Why do you think the MIL hatred thing is so prevelant?

[mrspir8]

Just wondering...I am not by any means dissing anyone choice of thread subject or current situation. If half the MIL threads on here are true then some of you are having quite a shitty time with yours.

I love my MIL, she is a loving, warm, freindly, funny woman. She is kind, helpful and non judgemental. Dont get me wrong, she irritates me to the point of distraction sometimes, she is so damn polite and unassuming that she never says what she really wants to do and never takes part in any decision making of family events etc.She also never lets my husband know if they are poorly or anything because she couldnt bear that she had inconvenienced us in anyway. But I still love her. She is my husbands Mum and a wonderful Grandmother. I wish she lived closer.

In contrast my own mum, although I love her heaps and heaps and cannot bear the thought of her not being in my life, is bone-achingly negative about everything, overbearing and often critical. I have sought to make things better recently and not really gone the right way about it, consequently we have had a rocky ride especially since my daughter was born. Things are peaceful at present.

For example, do you think that I enjoy a better easier relationship with with my MIL because my relationship with my own Mum is so unpredictable? Is this a factor in the relationship at all, for you?

or is it possibly some deep biological alpha female thing?

Actually, I wonder if a lot of the problem comes from the men. Maybe some men are happy for (or expect) their mothers to continue to spoil them, even to the extent of tacitly setting up a competition between wife and mother, opt out of a lot of family things and go for the easy life approach.

That can leave MIL and DIL treading on each other's toes while the husband and FIL decline to get involved. but of course, the resulting strife is entirely the fault of the two women.

My situation was different. MIL wasn't a great mother and DH was not close to her. She clearly decided to get being a MIL right though, and she did, she was great.

My MIL is OK - mad as a bag of snakes, and self-absorbed, but kind and never critical or overbearing. I think one reason it's not a problem is that she's not really that interested. I couldn't stand someone being possessive about my DP or DC. I'm horrified at some of the outrageous MIL behaviour I've read about on here.

BUT I have to confess I've felt moments of MIL-from-hell attitudes in myself, and my DS is only 5 . I'm a feminist and I already find myself liking the feisty, independent girls he's friends with and hoping he steers clear of the drippy ones. If he marries a self-subjugating drip I will have work very hard to to remind myself that it's none of my business, and make a big effort to be nice and supportive to her. I know - bitch! But there you go. You can see how it happens.

For me, it's purely down the fact that we've never entirely 'gelled'.

Superficially we get on just fine - chat on the phone if she calls, get on when staying at each others houses, considerate of each other, and she has been very approving of how we raise DS.

But we will never be close or totally easy with each other and it's just the way it is.

I have always got on like a house of fire with all my exes' mothers and do find it a real shame that I don't have the same easy, natural relationship with my husband's mother. But what can you do?

My MIL and I have had a rocky relationship and have come out the other side. When DH and I got married things got better (she basically sat back, let us make our plans and was grateful for the ocassion). Then when DD was born, again she has been brilliant; the perfect amount of involved and laid back. She's not overbearing in the slightest and has been very good to me over the past few years.

I am very close to my own mum, so the I know I am lucky to get on with both mum and MIL. They get on well even if they dont see each other that often and they always ask after the other. My mums struggled with illness a lot so we spend more time with her than with MIL, who to her credit never complains, and as such I always try to make an effort to see her as much as possible. Its DDs 1st birthday in 2 weeks () and I'm looking forward to having both MIL and mum there.

That all being said, neither DH nor I have anything to do with FIL or my dad so I guess it all evens out!

I did have one ex whose mum I liked a lot more than I liked him! If she was my MIL that would be lovely (but not if he was part of the package!)

as other posters have said, it's control. alot of MILS and DILS who don't get along probably don't because MIL still wants to control her son and DIL wants to control her own family.

my MIL is lovely, i'm a family orientated person so i like to make an effort. she is involved in DD's life and she is really interested and loves DD to bits. what annoys me sometimes with her is if OH has been really unreasonable with me she will tell me i shouldn't stand for it, give him down the banks etc... but then be all over him when he walks in the room and act like he's the best thing since sliced bread. so much for female solidarity!

she does get on my nerves at times, same way as my own mother does, but my mum and i have similar interests so we are quite close. MIL and i are rather different people so we are not close friends (like some of my friends are with their MILS) sometimes she can be a bit childish, for example it was my mum's bday last week so i told MIL i was taking my mum out for a meal and a drink. the next day MIL rang me and asked me to go for a meal with her and my DD. she never would have asked only she knew i was going with my mum she also just invites her self on holidays with me and OH or invites herself on days out with us, this annoys me. but when all is said and done, i see her as family and i care for her.

what i can't stand is DILS who seem to forget that their hubby had a family before getting involved with her. some seem to expect that they should just be the centre of hubby's universe and everyone else should be forgotten. won't be happening if i ever have a son. my son would come from a big, loving family and none of us would be going anywhere

whilst a man's wife and kids would of course be the centre of his life, his mum, dad and family should still play a big part. if a man is from a close family then that bond would never be broken, regardless of who he marries. i think some MILS worry that this is not the case and that they are losing their son?

I can tell my mum if I'm not happy with what she is doing - I don't feel comfortable doing that with MIL

my mum will try and make everything perfect when we come to stay. MIL won't (ie no milk or suitable food for ds so we have to go to the shops as soon as we arrive, doesn't 'do' lunch so expects none of us to either and then gets annoyed when we do etc)

my mum doesn't necessarily agree with the way we raise our son but follows our wishes. MIL deliberately reverses our wishes!

But ultimately I had a very happy childhood and can think of nothing better for my own kids. So I trust my parents completely. My dh had a rockier ride and he himself acknowledges that it is harder with his mum

I get on with my MIL but then again my husband is the youngest of 5 children (4 sons) he is the baby of the family so by the time I arrived on the scene my MIL was well practiced at the whole thing. I have never felt as though there is any competition between us but then again I have known her since I was 16 so maybe I have just "grown up" with her around.

My MIL is great. She is very relaxed, she loves DS, she is always nice to me - and yet she still manages to irritate me sometimes. She does too much - if she drops by and we're not in, but due back soonish, she starts gardening - so I'll come back and find things planted where I don't want them, leaves piled where they shouldn't be. SHe has taken damp washing off the line before it's ready to come in yet - all very helpful but still (and I realise I sound ungrateful) irritating.

She is a non-stop chatterer - that drives me bats as well. But to be fair to her, she is the kindest person and would do anything for any one of us - but sometimes that in itself is a bit of a burden. FOr e.g. she and I went shopping for DS's birthday present - I had said I wanted to get him a magnetic drawing board/table - when we finally found one she insisted on buying it for him. So - she had bought him something I wanted him to have (good) but then I had nothing for him from me and DH!

Ungrateful cowbag, me.

Now, OTOH - my Dad adored his MIL (my Nanna), whereas his Mum really didn't like my Mum and would get sly digs in whenever she could. She was never overtly nasty but my Dad didn't stand up for Mum either - he would leave the room to let them "sort it out between them". Her excuse? She "didn't understand women as she'd only had sons, not daughters".

I wouldn't want anyone in my garden if not here and would ask her not do that and to arrange a time when I will be in as i feel she's invading my space.
I don't go shopping with mine so that's not a problem.
Husband's round there weekly after work (he works in the same area) so less pressure for them to visit/ be visited and we have no kids together.
Previous inlaws 3 hours away so no problems there, and no popping in.

"Also the expectation some MILs have of younger women in the family deferring to them."

I think that that is a good insight, 2rebecca. I know that my MOL is quite open about the fact that she had to defer to her MIL (and her own mother) and that she thought that, once they had died and she had her own DIL, that it would be "her turn" to be boss. She and her friends discuss this and think that the attitudes of the younger generation have deprived them of any chance of ever being in control.

Two people trying to set different boundaries. Never going to be easy.

It is possible a dil will mesh better with a mil if their respective values are similar.

Family background is not often an issue when the couple are dating etc

The mil will try and impose her structure and values on her entire family and the dil will push back by closing the ranks around her own immediate one.

"The mil will try and impose her structure and values on her entire family and the dil will push back by closing the ranks around her own immediate one."

Too right, MarshaBrady. My (atheist-Jewish) MOL thought it perfectly acceptable to tell me how she expected me to celebrate Christmas, in line with her family's traditions .

I got on with my mil like a dream for the first 7 years of my marriage then sil [who was my friend before marrying dh] had her dd and bang it changed over night, she would come and visit her friend 2 doors down from us and walk past the kids playing out the front without even acknowledging them, before she would always come in for a cuppa and a chat she would actually sit in the friends garden drinking beer all afternoon and not bother.
We had a huge fallout this year over the way she treated the kids and us dh has always been treated differently as he was the oldest and had a different dad, dh went to sort out the problems but even though we had written documentation of whet had happened between sil, her dd and our dd2 [cyber bullying,text messages] mil still wrote me a letter threatening to get the police onto dd2 if she didn't stop the bullying. None of the kids will call her granny anymore they just refer to her by her first name.
smil and fil however worship the ground they walk on and are always asking after them.

I agree with Morloth.

I think there are difficult MILs out there - and, in a generations time, they will be the endlessly chippy and complaining DILs on here at the moment.

But I think the MIL thing is also linked to the total contempt in which women beyond middle age are held.
In Britain a woman past 40 is often invisible and a creature of contempt to anyone except her family. They have little status and are expected to be silent and opinionless lest they receive the usual torent of abuse - old bag, old bitch, hag cow etc etc.
It is on here everyday

I like my MIL. She can be annoying though, but so can my mum. The difference is I tell my mum when she's annoyed me and we move on from there. MY FIL however is a bully and DH, his siblings and MIL idolise him for "rescuing" her and her kids from single motherhood after their biological dad walked out and away from their lives.

What annoys me particularly is MILs ability to conveniently forget things she doesn't agree with. I've got use to lit now that so am happy to keep repeating myself.

She's helpful, looks after DS once a week while I'm at work and adores him, so I can't hate her for that!

I think the "generational difference" between us and the generation before (our Mum and MILs) is begger than at any time in history...

Unless you have a very young Mum (My Mum and MIl are both in their 60s) they grew up after the war, with rationing, when women were just beginning to be something in the workforce (My Mum trained as a nurse but gave up work when she got married)....

The culture was very differnt, the homes were very different (both my Mum and MIL had small babies (me and DH) in houses with no central heating, no double glazing, in Scotland in the winter...so no wonder they go on all the time about babies needing socks on, and extra blankets because thats what they had to do...)...My Mumw anted to travel to NZ - she had family there - when she was about 23...she needed her FATHER'S written permission to do that, he didnl;t give it so she couldn;t go...

We, with our expectations and our lifestyles are very different to 1 generation above us, and there is just generally a huge clash...

AND, I know my Mum, she thinks like me, she supported me when I did things that she couldn't (not wild things, but my MIL is intimidated by the fact that I have degrees and used tolive in London), whereas I didn't grow up with my MIL so, to her, these things are a "culture clash" where they aren't with my own Mum.

\Does that make sense..?? I don't get on wioth my MIL but we don't argue or fight or anything, we are just from completely different worlds, and the things that are important to her tend not to be important to me (When we were getting married she was obsessed with the cake...when its Christmas her big worry is when she'll get to the shops for cream...) so we don't argue we just move in completely differnt worlds and I intimidate her...

I fell in love with my DP, NOT his family.

Again my MIL can be a right PITA but she is OK in (very) small doses.

My MIL is as mad as a box of frogs. She was totally fine with me until our wedding day, when she decided that she wasn't going to talk to me at all - I still don't know what to make of that one!

The day after I gave birth, they came down to visit. 'How are you?', she asked as I limped around trying to accommodate them (more fool me!). As soon as I began to answer she talked over me & changed the subject. So technically, she did ask!

They live almost 4 hours away, so we don't see them a lot. When DS was tiny, they visited fairly frequently. Now he's 1, they don't even call. DH phoned them last night & it was the first contact they'd had in over 2 months.

& yet MIL has been known to complain that she's 'missing everything' & suggest that we drop our entire lives to move closer to them!

We are going camping this coming week so that we can drop by & see them - DS is not up to an 8 hour round trip in one day & they refuse to make it possible to stay overnight there, because it's more important to hoard clutter in the spare room.

In my case, I'd say that it's not me with the problem!

I had a very good example of older age with my grandmother; formidable, elegant and wise. So it's not an age thing with me, my default nature would have been respect.

Unfortunately I had a few corkers (like Bonsoir - I sympathise!) and my position changed. It is a shame I know.

I agree there's a big generational shift.

My MIL is fabulous - will look after the children, do anything for us. But she is my MIL, not my friend. And it took a while for that to settle down - she'd have liked us to holiday and socialise together. But she's from a generation (or background) where socialising means the women sitting together all night, or staying at home with the children, while the men prop the bar up.

And she defers to my FIL, on everything - where to go on holiday, what to buy. I remember going to buy something for my & DH's house and she was absolutely shocked when I chose & bought it, without consulting DH. DH is quite happy for me to do that, and to boot, at that time, I was the higher earner! But she just couldn't understand that equality - I think at first she saw me as domineering.

So there's a big gap between us and our lives, so we'd never be 'mates'. But she respects that I can provide support to DH in a way that a woman more similar to her couldn't (he & I do similar jobs, have similar level of education, ambition, so on), and I am very fond of her, we have a common interest in the children, and I'm extremely grateful for all that she does for me, and for us as a family. So she is a 'friend' to me in that we both benefit from the other being around!

So for me, it's not about MIL being a replacement parent (to me or to my children), or about us being similar to one another: it's about respecting what each can bring to the family unit.

What really upsets me is that I have sons, and I read all the hatred towards mils; the condemnation of their ways and I think - that will be me. Because girls are closer to their mothers than sons are, generally, and her family will take precedent. I try to be close to my mil because she did a good enough job with dh for me to marry him, and choose him to be the father of my dcs. All of the mums keeping their ds s away from the mils, will be in the same pposition as the mil one day, just trying to be part of this precious persons (their ds) life. I look at ds (2) now and feel so sad that one day he may be forced to agree I am a bit crap at parenting/looking after dcs because his partner says so.

I am very lucky. My MIL is an amazing woman, so kind, calm, generous and a great Italian cook!
My DS absolutely adores her and im pretty sure DD is developing a similar infatuation (she's only 6 months!)

Infact MIL is having DD today and my mum is having DS so me and DH can go out to watch the football in peace.

I can sort of understand when people complain about their MIL. When I was a teenager I didnt get on with my boyfriend-at-the-time father, we just didnt gel. Maybe that is the case for some people and their MIL.

I agree with Marsha about respect - all the women in my family have matured well and there is a tradition of respect for the wisdom that age and experience confer.

But, of course, not everyone does become wiser with age. Many people live life on automatic pilot - and their reflexes become ever more anachronistic with the passing years.