s/o just nuclear family

[Anonymous]

Sometimes when we (me, DH, kids) visit my family, I make a quick Target run with my Mom. Same if they visit us. Really, that's all I need, as a daughter. I love spending (some) time with my parents, but I don't really see a need to do it without my spouse. Same with my siblings. Love them AND their spouses. Any reminiscing can easily be infront of spouse, or take place on a brief errand.

Taking a cruise as an adult with my parents and my siblings sans our own respective families sounds miserable. And I truly love them all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sometimes when we (me, DH, kids) visit my family, I make a quick Target run with my Mom. Same if they visit us. Really, that's all I need, as a daughter. I love spending (some) time with my parents, but I don't really see a need to do it without my spouse. Same with my siblings. Love them AND their spouses. Any reminiscing can easily be infront of spouse, or take place on a brief errand.

Taking a cruise as an adult with my parents and my siblings sans our own respective families sounds miserable. And I truly love them all.

I'd jump overboard if I had to take a cruise with my parents and sibling. No way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between my two adult children in their 40s one has had a spouse and both have had long term relationships. I have never expressed that I want to invite or go out with only my child and the spouse or BF or GF was not invited. I would not want to insult them that way, whether I loved them, liked them, didn't care either way or hated them. It's a path I would not go down.

If I did invite the couple(s) to something and the other couldn't make it for some reason I did then enjoy the time with just my adult child. But I did not request it. I would not have wanted that to happen to me so I didn't do it to them.

Op. This is so foreign to me! It would never occur to me that one-on-one parent/adult child socializing was weird, I was thinking of parents + multiple adult children. Whenever one of my parents visit I make a point to have some time with just me and Mom or me and Dad or me and Mom & Dad. I suggest to DH times it would be particularly convenient for him to visit his mom just him. I think of it like, look, even if I like my friend’s husband sometimes I want it to be just us.

I don't think one on one time is weird. I have one on one time with both my adult children regularly. What I think is wrong is requesting it and specifically saying the spouse is not welcome. It would be REALLY rude and weird to do that for a vacation, less so for a lunch or dinner but still, rude. I would not want to treat my kid's spouse or even a BF or GF like that

I say something like this: Are you free for dinner Friday? If they says yes, I say, Will Larla be able to come too? If they say no, fine. If they say yes, fine. I never say, How about just you and me, don't invite Larla. Or even worse, Don't tell Larla about it.

It's a good way to find yourself the topic of anti-MIL conversations on DCUM, trust me. But realistically it's also a good way to alienate an important member of your family or at least an important person in your child's life.

[Anonymous]

In my family everyone is included, every family dinner has spouses and all family there.

MIL made it quite clear she needed son time. She treated me so badly that I didn't want to go see her. She got all the son time she needed. She once told me I should come and see her 'every now and again would be ok'. Lol, who could be bothered. She got her son time but she complained she never got vacations, dinners out or family get togethers. Meh who cares.

OP you will be a terrible MIL but if you haven't worked this out yet, I'm sure it will be cemented in the next few years.

[Anonymous]

Point of clarity - once your adult children are married, their nuclear family is their spouse and children. You are then their extended family, not nuclear. Sorry to burst your bubble. Hope you have some girls.

[Anonymous]

I think the occasional mother-son lunch or coffee is perfectly fine, but once it becomes a mother-father-son-sister-brother lunch or coffee, not at least inviting the spouse(s) is rude. It’s been transformed from one-on-one time to a family event, and your child’s spouse is family too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the occasional mother-son lunch or coffee is perfectly fine, but once it becomes a mother-father-son-sister-brother lunch or coffee, not at least inviting the spouse(s) is rude. It’s been transformed from one-on-one time to a family event, and your child’s spouse is family too.

+1. Lots of scenarios here that I find organic and totally fine. Go grab a drink just you and dad while you're visiting, or you and mom go get manicures (maybe you even take the grandkids). Maybe a mother and her daughters have done a girls weekend every year since the girls were in high school, so it isn't odd that the husbands (including dear old dad) aren't invited each year. Or a father-son golf weekend. Maybe one spouse can't take vacation, so you take your kids to see your parents for a few days.

This is different to me than deliberate exclusion, especially in a true vacation situation. Also agree that once adult children are married, they are not part of the nuclear family with their mom and dad. They split off into their own new nuclear family in their own household.
YMMV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When is it appropriate to have something with just the nuclear family? My kids are young but I can imagine one day wanting to go out to dinner with just them and not their spouses. DH and his siblings sometimes take their mom out to dinner without SOs involved (I imagine I could come if I wanted to but I don’t want to crash family time). Vacations, no, but do we feel like dinner or coffee or drinks is okay?

Once they are married and/or have children-that family becomes your child’s nuclear family. You are no longer part of their nuclear family.

+1

[Anonymous]

I spend lots of time just with my mom. And Dh often goes on guy hunting/fishing/camping trips with his dad and other guys. I can’t imagine my Dh going to dinner or lunch without me and just going with his mom though. Maybe because they aren’t local and Dh would have to leave me at his parents house.

I have sons and hope to have hobbies/interests with them when they’re grown. I see that Dh doesn’t have anything him and his mom do together and thus they aren’t as close. She never transitioned from parent to friend the way my mom did with me and my siblings.

[Anonymous]

Op here. Like I said, my kids are little so this is just curiosity! But it sounds like there’s some consensus that 1) it’s different if it’s a one on one parent/adult child hangout, 2) it’s different if it’s organized by the adult child, and 3) it’s different if it’s “I invite you and don’t mention your wife” vs “I invite you and explicitly do not invite your wife.”

And for those of you concerned about me as a MIL — at the moment, my only son is waking me up at 4am every day and we’re getting all the one on one quality time I’ll ever need. And then some.

[Anonymous]

My mom doesn’t consider my husband part of the family and we have been married almost 10 years. She thinks people are only family if they’re related by blood. This has caused tension because she doesn’t like it if I side with my husband. She thinks that I should always side with “family” if there is disagreement. That’s how it was when she was younger with my grandmother and my dad so that’s how she thinks it should be with us. It sucks. Maybe if she actually liked DH it would be different, but I don’t know since she obeyed my grandmother in all things until she died, no matter what my dad thought.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op here. Like I said, my kids are little so this is just curiosity! But it sounds like there’s some consensus that 1) it’s different if it’s a one on one parent/adult child hangout, 2) it’s different if it’s organized by the adult child, and 3) it’s different if it’s “I invite you and don’t mention your wife” vs “I invite you and explicitly do not invite your wife.”

And for those of you concerned about me as a MIL — at the moment, my only son is waking me up at 4am every day and we’re getting all the one on one quality time I’ll ever need. And then some.

If my family says would you like to come over for dinner I would assume that includes my spouse since we are married it we even occur to me to ask.

[Anonymous]

I wish my husband would spend some alone time with his family. Instead he will put the kids to bed and go to sleep himself after having his family over for dinner. Then I'm left entertaining them. Don't get me wrong, they're good people but I'm jealous that I'm not the one going to bed early.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not at all surprised that the responses here, despite a few sane ones, are trending toward "You MUST include adult childrens' spouses in everything or you are excluding them and that is 'shrew' behavior" and is unforgiveable, etc. etc. That's exactly how DCUM tends to go on these things.

This hasn't come up for us because DH and I each recognize that the other is the adult child of our in-laws/parents and we feel it's appropriate and simply nice for adult children to spend time alone with their parents sometimes. So we volunteer to give each other that time. My mom and his mom don't need to ask to be left alone with us adult kids -- we volunteer that. I see that meals out seem to be what gets people her in such a frantic fear of "exclusion." And of course the idea of the MIL being the one to ask the SIL or DIL for time alone with the adult child just makes the anti-MIL brigade here have fits.

If those of you whose in-laws ask for time alone with your spouse were to OFFER that time and say to your spouse, hey, you should take your mom/dad out to dinner, just you and them--you wouldn't need to be in such a twist about it. I suspect that people who are so reflexively upset about this "exclusion" are actually people who don't care much for their in-laws, or whose in-laws are meddlesome in other ways, or who fear being "talked about behind their backs" etc.

I want to see my mom without my DH around sometimes. I want him to feel he can tell me he'd like some time with just his mom. It's natural, to us. And seems more mature than thinking we are welded together.

+1000. There’s always a lot of co-dependency on boards like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not at all surprised that the responses here, despite a few sane ones, are trending toward "You MUST include adult childrens' spouses in everything or you are excluding them and that is 'shrew' behavior" and is unforgiveable, etc. etc. That's exactly how DCUM tends to go on these things.

This hasn't come up for us because DH and I each recognize that the other is the adult child of our in-laws/parents and we feel it's appropriate and simply nice for adult children to spend time alone with their parents sometimes. So we volunteer to give each other that time. My mom and his mom don't need to ask to be left alone with us adult kids -- we volunteer that. I see that meals out seem to be what gets people her in such a frantic fear of "exclusion." And of course the idea of the MIL being the one to ask the SIL or DIL for time alone with the adult child just makes the anti-MIL brigade here have fits.

If those of you whose in-laws ask for time alone with your spouse were to OFFER that time and say to your spouse, hey, you should take your mom/dad out to dinner, just you and them--you wouldn't need to be in such a twist about it. I suspect that people who are so reflexively upset about this "exclusion" are actually people who don't care much for their in-laws, or whose in-laws are meddlesome in other ways, or who fear being "talked about behind their backs" etc.

I want to see my mom without my DH around sometimes. I want him to feel he can tell me he'd like some time with just his mom. It's natural, to us. And seems more mature than thinking we are welded together.

+1000. There’s always a lot of co-dependency on boards like this.

+1