Reply to How to respond to MIL's comments about caring for her adult sons?

Forum Index » Parenting -- Special Concerns

Reply to "How to respond to MIL's comments about caring for her adult sons?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DH has two adult brothers in their late twenties who live at home with their parents who are now in their mid to late 60s and have some chronic medical issues. One  brother employed, the other is not and will not likely be employed any time soon. They do not do any chores around the house as far as I can tell. It's likely one or both will eventually need to live with us. MIL who has some mobility issues but does all cooking, cleaning and laundry. I find this situation very troubling and feel it is holding her sons back from becoming independent, but I've never felt it was appropriate to say so and I think DH feels similarly.

DH is not like this - he is very much an equal partner in raising our DD and doing chores. We both WOH (well, telework now) full time.

MIL has recently made comments to me about how in her culture (different from mine) women sacrifice themselves for the family, how she takes care of her sons because she feels that is her role, and how women are responsible for taking care of parents when they get old. Of course, that's true in many cultures, and it makes sense to me she feels that way, but I don't intend to carry on that tradition. If her sons live with us, I won't be doing their laundry, for example. Of course I will help take care of her, but I expect DH and his brothers to take primary responsibility for that.  I'm not sure what DH's expectations are with respect to me caring for his mother. With his brothers, I suspect he will end up doing a lot and it will cause strain all around.  I haven't brought it up because the subject of his brothers his family in general is very sensitive for him, he worries about them terribly and still hopes his brothers will both become independent. Is this the sort of thing where I should let sleeping dogs lie?  Or should I make my position more clear to him now?[/quote]

OMG. Were you super young and naive when you married? This probably would have been a deal breaker for me. Do not let sleeping dogs lie! You better figure it out now with your DH before ten years go by and then you end up divorcing! [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics