Come and talk to us (and gransnetters) about the MIL/DIL relationship

[KatMumsnet]

Hello

As lots of you will know, we have a sister site, Gransnet, which celebrated its third birthday recently. And we've been having a think about topics that MNers and GNers have in common, or might be able to share info on in a useful, supportive and hopefully interesting way.

Last month we collaborated with Gransnet on this thread (also here) about the perimenopause, which lots seemed to find useful.

So we thought we'd take a step into a slightly more controversial area (at least according to 1970s comedians, and a few threads MN): the relationships between daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law - and top tips for how women can work together, inter-generationally, for the benefit of each other and for the DCs/GCs.

If you have a great relationship with your MIL, what advice would you pass on to others for achieving this? What's the one (constructive ) suggestion you'd make to anyone who finds their MIL a bit difficult?

If you could really speak your mind (perhaps you already can), what one thing would you say to your MIL - good, bad or indifferent? What does she already do that's amazingly helpful or joy-bringing or quietly constructive? And/or, what's the fly in the ointment?

And if you find your MIL difficult, and your relationship with her has broken down (or is close to doing so), is there anything either of you could do or say to start building bridges? Or are some relationships best left alone?

If you are yourself a MIL, what's it like - and how do you keep your relationship with your DIL on an even keel (if you do)?

We should stress we're not trying to foment discord here; studies show that grandparents en masse give up huge amounts of time to help with childcare and/or give financial and emotional support to their children and their partners, and lots of parents know the joy of handing over their precious darlings to the grandparents and running away having a few hours/days off.

And we're not excluding fathers-in-law or sons-in-law, either - as ever, feel free to tell us about those relationships too. But of course the DIL/MIL demographic is likely to emerge strongly from a MN/GN crossover. And we thought it would be interesting to break through the pop culture perception of MIL/DIL relationships and see how you think the land really lies (in a completely unscientific way). Of course, you may even think the whole issue is hugely overstated, and that millions of DILs and MILs all over the country are just quietly getting on with enjoying their relationships and running their lives.

There will be a parallel thread running on Gransnet about the same issue, and we'll be copying and pasting comments between the two - so if there's something you'd like to ask a community of MILs, now's your chance. And of course do feel free to get yourself a a Gransnet log-in and pop over to say hello.

My MIL is lovely and the best granny ever, but based on my experiences over the last decade and a half, my top tip for MILs is: if your DIL seems reluctant to discuss plans to have DC, for goodness' sake don't keep bringing it up, or at least have the decency to hassle your DS rather than your DIL. You have no idea what issues there may be and if there are sad things going on, they won't necessarily want to discuss them with someone who lives and breathes for their GC. Secondly (maybe just me) please stop picking political arguments on public transport!

I have enormous respect for my MIL. Her son chose to marry someone from a totally different culture who can't communicate with her. On the day of our marriage she promised to treat me like her daughter and she has done exactly that. I have never felt disapproval or criticism from her despite the huge differences between us.
I think the most important thing for me is respecting boundaries. She has never interfered in our relationship, or tried to tell me how to raise our children. From what I can tell, I think she can see how much I love her son, and she loves me for that.

Hello

Just to let you know, Gransnet are going to be running a Q&A with Relate and The Grandparents' Association on the topic of relationship breakdown within grandparent-parent relationships, and how these situations can affect grandchildren/children. Do pop over and add a question if you'd like to.

Many thanks for all your thoughts so far.

No real issues, but in an ideal world...

A MIL would treat all her grandchildren equally, offer to take them out & not just wait until they're asked to babysit.

They'd treat all their children equally & realise that just because they never ask for help, doesn't mean it's not needed. Being the 'strong' one is exhausting.

I have a lovely MIL who is very tactful and helps a lot with our children when she can (she doesn't live in the UK). Recently she stayed 2 weeks, sent us out for dinner, spa etc, and looked after both (young and somewhat complicated) children when we went away for 2 nights! We are so grateful. She also came for 2 weeks when each child was born, did all the meals, some of the night duties, washing, nursery run etc. She'd have stayed longer if needed. She followed my menus, made the usual food we like, and fitted in as best she could with the family. (I should say I got a huge amount of help from my own parents too!)

When many years back there was trouble between my dh and I, she was very tactful and took time to help my dh understand my p.o.v. I've always been grateful for that.

Marking for later

I get on ok with my MIL, I certainly wish we had a closer relationship but I don't think we ever will. We're both quite head strong women and I think we both grate each other but just try and make the best of it.
I don't the situation is helped that we live so far away from each other, so the time we do spend together is days rather than a couple of hours here and there, so by the end of it I think we all feel a bit fed up with each other.

Over on the Gransnet thread, Pollaidh has said:

"when it comes to the bringing up of children, The Parents are always right, even when they are clearly wrong. "

I have a very difficult relationship with my Mil. My husband says he hates her, she was quite a cruel and uncaring mother, to my husband especially.

I could write a book about her abusive behaviour over the years but you will just have to take my word for it. Her father committed suicide when she was young which must have been horrendous. I think it must be where her anger comes from but she takes it out on her children and makes them so unhappy.

After my first baby my feelings towards her changed, and shifted from sympathetic tolerance to out right anger, to be honest. The thought of her hurting my kids in the way she hurt hers and her other grandchildren made me feel really really angry at her.

I don't feel angry at her now though. We see her so infrequently she really isn't part of our lives. I feel sad for my husband. He has emotional scars but is thankfully a wonderful and happy dad to our kids.

I tend to think that if you have a good and healthy relationship with your son then you will have a good relationship with your DIL.

I love my MiL. She is my mum in law, and we get along really well because she doesn't try to mother me.

Unlike my own mother, who I constantly fall out with because she will not stop mothering me even though I am a grown woman who has lived independently since I was 16 years old

I think the secret to getting along with your adult family members, regardless of biological relationship, is probably: do not treat them like a child.

I have known my PIL for 20 years. For the first 13 they were amazing. We would spend Christmas with them, go on holiday with them - I absolutely couldn't complain at all. They were wonderful. That was until we had a baby! I soon learnt that it was wasn't my baby it was 'their grandchild' and if we ever saw them they would take the baby away and have their 'time' with their grandchild. Whenever they would come to stay they would take over and act as the parent. They would be great babysitters and so I just learnt to hide my annoyance as the kids were happy. Since then they have 5 grandchildren (3 with me) and 2 from DD. They have always idolized their DD - she is attractive , clever and successful. Now that she has 2 DD I am always being compared negatively. Everything I say is wrong and everything my husband (their DS) is right. My MIL almost flinches if any of the children show me affection or hug me. She cannot cope with the idea that someone not related to her is bringing up her grandchildren. I went to stay with them last summer for a few days so they could see the kids. They would go out everyday with kids without me and leave me in the house on my own. I had my last baby late last year and was seriously ill. They kindly looked after the kids while I was in hospital but would not let me bond with the baby once I was better. They kept saying how they wanted to take her home to bring up themselves. Instead of encouraging me to bond with her they would take her into a different room to have 'their time'. I was talking to a good friend about the situation and we agreed that we will try when our time comes to get on with our DILs. If you are genuine and want to help I think you will have no problem at all. Don't try to be a pseudo parent unless your DIL wants you to !! It is so hard with small children finding someone you trust to look after them. I think something has snapped in me now and they either back off or we will see them heaps less which is a shame.

Unfortunately my MIL doesn't live very close to us, but if she did I'd absolutely love it. Mainly because neither of my parents (who live less less than 3 miles from us) are showing any real excitement at the prospect of becoming grandparents for the first time. ?? ( they didn't even come to our wedding last year)

MIL has always been lovely from the day I met her ( think she was glad that someone was finally taking her only son off her hands!) and had no problem when he decided to up sticks from Northern Ireland to the Midlands to be with me three years ago.

As it stands the only grandparent who to have a relationship with our impending arrival is a flight away. Wish I could swap mine with his!

Anyone else have a similar situation?

They kept saying how they wanted to take her home to bring up themselves

This is just plain odd. I do wonder why people let their PILs get away with this rubbish, though (though I do realise that with a new baby isn't the time you feel at your most combative and completely see why anyone wouldn't feel up to a row). I have regrets about the relationship I have with my PILs but none of them are to do with the bits where I stood up for myself and told them they were overstepping the mark!

My mother had a very poor relationship with her own MIL - Dad had left the northern area he was from, come South to work, met Mum and settled down South - strike 1.
Grandma only had 2 sons, no DDs, as did her sister - she told Mum that she'd never had a DD and didn't know how to relate to women as daughters (she'd had 2 sisters but that didn't count, apparently). Strike 2.
I was born 1st (a girl!). Strike 3.
Mum's next baby was still born and Dad had a nervous breakdown - Strike 4.
When the next one was born, my Dad was unavoidably away (years later and having had my own DC I can fully understand why this pissed Mum off for years) and my grandparents refused to come down and help until he came back. My lovely nan was the one who looked after me.

My Dad, otoh, got on brilliantly with my lovely nan - called her Mum, loved her possibly even more then my Mum did - I know he was more upset when she died!

So. My first nearly-MIL - nightmare, but then I was a gauche teen and didn't know how to respond to her "social" manners - I felt very intimidated and could tell that she and her DH didn't think I was good enough for their son. She ended up never talking to me - I would sit on a chair in their living room while she and her DS had their little cozy chats - good job I never married him, she became a complete nightmare!

And my current one? I met her when I visited in Australia, she seemed lovely, I was determined to make things work with her because DH was very attached to her (not as much as the previous one though!) and as I was likely to move out here, then it would be very important to get on.
She is immensely helpful, but...
She's be here every day if she could. She likes to be helpful but to the point of interference, which can grate.
One year when I took the DSs back to the UK I got home to find that she and DH had moved a load of stuff around, and broken some of my things, then hidden them and lied about it. I felt as though I had no place in my own home - a possible over-reaction but based on the fact that whenever DH wants to do something around the place, he calls his mother over and they do it together. They are the partnership, I am just here too. I suspect this is largely because he can tell her what to do and she won't argue, whereas I'll ask for justification for why he wants X done, especially if it seems as though Y would be a better option.
She still takes it upon herself to prune/plant/weed/change our garden; to the point where I've actually given up doing anything in it now because I don't feel it's mine. DH doesn't care - he thinks she's a great gardener and is helping.
I still get on with her but it's more of an effort now - I find her and DH's conversation to be very difficult to join in with because I disagree with a lot of what they both say, especially when they get started on their hobbyhorse topics (Immigrants, bitching about neighbours/work people) so I tend to tune them out. They also both converse while a tv programme we're supposed to be watching is on, and then both turn to me to find out what's going on!

She has been very supportive though and I do care about her and will miss her whenever she goes; but we're not best friends and I probably wouldn't see her on my own - I'll go out with her without DH but always with one or both of my DSs.

She probably thinks I'm a PITA as well, to be fair.

Me and MIL. We've come to accept each other. I don't think we'll ever be friends.

I find her very hard work. She's quite childish and self-centred. She calls several times a week but will never speak to me; she always asks for DP straight away. Never a "how are you doing?" She really relies on DP (even though we live 250 miles away) to sort out her problems. I think it says a lot that she doesn't really have any friends and the rest of the family didn't talk to her for ages - only her brother does again since the birth of our DD.

She worked before she had DP, raised him as a single mother but hasn't had a job since he was born. He's 31 now. She's still on job-seekers allowance but everytime the job centre suggests a course or a job she's got an excuse. It drives me crazy really.

I'm quite sure she thinks I'm a spoiled brat. I'm from a very middle-class background, grew up abroad and travelled loads. She's very working class and seems to live in a totally different world from me. I don't know what she thinks of how we are bringing up DD, and to be completely frank I don't care. We see each other 3/4 times a year and that's enough for me.

I am very very lucky - my MIL (and FIL) are wonderful, generous people who adore my children. They are respectful toward me without it feeling as though I am an outsider (exh family were formal somehow, treating me as though I was a VIP so it felt awkward all the time)

My MIL told me once that her sons made a choice to be with her DIL's and so her only option is to love us. She threw herself into embracing us (3 very different women) without being smothering or interfering. She asks to see the children as she misses them - this even though she has my sons every day after school by choice. She sneaks dinner plated up for me into my kitchen when I have been working away and knows her son probably hasn't thought to do it. She would never presume to overrule me even if she disagrees and would defend her family against all comers with her dying breath. I love her very much to be honest, she is one of the nicest people I know

My MIL made it absolutely clear from the outset that I was not welcome in her home and that her son was too good for me. She adored her oldest dgc but was less interested in subsequent dgc, until eventually she declared that DH and I had "too many children" and the PILs cut off contact. She was very difficult but I tried hard with her and I still feel so sad about it, especially as I would have loved a mother figure in my life, or just a friend of her age and experience. There should be an adoption scheme for those of us who long for a mother/grandmother figure to share the little things in life with.

I get on with my mil but she and my fil are very different to my family and I struggle to bond with them.

They have raised a fab son who is the best husband and father I could hope for and for that I'm thankful. They are generous, helping us out with money and looking after our dd one day a week. And I am very greatful and owe them a lot.

I hate saying this and it will make me sound horrible, but they are not emotional people. They don't hug, or kiss or tell each other or us they love them which I find difficult to relate to and this has held back our relationship and makes it difficult for me to talk to them.

My mil is quite old fashioned. She is very house proud and my fil doesn't lift a finger apart from baking. I am a slattern and I always feel like I'm being judged on the cleanliness of my house. DH does the majority of the housework and I think she feels it should be me doing it all like she does.

I hope I can have a good relationship with any future daughter/son in laws. Sort of a mix between my oarents and dh's would be perfect!

On the Gransnet thread, FlicketyB has said:

"I think we sometimes invest too much time and effort trying to analyse how relationships ought to work.

In normal life we do not like everyone we meet, at work and out we meet people who are mean, miserable, opinionated, interfering, charming, a joy to know, kind and considerate. Just because you love a man or your sons/daughters love their partners it isn't going to follow that all their relatives are equally delightful. Any relatives they have will be a mixed bunch, some will be delightful some will not, no different from ordinary life. I was fortunate, my in laws were delightful, although I didn't like some of the wider family and DDiL is delightful as is her family.

However my paternal grandmother did not like my mother and visited that dislike on me because I was too like her. Our personalities couldn't have been more different and antagonistic. I realised this quite young and it never bothered me.

I think people just expect too much of the Mil/DiL relationship. If you do not get on with your Mil/DiL, you probably wouldn't have got on had you met outside the family relationship. You probably have relations of your own that are not your cup of tea. Back off, cool down and stop feeling guilty or angry because the relationship doesn't work. It will probably do it a power of good."

I don't really care about my MIL and whether I get on with her, she is quite aggressive with DP and has favourite children, of whom DP isn't one.

I do care about the fact that she shows the only the most basic interest in her GCs, and her offspring have followed her lead. This means that our only true extended family is on my side.

I think in MILs, GPs in general, hold a powerful position in a family and don't realise they have a duty to encourage the rest of the family to bond and mix. Quite often they see themselves as the head and don't allow the next generation to take over. They can be ungracious and selfish and need to learn when to step down. Respect for elders is great, but there has to be some give and take. It's not enough to say "I gave you life so you should be grateful for that".

i think the respect is earned basically. if you were a good parent, if you treated your children fairly and equally, if you were loving and accepting and supportive to your children you are likely to have a good relationship with them when they are adults, get married and have children of their own. maybe even your views on parenting will be looked for if you did a good job of it.

the problem arises when that is not the case and nothing has ever been resolved or worse the abuse/favouritism/poor behaviour etc continues but there is a sense of entitlement that you should be respected, listened to and doted on by your adult children just because you are older or are GPs etc.

good relationships with your adult children's partners and your grandchildren requires a good relationship with your child. dils can't magic away history and issues and angst by performing their role nicely. mils can't magically wipe the slate clean by buying nice pressies and being willing to babysit for their grandchildren. if there is crap from the past lingering it needs resolving. most of the time when you see women posting on here abotu what to do about their ILs the problem isn't really 'their' relationship at all but that families drama and pain and unfairness that has been going on since way before the dil came on the scene.

I think sometimes it's a hard relationship because, obviously, a DIL will love their husband very much and it can be hard to see him upset by the MIL's behaviour towards him.

I have a good relationship with mil, and love her as a family member. From the minute dh and I were together I became a member of the family, so welcome round any/all the time but also expected to pitch in. Being young and ungrateful I didn't really recognise this at the time.
I think a lot of this comes down to her personality, she is genuine, uncomplicated, assertive (which I am not so found strange to begin with). She winds me up from time to time as I do her but that is families!

Nd she's a brilliant granny!
I feel quite disloyal writing all this as though it reflects on my own mum which is stupid. I feel very similar about my mum - very lucky to have the family I do!

I tolerate MIL. She really likes me and sings my praises but it's at the expense of DH 'oh you're so good to put up with him', which upsets me as it's clear that BIL is the golden child who can do no wrong. He is unemployed and living on benefits and she cooks his meals daily and makes loads of excuses for him about why he doesn't work 'he has problems' (he's lazy and takes too many drugs). However, both DH and I work and tend to spend our money on meals out and the cinema occasionally, both things MIL has an opinion on 'you spend far too much on food, I can't believe you've gone out for dinner again, you went out last week.' It's our money, we earn it and we'll spend it on whatever we like!

She is forever moaning about how DH doesn't ring her everyday, he never has done and isn't going to start, as almost every conversation they have ends in an argument about one of his shortcomings. We get answer phone messages at random times saying 'it's only me, you are probably busy so you can't talk to me', we'll actually it's 5pm on a weeknight and neither of us is home from work.

I never feel at ease in PIL's house. She's forever saying 'make yourself at home' but then huffing and puffing about a cushion being out of place, or that we might want to watch something that's not one of the soaps or BGT. However, when she comes to our house she clearly lists all the things she wants to watch whilst she's there and ensures she does so.

She holds grudges and silently seethes about things for a few days before exploding and causing loads of upset. It'll be a tiny comment someone's made that's she's taken the wrong way.

She does loves DSS very much, but never reprimands him and tells DH and I off for doing so. When DSS has stayed with them for a week he comes back rude and irritable as he's not checked on any of his cheeky comments or behaviour, his bedtime is not enforced and he is fed from dawn to dusk. He has an intolerance to fatty foods and gets horrible sulphuric burps so he doesn't eat anything like that here. MIL thinks what rubbish, if I want to feed him a full English done in lard the I will. She also twists things that he says in order to pick arguments with us, 'DGS said you don't give him pocket money, we'll I think he needs to get it and you should give him£2 a week.' We've talked about pocket money with DSS and he decided he'd rather not get it and just occasionally get a nice surprise or something he's asked for. She does this all the time, 'DGS says he can't watch normal TV in his room, why haven't you set up his TV?' We have set up his TV and he can watch it, but he uses it for DVDs and XBox instead.

She also tends to drink too much and start arguments or get on her high horse about things. I just tend to smile and nod, until she starts immigrant bashing and then I leave the room. She has many xenophobic ideas which neither DH nor I share nor wish to hear.

Sorry for the essay! All this sounds really petty written down, but it drives me mad. Luckily she lives 300 miles away!