To ask you what is the worst thing your MIL has done or said to you?

[IndigoIsMyFavouriteColour]

I’ll start. We lost a baby at 25 weeks pregnant, a little girl, the whole situation was awful. 6 months later I was pregnant with a little boy and we waited until 20+ weeks to tell anyone about him because we were nervous (understandably).

We phoned MIL on speaker phone to tell her our happy news about the new baby (we already had a son) and her first response was ‘well when am I going to get some granddaughters?’

There are many more examples but this really took the biscuit

Also MIL is not an individual characteristic in the same way that race is. It's not an identity category. It's not a protected characteristic. It's a relational role. More comparable examples would be:

Tell me about the awful things your boss has done.
Tell me about the awful things your neighbour has done.
Tell me about the awful things your husband has done.

I had two MsIL, I posted about the awful thing one of Them said, as this thread is about that. I didn't mention my first MIL.as she never said anything I could complain about.

Having had one nightmare MIL I make sure I have a good relationship with my Dil/SIl

I have no prejudice and just replied to the question. No generalisations.

I also think it's extremely distasteful puppy to minimise and ridicule some of the awful abuse many dils on here have suffered at the hands of their mils.

Some of us have had the most precious and blessed moments of our lives ,weddings ,births baptism ,even the deaths of a parent ruined or made worse by a mil.

In the worst cases marriages have been destroyed and children's families broken up.

I read an interesting article by Elliot gould who said his mum never like Barbara Streisand his wife and he couldn't get past her continual disapproval and he puts that as a major factor in the break down of that marriage.

Husband arguably yes- but men are hardly a marginalised group..

Neighbour/ boss no- as these could be anyone. The thing that makes tbe MIL trope misogynistic is that MILs are always female. Thats why the complaints are always with MIL , not FIL- it's because of misogyny. It's like the evil step mother trope - which is also misogynistic.

OK. So you're saying DILs aren't allowed to share their experiences of abusive and misogynistic behaviour because MILs are women too? Is that right? That MILs are above criticism because they're women?

I also think it's extremely distasteful puppy to minimise and ridicule some of the awful abuse many dils on here have suffered at the hands of their mils.

This!

I just posted I had no problems with my first MIL but I couldn't say the same about her racist bully of a husband.

I was very lucky with my MiL, she was lovely, and died too young.

However I still remember how it did rankle over 40 years ago, when she and FiL first came to see our new house - a fairly good sized, newish 4 bed with a large ensuite and a family bathroom, plus a downstairs loo, all still relatively uncommon at the time.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s a very nice little house.’ Dh and I did exchange raised eyebrows at the ‘little’!
To be entirely fair, they had a considerably bigger Edwardian semi, but still largely unmodernised, with just one indoor loo, and one outside the old scullery door, for the skivvy.

Are you listening?
Of course anyone can share their experience of having an abusive individual in their lives- regardless of whether that individual is male , female, young, old, black, white, disabled, fat etc,

If you post negative generalisations - invite negative generalisations - about "MILs" - a sub-category of women/ females - as a group , then you are most likely driven by , and most certainly promoting , misogyny.

I've already asked you this but you ignored my question.

Can you show me an example of where someone has made a generalisation across a category in this thread? Has anybody said, anywhere at all, that all MILs are problematic?

You don't need to say "all MIL's are problematic".

the title of the thread "share the awful things your MIL has said" is enough. .

Like "share awful things that your disabled neighbour has done".

"Share awful things about fat people",

"share awful things your Muslim friend has said",

"share awful things done to you by your step mum".

My lovely MIL is dead now, but I can honestly say that she never said or did anything bad to me.

They aren't all evil!

So nobody on this thread has actually generalised across the category of all MILs, is that what you're saying?

Some of the examples you are given are quite clearly problematic because they are inviting discriminatory comments about protected characteristics. But none of them, except for "share awful things about fat people" are inviting people to make generalisations across a whole category, are they?

Not my MIL - but my mothers behaviour with one of her DIL was atrocious. Not same with other so clearly not just misunderstanding.

DIL of eldest son has similar background, brought up same town, similar hobbies and shares same disinterest in housework. She was loved and spoken kindly of and to, despite any ups and downs in relationship. Given thoughtful gifts. Got jealous of DS MIL and gets into weird competitions - even who got best wordle score.

DIL of golden child. House proud, different background and parents have money. Passive aggressive comments. Behaved like an attention seeking toddler. Loved grandchildren, but made deliberate mess in house when babysitting. Switched lids on tea/coffee/sugar or left coffee rings or dirty trays in oven after use. Encouraged GC to walk through house with muddy shoes. Rolled her eyes if DIL mentioned. Liked the FIL of DS, but called MIL neurotic "like daughter", obsessed with cleaning (she's not).

Always talked thru GC to parents when babies. One got “isn’t your mummy wonderful, doing XYZ” the other “your mummy shouldn’t do xyz should she? Silly mummy”.

DIL1 is pretty relaxed mum, their kids got fed “normally” if staying at grandmas. DIL2 enjoys health & fitness. Kids eat lots veg and crudités. They got chocolate and sweets for breakfast “oh they wanted it, won’t do them any harm". Purposely done to upset DIL.

There was probably lots more. SIL2 is lovely and tolerated but had healthy boundaries that we all supported. She prob doesn't know half of it and best not knowing now.

Women can be absolute bitches. Even dead mothers

I’d say it was far worse than a ‘clumsy’ comment. It was incredibly insensitive and pretty vile.

Some of the examples you are given are quite clearly problematic because they are inviting discriminatory comments about protected characteristics.**

Exactly.
MIL is a subcategory of women/ female people.
Thats why the hatred is always directed at MILs. Not FILs or even PILs. It's MILs because they are women.

not my current MIL but my ex MIL. these are even the worst, just what i can think of from the top of my head in the last 2 months

• told me im not fit to look after even a gold fish, and shouldnt be allowed kids

• told me i do nothing for my child ever, and that im a useless mother

• is convinced im trying to steal her grandchild (my daughter) from her, and if i carry on shes going to take me to court because she has 'plenty of evidence' on her phone.

• my DD does cheer on a weds night, and spoke about maybe doing comp cheer next year. now shes going around telling her son (DDs dad) ive changed her cheer to saturdays, she does comp now and how its not right because if she does well she'll have to fly out the country and thats stealing her time with DD.

• is convinced im playing a game to take my DD from her dad because she spends more time with me than him.

• screamed at me the other night because i didnt take DD to the walk in centre at 11pm when shes been full of cold for a couple days and she has bad ear ache because "if i was there id of picked her up and took her, ear infections CANNOT be left, you should of took her already."

spoiler: DD doesnt have an ear infection, shes got a viral cold and its blocking her sinuses because she suffers with nasel issues. shes been given nose spray by the GP, an appointment i already had booked for the next day

Not only shield a pervert but go on the attack against his main victim and her family while also saying worse things had happened to her (thereby admitting it happened) to protect her nice lifestyle
Then emotionally blackmail DH for not wanting to participate in the happy families charade and blame me for "turning him against her and keeping her GC away from her"
She then dumped said pervert for a better prospect when he became ill and was no longer any fun and she was facing being his carer.

Being a MIL isn't a protected characteristic. It's not even an identity characteristic. It's a social role that just so happens to be occupied by women.

Nobody is asking for people to make generalisations about MILs associated with the protected characteristic of sex. Sex has nothing to do with it, other than the incidental fact that all MILs are women.

People have been sharing their experiences with their mother in laws. The key word being "tell me about some of the awful things your MIL has done".

I don't really understand why you can't grasp this.

A year after my mum died I managed to find myself discussing her death with MIL and how sad it would be she wouldn’t meet my future children. She said ‘it would be worse for me to lose my mum, having had my her all these years’!

She also once claimed to be ‘the centre of all my children’s universe, that includes you’re DH’! 🤣

She’s honestly crazy, you can’t reason with crazy so I ignore it instead.

Maybe not the worst but this was the final straw for me never going out my way again for non-driving widowed MIL...

We live in a very rural location, food shopping is a case of being flexible to what the shops have in and in bad weather, lorries can struggle to make supermarket deliveries etc.

So, I use up a precious day of annual leave to take MIL to M&S just before Xmas. Her contribution to Xmas dinner was her homemade trifle, mainly legendary due to having so much sherry in it no one except her liked it. She wanted fresh raspberries and they didn't have any, I helpfully suggested we buy some frozen ones instead as M&S frozen stuff is really good quality, well, it was like a child having a tantrum, would have thought I suggested she add tripe not frozen raspberries. "I want fresh raspberries, stamp stamp" to me, the poor lad filling the shelves and anyone else who gave her an audience. I was flipping mortified and never took her shopping again.

Most of the comments here are hideous.

However it’s clear that in many cases we let ourselves down by staying in a relationship that would be marred by an awful MIL and a partner who refuses to defend you.

My MIL is wonderful (as is FIL) and I could not imagine my life without them both.

DH from the start was clear if there was anything that upset me he’d deal with it. 20 years in and never any fallout.

Much like other relationships, when we allow ourselves to be repeatedly diminished and denigrated we court this vile behaviour.

The first time someone treats me like that is the last.

Soon after we married MIL said her plan was to divide and rule us. I've had zero contact since and DH is low contact.

So many things. But one of the worst was when she said to me "you don't understand how worrying it is when your child is ill", after I tried to reassure her that her 40 year old won would be just fine once his kidney stones were treated. She said this only weeks after I'd held my son as his life support was turned off, and he died in my arms. Yeah, won't ever be forgetting that one!

On meeting her grandchild (my son) who has Down's Syndrome.

Her first words on seeing him were, "Oh yes! You can tell he's got it!"