Twinkle: Your Family Planning is My MIL's Business

The timeless struggle between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is a fascinating one indeed, and one that I'm trying to reconcile as a mother. Granted, I don't have a son, and I think mothers influence their sons and daughters in different ways. Mothers of girls get to watch their daugthers grow up to have similar traits and characteristics, whereas mothers of boys have to watch their sons live lives with girls who were not raised by them. That's the central tragedy to moms of boys, I think--that their sons marry girls who were raised by different mothers, sharing some other mother's mannerisms and traits. If incest were legal and advisable, I'm sure my MIL would think there's no better match for Mr. Twinkle than his sister.

The thing I love about your attitude, Julep, is that you're respectful of her rules but are still making your own decision about how to handle the (rather arbitrary) two-dog mandate. It's the best kind of punishment, because she brought it all on herself. And if this woman shows such blatant favoritism to some dogs, I hate to think what will happen if one grandchild gets better grades than another one. Perhaps you all should take the smartest one on vacation with you.

This sort of reminds me of my own MIL, who is practical in all matters, especially family planning. This is a woman who wanted no more than 2 children so the adults in the house wouldn't be outnumbered. No one told her that she's bigger than kids and also the boss; she has no trouble wielding authority, so I really don't know why she thought more than 2 were out of the question. She also spaced them 5 years apart so she wouldn't have to pay for more than one college education at a time. These were her decisions, and they make a lot of sense from a practical standpoint, and it's not my place to judge them. Nor is it her place to judge Mr. Twinkle's and my desire for a large family, nor the fact that we want our children to be close enough in age that they can play together and have something in common. These things are important to us just as her reasons were important to her.

Just as she believes she's the only person who can take care of an infant, my MIL also thinks she knows what's best about everyone's family planning choices (not just people in her family). If she hears talk of some random having Irish twins, we all have to sit through a long soliloquy on the perils of having two in diapers. If someone has 5 kids, we have to hear her wonder how those parents will ever pay for everyone's college. At a bris, she'll marvel (and not in a good way) about the number of babies there. I mean, who does she expect the parents of this newly-minted Member of the Tribe to hang out with if not other parents of babies? (We can't all be in the 60-and-over mah jong group at the Glenview). The worst wrath was reserved for the octo-mom, and the fact that the octo-mom aroused such ire in my MIL actually made me want to defend the indefensible.

I do think there's a desire to influence our decisions in her endless ranting and raving about other people's family planning, but there's also a sincerity that makes me believe she thinks she really does know best.

And I've got news for her. We didn't consult her the first time around, and we won't be asking her advice next time, either. We're going to do things our own way, which is not necessarily her way. I can't help it that she didn't raise me.