Dad should stay out of daughter’s blow-up until he knows more

Stay out of it, knowing you don’t know everything you think you know.

You saw your daughter behave badly, yes. But unless you’re in this marriage yourself, you don’t know the backstory.

Your daughter could be emotionally abusive, and that would warrant prompt involvement by bystanders — to let her know her behavior is not OK and to let Jack know you see this and will stand up for him. This is an especially powerful stand for an in-law to take.

It also is possible, however, that Jack routinely strands your daughter at key childrearing moments, and the outburst you witnessed — while still wrong, almost always — could have been a onetime loss of composure over a valid, long-running complaint. Do you really want to be the dad who sided against your daughter in that conflict?

It could also be a one-off, a freestanding flip-out by an exhausted person who quickly regretted it and who poses a low risk to do it again.

Humility is our best friend. It urges us to say to ourselves in these situations: “I know what I witnessed, but do I know what it meant?”

Sometimes the answer will be yes, and you will act accordingly. But asking yourself that question in this case — I hope — rewrites the script for what to say if you do draw your daughter aside:

“You really lit into Jack earlier. Are you OK?”

Since “you” in this context can mean your daughter, or her and Jack as a couple, or all of them as a family, it allows your daughter to interpret it as concern untethered to any specific assumptions — which means (no guarantees, obviously) you are less likely to escalate tension, and thus more likely to find out whether this family needs your help.