Figuring out the in-law thing

The realization washed over me while I was still in the hospital after my second son was born.

Someday, it will happen.

I will become the mother-in-law.

I don’t know how it is in other cultures, but in mine – white, middle-class, suburban America – so often, her mother is the mom and his is the mother-in-law.  Mom is the one who can come to the hospital when the grandkids are born.  She can stay and cook meals in your kitchen and take care of everyone while you get used to having a real, live baby to care for all of a sudden.  She gets the first emails and phone calls and pictures.  She will get the “HELP ME” panicked phone call the first time the baby has a fever because she is the mom’s mom and who do you really call when you are desperate to know something about motherhood?  The woman who raised you.  Who taught you everything you know.  Not the woman who raised the guy who can sleep through the baby crying, takes 20 minutes to change a diaper, and overlooks an entire sinkful of dirty dishes.

We all have our hopes and fears when we meet our mothers-in-law, no matter at what stage of the relationship it was.  We all want to get along, to be liked, and most of all to be accepted.  For many of us, it’s challenging at first.  His family has different traditions, expectations, inside jokes.  We keep at it for the sake of family harmony, and the more we get to know our spouses, the easier it is to sympathize with their mothers.  {For example, we discover that she did make him do dishes and sighs equally over his inability to return phone calls in a timely manner.}

But absolutely nothing sparked a feeling of camaraderie in me like having two boys and realizing that I might not ever have a daughter.  So I’ll be their mom for a lifetime, of course, but once they find partners, I’d better get used to being the mother-in-law.  In the meantime, I’m working on being the best daughter-in-law I can be.  Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

1.  Keep in touch.  I realized the day I came home from the hospital with Theo that my mother-in-law hadn’t seen him yet.  My husband was already back at work and he is normally the one who Skypes with his parents, but I had the sudden certainty that she would want to glimpse that tiny little face.  I called, she practically hung up on me in her excitement to get to the computer, and she cooed over him for the next 15 minutes.  I think it made us both happy.  Sure, I’m more likely to call my own mom and have J call his, but direct contact that I initiate does help pave an easier path for everything else.

2.  Give the benefit of the doubt.  This is especially important for me if I hear about something secondhand that rubs me the wrong way.  Now I try to figure out what the simplest, kindest explanation is for it and go with that.  I hope she does the same, because having someone else in the middle is not the easiest or best way to pass along information or make plans, and misunderstandings happen.

3.  Switch roles.  I ask myself, “Would I do this or ask this if it were one of my boys and his partner?”  Or, even better, “Would I feel this way if it were my mom?”  It astonished me how often I realized that if my own mom said or did something, I’d let it roll right off my back.  So now I try to do the same for his mom.

4.  Bond over the grandkids.  My mother-in-law has three people in her life that rival Mary Poppins.  Yes, the males in the house are practically perfect in every way.  Not even I can get away with even the smallest criticism of them.  But you know what?  My own mom always said that you can never have too many people that really love you.  It’s true, and now I think it’s pretty wonderful that she is another person in the world who absolutely, unconditionally loves my munchkins.  They need that, and so do I.

5.  Find the win-win.  For me, this is letting her have time alone with the boys while I escape for some time to myself.  This gets easier (and better) with every trip as the boys get bigger.  This past visit, I got to take a sunshiney walk to Starbucks to get some chai tea.  She listened to Theo’s monitor and colored with Sebastian.  Every single one of us was happier for it.

6.  Give credit where it’s due.  I’m sure in some cases, the man in your life is wonderful in spite of his upbringing.  But for most of them, she had a pivotal role.  In my case, J’s mother is responsible for his love of music, books, and travel, not to mention the fact that he is one of the kindest people I know.

7.  Ask for stories.  My mother-in-law grew up in Budapest, so her childhood was dramatically different from mine, J’s, or our boys’.  Yet I rarely asked her about it before Sebastian was born.  Now I can’t get enough.  The stories are not only interesting and occasionally funny, but they offer insight into so much of the rest of her personality and style.  Plus the stories she has from when J was born remind me that she gets it: early parenthood is hard and sometimes even practically perfect boys have meltdowns.

8.  Have your own relationship.  I spent a longer time than I care to admit trying to duplicate the way my husband interacts with his mom.  In other words, I tried to ignore or gloss over misunderstandings, hurt feelings, or confusion.  It didn’t work for me, but I figured he knew best what worked for the rest of them.  Well, turns out that I had to just be my own person, and handle it my own way, which was to ask for clarification and speak directly and honestly about my own feelings.  I think this is the single best thing I have done for my relationship with my mother-in-law.

That’s what I’ve got so far.  I know some people have much more challenging relationships with their in-laws, so for those of you I can only offer this bit of wisdom from my mother:  If you can’t be a good example, at least you can be a terrible warning.  Whenever someone does something that makes you crazy, you, too, can think of this and laugh (and avoid doing whatever it was)!

Any other tips out there?  I figure if I can sort out this role, maybe that’s a bit of the way toward someday being the kind of mother-in-law that my son’s partner will love.

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This post is part of the Pour Your Heart out series.  You can read more here: