I'm So Over The Negative MIL Discourse As A Mom Of Men
Why does the warm blanket of sisterhood, of feminism, not unfurl far enough to include a mother-in-law?
The headlines are always there in the background, but really start coming in fast and furious right before Thanksgiving. “10 Ways to Set Boundaries with Your Mother-in-Law,” or “How To Tell Your Mother-in-Law To Mind Her Own Business” or “Your Mother-in-Law Survival Plan for the Holidays.” They feel like a punch in the stomach every time. Already the world is deciding they need a complicated plan to survive women like me for the holidays. I am a mother of four sons. I am also a mother-in-law. Someone to be tolerated, survived, pushed away, talked about, othered.
Or at least that’s what the world has decided for all mothers-in-law. That we are the worst. And I guess we were always the worst. I guess we must be stopped before we start doing whatever it is that mothers-in-law do that drive everyone crazy. Make the wrong food, criticize someone’s parenting style, watch Fox News. I’ve never really known what the common denominator is that makes mothers-in-law universally hateable except they’re not the main mom. They are mom-adjacent and this means they don’t get to join the club.
I wonder about this all the time. Why does the warm blanket of sisterhood, of feminism, not unfurl far enough to include a mother-in-law? I wonder where it all started. Was there just one mean mother-in-law hundreds of years ago who rolled her eyes or wore white to her son’s wedding like a crazy person and she set the standard for who we all would become? Uncool, Unfun. Unwelcome because of the first two things that are pre-decided for all mothers-in-law but also because we are the moms of the sons, I guess?
I’m new to the mother-in-law game but I’m going to tell you, I’m good at it. I was looking forward to it. To welcoming more people to love into my already loved-up life. I really like the partners my sons have chosen. I would be friends with them if I were younger and cooler. They have all introduced me to at least one thing I didn’t know about before. Like contouring. And Book Tok. And thrifting. One of my sons has a girlfriend who invites me to stay with her and her roommate when I visit and we all watch 90 Day Fiancee together and eat snacks in our pajamas and play with the cats. I never had the chance to live with other women and so my nights there are sacred to me. I love every detail. The little chocolates my son’s girlfriend puts on my bed. Their sunlit apartment full of good smells and twinkly lights and the kind of friendship I didn’t get to enjoy when I was their age
It is the same when I visit my one and only daughter-in-law (so far). We drink wine together and play board games. We walk her dog, which we call my grandpuppy. We talk about politics, about books we both like, about my son sometimes but not all the time. He is not the point of us… all the time.
Another son’s fiancee is trying to teach me to crochet. We’ve taken Christmas cookie baking classes together and sung karaoke together. We talk about her upcoming wedding. We go for walks with her dog, also my grandpuppy.
It might sound like a brag or an anomaly in the in-law algorithm, but I love these women. I try really hard to not wreck that love by doing the dumb things. I do not make the wrong food. I do not comment on their decor or their clothes or their lives. I do not watch Fox News.
And yet, the world still sees me as a Mother-in-Law. The uncool kind which seems to be the only kind. Some of my friends complain about their mothers-in-law. They come up with reasons to not include them in the lives of their children, perhaps not seeing the irony that they, too, will be a mother-in-law someday. That they, too, might suffer this weird fate of everyone in the world being mad at you by way of some title you didn’t earn.
I submit to you now that there might be another way forward with the way we look at mothers-in-law. Maybe this tendency to throw up walls before they might be necessary doesn’t help anyone. Maybe we can jump off this lame merry-go-round and try a rebrand. The mothers-in-law from these days are Gen X, after all. We’re down to hang. We’re open to notes as a generation who spent way too much time taking care of ourselves.
Maybe we are just regular women who raised your partners, the people you presumably like some of the time. Maybe we are nicer than you might think. Maybe it’s okay to be friends. To talk about things that have nothing to do with this relationship and just eat some cheese together and discuss silly things. Pet names.Television. Sweaters.
Maybe some of us are jerks. But maybe you could wait a beat before deciding that all of us are jerks.
Maybe give that mother-in-law survival guide a pass for now. Maybe let’s all just try to thrive together instead.
Jen McGuire is a contributing writer for Romper and Scary Mommy. She lives in Canada with four boys and teaches life writing workshops where someone cries in every class. When she is not traveling as often as possible, she’s trying to organize pie parties and outdoor karaoke with her neighbors. She will sing Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” at least once, but she’s open to requests.
