The Search For My Inner Mother-In-Law

By Deborah Ross, LPC

On September 6, 2009 my son said, “I do,” and with those words I joined the ranks of Mothers-in-Law.  As a therapist I understand the importance of roles and the expectations that are associated with them.   How do I mother-in-law?  The culture doesn’t even provide an adequate verb that hints at the role’s expectations.   We say mothering and that brings up a warm, fuzzy, cuddly image.   Mother-in-lawing?  What does that mean?  How do I do that?  What is my role model?

When I check in with the space inside myself marked “mother-in-law” that file has a yellowed page or two but otherwise is empty. My mother-in-law died in a car accident when my husband and I were still newlyweds.  My father-in-law died the following year.  Therefore I have no personal template of a mother-in-law interacting with a daughter-in-law to guide me in embracing my new role.  

So I Google. 

Entering “mother-in-law” in a Google search brings the first hit – motherinlawhell.com.  Dripping with venom, the posts graphically and painstakingly illustrate all manner of injustice and slight and serve as a battle scorecard in a war that seems likely to last a lifetime.   Not far behind in the search history is an entry for Ernie K. Doe’s classic oldie, “Mother-in-Law.”  “The worst person I know, sent from down below….mother-in-law.”  In 1961 it rose to number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and R&B Chart.

Clearly this hole in my experience is not going to be filled by my Google research. And there are no “Getting the Love You Want” or “Start Right Stay Connected” workshops for in-laws.  For better or worse, most of us have to make it up as we go along.  The cultural messages for mothers-in-law say that we often get it wrong, dead wrong.  And as I poll friends who speak other languages, I see that there are parallels in other cultures.

What happens in other cultures matters immensely to my search, because not only is my own “file not found”, but if it were, my file might not help. My daughter-in-law and her family are originally from Bangladesh, and I suspect that their cultural expectations of in-laws might be quite different than those I know from my western upbringing.   I soon found out how right I was when my son informed me that in Bangladesh it is customary for the groom’s family to provide the bride’s wedding attire.  I felt panic, sure that there were important rituals of which I was ignorant that would involve substantially more than cruising through bridal shops at the local mall.  Indeed, this turned out to be true, too, as I learned about the intricacies of Mehndi, the gloriously colorful pre-wedding ceremony in which henna is applied to the hands and feet of the bride.  

Cultural differences or no, I search for a way to make my role with my daughter-in-law meaningful.  As a therapist, connection is what informs everything that I do. It is what I work toward with my clients, what I hold out to my couple’s to experience and cultivate for a lifetime, and it is what I seek in my own relationships.  So I use it as my frame of reference or compass point as I think about the warm, loving relationship that I hope to have with my daughter-in-law.  I know the importance of being aware of what my daughter-in-law is feeling as she becomes a part of our family.  What are her concerns? Her fears?  What is she hoping for in her relationship with me?  This is all about connection.

I also know from my clinical experience with couples that in-laws can either contribute to toxicity between couples or they can help enrich the couple’s lives.   I realize that, in fact, “file not found” is inaccurate. My file is filled with training as a therapist and countless hours spent with couples, all of which give me the gift of greater awareness of what contributes to being a nurturing, supportive mother-in-law. 

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