exceptions to the rule (which are not so much "exceptions" given how plentiful they are) do in fact make something not the objective truth.

I genuinely don't know a single woman in my social circle who buys presents for her husband's family out of duty or because he won't (obviously several buy presents for their in-laws because they have a strong relationship in their own right). I certainly don't.

My brother goes for dinner with parents once a week and actually chucked a girl he'd been seeing for a few months for bad mouthing our mum (mum met her briefly at his front door once dropping something at his house and apparently didn't fawn sufficiently?) so I hope my two boys are like my brother!
DH and his mum aren't close, they are just different people with nothing in common. I used to try to encourage relations but not my circus and I eventually found out for myself why he doesn't like her that much (obviously he loves her as his mum though).
He takes charge of birthday presents and mother's day flowers just as I sort my mum out, he is a grown up and I'm not here to wipe his bum for him.
So to summarise, aim to be more like my mum than MIL, hope my boys still want to know me when they are adults, don't be a dick to future DILs. Sorted.

Exactly depends very much on the wife they find. Same for girls- depends very much on the man they pick!

It's true to some extent. Men as a group put less effort into their personal relationships and feel much less guilt about sidelining those that they no longer find rewarding.

Ask carers in care homes how often male adult children visit compared to female adult children.

It’s bollocks

I’ve got 2 grown up sons. Both have long term partners, DS2, also, has a 15week old baby. They’re all very much in our lives and always will be. I get phone calls, texts and FaceTimes ever day, even more so now DS2 has come along. When they’re on holiday I still get phone calls. If they do something new, I get told almost immediately. We’ve always been a very close family, i can’t see that changing tbh.

I know for a fact that it’s my sons who buy the presents for me. I buy them for my in-laws, but I don’t work while DH works long hours so I don’t mind.

I think it's largely true and until male/ female is a level playing field it's not such a bad thing. Women should stick together and support the next generation of women.. I have a boy but I love his girlfriend, my step daughter and get on well with DH ex.
I don't think it means the men have a better relationship with dads than mums . It means they start a new family dynamic.
The sexist bit is thinking women have just mum where men are seen as people in their own right.

Sadly my MIL felt like she lost a son to me and both PIL never smiled on any of the wedding photos.

I hate it and also think it’s nonsense. It makes so many lazy assumptions. I have three DCs; 2 boys and a girl and it’s just not true.

So do you think that because, now, in your life, most wives don’t pander to this sexist bullshit, that means that somehow the sexist bullshit never existed and the saying was based on… nothing?!

I genuinely don’t get what point posters are trying to make with their anecdotes. Yes, it’s a sexist saying. Yes, it grew out of sexist bullshit that was real. It’s great that there are more and more examples of it not being true any more. That’s great.

But let’s not pretend that it doesn’t come from a dark, misogynistic place where everything domestic belongs to women. Why pretend? Why pretend that those sexist ideas are completely gone, either? They’re not!

YANBU.
It is a load of bollox.

It was a self-fulfilling prophecy in my case - my MIL said this to me shortly before our wedding. Someone else had said it to her and I guess she decided that it might be true. We were never particularly close, but she seemed to go out of her way after that to be uninvolved - I would have been very happy to have her more involved in our lives and with our kids. She lives very close to her daughter and we live much further away, which obviously plays a part too, but she definitely pushed me away. Ironically, my husband is much better at phoning his parents than I am and he visits as often as he can.

My middle son is married, lovely woman! They probably are equal in relationship with each of their families. We laugh, joke and enjoy each others company. She didn't 'steal' him...we joke that she married him, she gets to keep him, we don't want him back! 🤣
Apparently, she loves her MIL..😂.
We gained a much loved family member.

My daughter is in a long-term relationship. She gets on well with her partners parents. They tell me they love her too. She is part of their family. They live closer to them, so see them more frequently. Her partner likes us and again an easygoing relationship on both sides.

Eldest Sons ex..different kettle of fish. We aren't regarded as family. She only considers her side as family. It's taken years to get to the point of unblocking her number to stop abusive calls! Grandchildren were used as weapons against their father and us.

My mum has a good relationship with my brothers newish wife but her relationship with my brother has been impacted in that he has become more distant and unbothered about seeing her or my dad…..like it’s a chore for him now…..when before he would invite them to stay with him, speak more regularly on the phone, visit them more often etc. He didn’t even text to ask how things were going when my dad ended up in hospital for nearly a week. My mum is putting on a brave face but I think she’s a bit sad about it. She would never say anything to him about it though. My parents paid for their wedding and honeymoon and have done loads of stuff for them too. I know my brother will be totally useless if my parents end up needing care and he will leave it all to me.

My in-laws rubbed their hands together when I got with their son, put their house up for sale and moved 4 hours away 🤣

He was the baby that was still living at home. I got with him just as he bought a flat. Within six months theirs was up for sale and they were looking elsewhere.

My brother is really close to my parents. When my elderly DM needs live-in help it's him that does it. I think that saying is BS.