If there’s one thing we shouldn’t do as women, it’s judge one another. But unfortunately this rule seems to break down when it comes to the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship. Ugh. One woman is really going through it with her MIL and the way her husband's mother constantly picks on how she parents.
But is her MIL really one to talk when the woman’s husband can barely do laundry?
As the original poster explained in a since-deleted post, her MIL "bombards" her with unsolicited parenting advice all the time.
The OP recently had a baby and her MIL loves to tell her how she should be parenting “and what I’m doing wrong.”
“Recently I find myself getting more and more p—– off at my MIL, not for the unsolicited advice but because if she has all these amazing parenting tips and just knows everything on how to raise the perfect child," the OP asked in her post on the r/Mildlynomil forum. "[But] then, why does it feel like I’m raising her son too?”
Her husband seems to have some missing skills.
“He was clearly never taught how to clean,” the OP wrote, “How to do laundry or even how to properly shower!!!”
“These are all things that I had to teach him,” she noted. “It just p—– me off bc MIL passes so much judgment on my parenting skills yet there is so much I could say to her about hers …”
Redditors chimed in with some of their experiences with mothers-in-law and how they'd raised their sons.
"One time when my boys were little for a reason I don't remember, my MIL had folded some laundry," wrote one person. "She mentioned to me afterwards 'You should teach your kids to turn their shirts right side out before washing, so that you don't have to do it when you're folding them.' I looked at her and said 'All of the sons in this house, yours included, know that their shirts come back to them exactly the way they went in. They can turn them back when they hang them if they care to.' I don't remember that she said anything in reply, but it's been something like 20 years since then and I still remember that comment. And to this day her son still puts his shirts in the wash inside out just as often as our sons do."
"I share a similar frustration," someone else explained. "In my case – just recently became self aware of the fact that both my husband and I are codependent. No surprise that his mom is massively codependent. Fun tidbit: I recently learned that his mom was still picking AND laying out his and brothers clothes well into highschool!! Explains SO much. Now, to unpack our codependent tendencies and start healing…"
A third commenter wrote: "Yes! My husband didn’t know how mailboxes worked. He thought the ones at houses were only to receive mail, never send it. He spent a good portion of his life driving to find those blue mailboxes. My husband didn’t know how to wrap gifts, fold clothes, what fabric softeners were. Husband’s parents were also extremely cheap, until we moved in together he never knew there was toilet paper that wasn’t single ply. That yes, you can go on a vacation. But MIL loves to give her input whenever we see her."
Other Redditors tried to give her some good advice.
"I'm a big fan of fighting fire with fire," one person noted. "You aren't changing the baby right? Maybe offer some 'You should tell your son how to pay bills on time so they dont accrue interest.' Or 'REMIND YOUR SON to be a dad and put down the video games/stay home on the weekends/help with his child. Did you not teach him that growing up?'"
While someone else also advised the OP treat the situation with sarcasm: "I'll keep that in mind the next time I have to show Dear Husband how to (insert important life skill here)."
"Warn hubby he needs to control his mother before you say, 'well, you didn't do a hot job the first time'…." a third person cautioned.
This is definitely a conversation the OP's husband should be having with his mother — but if he can't find the courage to say something, the OP has received some good advice on how to get her MIL to cool it.
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