Advice Columns

Geez. I'm sure Grandma has the best of intentions, but what she may not realize is that, no matter how close she is to her son and DIL, she'll still be considered "company". And as such, her DIL will probably feel like she has to be "on" and entertaining and showered and dressed when all she'll probably feel like doing is stay in her PJs for days and collapse with exhaustion.

I remember when my in-laws visited shortly after Daughter #1 was born - I was still recovering from the birth, and yet my MIL made it clear that she expected to be waited on hand and foot. And she wondered why we didn't invite her over more often.

I realize people may think this is awful but I think that when you have a son in a heterosexual relationship, and they are having a child, then you have to understand that your DIL may not be as comfortable with you during the birth/breastfeeding/ect as you want her to be. And perhaps less comfortable than she is with her own mother. People seem to forget that the new parents are going through huge changes in addition to the excitement of the new baby, and that for the woman this involves a potentially very uncomfortable adjustment to new functions of her body. I've had a few friends whose MIL felt they were "unfair" because they were not, say, comfortable breastfeeding in front of the MIL. It didn't help that they were also overbearing and not understanding that grandma =/= parent. Yes, it is your grandchild but it is their child.

My sister went through some of that with her MIL, whom she got along really well with actually -- but she's really close to our mom, and like, it's her MOM. It's not so strange that she's closer to her than to her MIL. I think her MIL (who has since passed away, sadly) felt a little like a second banana as far as time spent with the baby. And you don't want that, but it's also hard to just turn on some level of closeness that you don't have with someone, especially in as life-changing and energy-draining a situation as having a new baby. My mom was there advising her on nursing and helping her latch and stuff, and she was never going to be comfortable at that same level with her MIL. Having my mom there was support; having her MIL there was more like having company.

I agree that guests are always guests. I think if there were someone the grandmother could stay with, that could possibly help. But the bottom line seems to be that DiL wants time to herself, her husband and the baby.

I have to say... sometimes I do think MiL's forget, in general, that their DiL will be closer to her own mother. It's really not (necessarily) a slight. Of course, to play the devil's advocate it is still the mother in law's son... so it's tricky.

No dilemma for me - I'm not close to my MIL in the slightest. She endeared herself to me (not) right from the get-go when we had our first daughter, first by doing the "wait on me" thing that I mentioned, and then by informing me that I was doing breastfeeding all wrong and should be giving my newborn daughter cereal.

Older people have some crazy ideas about child rearing. The shit that my grandmother did my mother would be considered child abuse these days. My mother, born in December, was regularly left outdoors on the front porch, wrapped in blankets, to take in "fresh air." She lived in Central New York, just a hop, skip, and a jump away from a giant windy lake. And as my mother was growing up she was required to sleep on the second floor of a house built in the early 1800s. No heat whatsoever. She also spent her entire day alone in a playpen while her mother did housework. Needless to say, my mother paid little attention to any advice she had to offer upon the occasion of my birth.

One of the older women in my office, who is kind of my hero, used to bring her baby daughter into the office (before daycare was as accessible) and set her up in a file drawer. When the phone rang, she'd just shut the door so the person on the other end couldn't hear the baby. She also used to bring her along on warehouse document review trips - she'd crawl around the concrete floor and chew on file boxes all day while her mom went through documents

I'm eight months pregnant, so the "who gets to be in the delivery room" (um, my husband and medical professionals, thank you very much) and "when do we call the parents" and "who gets to visit and when" stuff is all under heavy discussion at the moment. I'm very close to my own mom, and fond of my MIL, so I expect them both to be in the mix fairly intensely, but neither of them intends or expects to be in the delivery room (as far as I know!), so at least I don't have to deal with that.

My MIL does the passive-aggressive "well, it's a wonder my children survived at all, given how apparently everything I did was WRONG!" thing a lot, which drives me nuts. No, you weren't wrong, it was just nearly 40 years ago and times have changed. And if I say "well, now they believe that X is not the safest way to do Y" that's not a judgement on your parenting or your experience. I'm not saying you were a bad parent, so don't take it personally. At the shower she gave us a diaper bag that she had filled with all kinds of drug store type things you need, including baby powder. And my mom said something about how they don't encourage the use of baby powder any more (before I opened the diaper bag, so it's not like she said it in response to seeing the baby powder, it was just in general conversation), and my MIL made a big scene of jumping up and running around the table and grabbing the baby powder out of the bag and throwing it out. It's exhausting. So while I love her, and she and my husband are very close, and she is really, really excited about this baby (her first grandchild), I don't really want her coming and staying with us for an extended period of time right at first. But she will be hurt if I say that, even though she will say all the right things about understanding and not wanting to put pressure on us, and blah blah blah.

And she definitely wants us to be as close as I am with my mom, and that's never going to happen. Not because of anything about her (I am very fond of her), but because she's NOT MY MOM. She said something to my sister, kind of weirdly, at our wedding about wanting me to love her best. When my sister told me this, I thought "Yes, of all my mothers-in-law, I love you best." But I will never love her better than my own mom, or be closer to her than I am to my mom. And I want her to be as much a part of our child's life as my mom is, and I would never try to keep her from seeing the baby or limit her time with her, but my relationship with her is always going to be different from my relationship with my mom. And after giving birth and being through the trauma of that and all the stuff you have to figure out? Yeah, it's going to be my mom I want with me.

Yeah, I have to admit, I can't imagine anyone being in my house post-delivery other than my husband, baby, and me. I love my mom, but I'm very private and would not have been comfortable dealing with the bodily things that were happening with her around. In-laws? Absolutely not. They came four weeks after the birth, and stayed for four days, and that was perfect. They were very understanding, and didn't even ask to come earlier than that, which was great.

I think there's a kind of amnesia that can occur later in life w/r/t all things parenting. Like, our parents would probably have hated having their in-laws come to stay with them for weeks too, but they don't realize that they are now the in-laws. And some new grandmas seem to forget the less pleasant things that happen around birth, and can't understand why a new mom wouldn't want all the "help" they could provide. Also some grandparents get pretty selfish when it comes to grandchildren, and forget that it's more important for the new family to find their way together than it is for the baby to develop a strong bond with his/her grandparents right away.

She also spent her entire day alone in a playpen while her mother did housework.

Heh. No offense to my mother, but she did something similar with me. When the weather was nice, she'd leave me outside in my pram all day long, only coming to get me when I cried. There was one time when she took a nap herself, only to be woken up by frantic banging on her front door and a neighbor yelling "Your baby has been crying her eyes out for the last half-hour!".

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this already, but on my wedding day, my MIL announced grandly "You may call me Mother Lastname." I smiled sweetly and continued to call her Janet (thinking to myself "I've got a mother already, thanks.")

My mom stayed with my brother and sister-in-law for about a week after each of their kids were born. But I am pretty sure the help she offered was to do the dishes, vacuum, and wrangle the older kids. And she was also invited. Which, except for the kid wrangling part, is pretty much what she does when she visits me (my parents are constitutionally incapable of being idle).

I'm pretty sure my mom will try to pull a "I am going to stay with you for a month because I am your mother and daughters need their mothers when they give birth." Which is unfortunate because we are not close. (And the reason we are not close is because she says things like that.)

I actually do like my MIL better than my mom, but I don't want either of them staring at my crotch in the delivery room or living in my house, thank you very much.

We're not pregnant but are thinking about it. So many boundaries will be set.

My mom and sister are super close, as I said, and the aforementioned help with nipple-wrangling went on, and -- my mom was NOT in the delivery room when my niece was born. My sister wanted her husband there and that was it. She did wait outside though. But she didn't get to come in the minute the baby was born, and she waited calmly(-ish) until my sister felt ready to have her come in. Which to be honest I think was hard for her because she wanted to be there THAT SECOND. But, too bad! It's not her baby. And she understood that even though I think in her heart of hearts she'd been wishing/expecting to be right there as it was happening.

Only my husband was in the room (with the nurses and doctor) for the birth of both kids. My mom came and visited me in my room while labor was progressing, but she skedaddled when it was time. My in-laws told us to call when I started active labor.

I started hemorrhaging shortly after the birth of my daughter (the placenta didn't fully deliver) and the nurses ordered everyone out of the room except the person holding the baby - my father. So he was there for that. He sort of tucked himself into a corner and pretended I didn't exist.

Dear Amy, How can I make my teenage son stop being gay?

Parent's theory on why son is gay is jaw-dropping. Parent of the Year, there.

He/she FORGOT the poor kid's birthday for the last three years? Unbelievable.

That can't be a real letter. Please? Amy's reply is great, though.

Tabby wrote:Dear Amy, How can I make my teenage son stop being gay?

Parent's theory on why son is gay is jaw-dropping. Parent of the Year, there.

That reads as fakitty-fake-fake to me. I am sure there are idiots out there who think like that, but they usually aren't as open or self-aware as this. The part where they callously admit to missing his birthday 3 years in a row without any kind of emotion is the fake kicker to me.

Actually, I wondered about it's being a fake, too. Unfortunately, I've heard anti-gay people saying things just as outrageous.

Binky wrote:

Tabby wrote:Dear Amy, How can I make my teenage son stop being gay?

Parent's theory on why son is gay is jaw-dropping. Parent of the Year, there.

That reads as fakitty-fake-fake to me. I am sure there are idiots out there who think like that, but they usually aren't as open or self-aware as this. The part where they callously admit to missing his birthday 3 years in a row without any kind of emotion is the fake kicker to me.

Same here. Besides the birthday part, the whole "they won't see reason and won't stop being gay" sounded really fake as well.

And really, that would be the best case scenario so I'm going to go with "it's fake."

Also the "I don't want him being gay because other people will make fun of ME" seemed really fake. God I hope it is.

The Bad Advisor picked up my tip on this super crazy slut shaming Dear Abby letter! I'm so proud.

inversed wrote:Also the "I don't want him being gay because other people will make fun of ME" seemed really fake. God I hope it is.

I'm not saying the letter itself doesn't sound fake, but "my child's choices will reflect badly on ME" is at the heart of an incredible number of the conflicts between parents and children right up into the children's adulthood. I recently had a chat with my own mother about my feeling she used me to validate herself to the world, which meant any time I disagreed with her or went my own way she got very personally affronted. So no, that part-- awkwardly and childishly worded as it was-- rang incredibly true to me.

Someone posted this on Facebook and commented that the letter actually sounded like it might have been written by the son in this case, trying to express what he felt like his mother was doing to him and why. I'm not saying that's what's going on here, but it's plausible.

Dear Abby, What's a polite way to ask my husband to stop raping me?

This is ungood.

Oh God. Good for Abby for not beating around the bush about it.

IMO Abby didn't go hard enough. I would have told that woman to leave. If a spouse is having a seizure, wouldn't the first instinct be to help rather than sexually assault them? Plus, he's having sex with her when she's unconscious? That is just plain creepy and borders on necrophilia. But I do love that LW says they have no issues in their 20 year marriage other than the whole rapey thing. Other than that it's all good.