Yes, I am biased! I always treat my daughter-in-law better than my son
As scientists say mothers-in-law are hard-wired to take their child’s side in arguments, MARION McGILVARY retorts...
WHAT a surprise that yet another team of ‘experts’ has decided mothers-in-law are to blame for conflict in families. Scientists at Arizona State University have found we much-maligned women have an innate bias towards our own offspring, and that we’ve evolved to take their side in arguments regardless of right and wrong.
As such, their study of 300 people found that mothers had more quarrels with their daughters-in-law than their sons.
What nonsense. As a motherin-law twice over, it’s certainly not true in my family. I love my son’s wife as if she were one of my own daughters — except I’m far more careful about her feelings than I am with the two I gave birth to.
As far as I’m concerned, she’s a saint. Yes, she never answers her phone when I call or reads my texts, but she gives the best hugs and tells me she loves me more often than my son does.
I’m fed up with being portrayed as a handbag-swinging harridan. Take my children’s side in every argument? On the contrary, I don’t hold back from telling my four (two boys and two girls) when they’re getting on my last nerve.
It’s a mother’s prerogative to sometimes say things to her offspring that no one else will, and vice versa — but the girl who married my son is somebody else’s baby and mine only to cherish, not criticise.
As for my daughter’s husband, well I treat him with respect and care, the way you do anyone who has the happiness of your loved ones in their hands (even if I might observe that those hands rarely see the inside of a dishwasher).
MOST of my female friends now have married children, yet not one of us has turned into a nagging harpy. But the mother-in-law is easy prey. Society encourages us to despise her. It’s an acceptable form of sexism, clinging on in plain sight.
At best, it’s a lazy, knee-jerk reaction based on an outdated notion of 1950s womanhood — a person who no longer exists, if she ever did. And at worst, it’s just misogyny.
Frankly, I’m a bloody nice mother-in-law, and am ready to take on anyone who says otherwise with my Fendi clutch.
I have an alternative explanation for the findings by Arizona State University.
Based on my experience, it’s possible to lose one’s temper with both mother and motherin-law — but arguments with your own flesh and blood are less likely to end in fury, and often feel less seismic because you’ve had years of practice at picking at each other and are used to each other’s annoying ways.
If you get into a fight with someone who doesn’t know all your little flaws inside out already, well, the fallout can be more dramatic. So I’ve always believed it’s best avoided at all costs.
The research also showed it was daughters, rather than sons, who had the biggest problem. But of course that would be the case — since men are rarely tasked with any of the emotional labour that causes friction.
Look at all we mothers-inlaw do. We are the unpaid childminders, happy to take care of our grandchildren and love them with mindless devotion.
Do we think that perhaps the odd chocolate button won’t kill them, while their parents think sugar is akin to crack? Do we let them watch TV, kiss the dogs, and stay up a bit too late? Maybe.
Some of us are too lax for today’s organic kale-snacking mothers, or too strict for the attachment parenting brigade who still have their six-yearold in the bed.
But most of us are wise enough to know that with other people’s children, we keep our opinions to ourselves, even when they stick in our throats like the damn kale crisps.
My beloved daughter-in-law came to us for a two-week holiday after meeting my son on his gap year, then stayed for several years. They later married and lived with me until they could afford to move out. I never had a cross word with her. Yes, I’m sure I got on her nerves, but she never got on mine.
Here’s the thing about marrying into another family — no matter how happy the marriage, it’s a culture shock. We each grow up in our own little tribes with our odd ways that we think are perfectly normal, then wham! You fall in love and are confronted with a whole other clan.
Yet in the first few months of my own marriage, my husband’s mother said that if we ever argued she was always going to take my side. How could you not love someone so ready to fight your corner?
However, she refused to be referred to as my mother-inlaw. Such are the negative connotations of the word.
P
ERSONALLY, I don’t care. The important part is ‘mother’. We are all mothers who love our children, and normally the people they marry, too.
Of course, familial bliss is not always the result. Yet when things do go wrong, it’s often the daughter-in-law who has the power — especially where there are grandchildren — and causes the problems.
One of my friend’s daughters-in-law put a spy cam on her when she was watching her children, then complained she wasn’t taking proper care of them. Another left the house when her husband’s
She’s someone else’s baby and not mine to criticise
mother came to stay and didn’t return, except to sleep, until the mother-in-law left three days later. Yet another refuses to allow her children to have any contact with their grandmother because the two don’t get on.
For someone in a new relationship, it is often hard to accept that another woman is close to her partner; one who has known them for longer, in ways they never can, and to whom they have obligations.
Who wants to share a husband or even a wife with their mum? Naturally there are adjustments.
But why this has to end with the demonisation of the mother, just because some people don’t know how to share their toys, is beyond me.
I actually have a non-relationship with the partner of one of my children. They live far away and we just don’t know each other. I always worry she doesn’t like me, but she’s devoted to my son.
So I’m resigned to the fact we won’t be friends… but friendly is enough. As long as my son is happy, I am. We can’t all be braiding each other’s hair and singing Kumbaya.
Meanwhile, my other daughter has kept her latest boyfriend secret for a year, which means he probably thinks I’m Medusa in a headscarf. Still, there are advantages to being feared instead of loved, especially if things go wrong in their relationship.
I’m a nice mother-in-law, but hurt my babies and you’ve crossed a line. The previous chap is still terrified of me.