Anonymous wrote:Nope. My MIL was used to being the lone princess/queen in her family of 3 boys. I think she resents they all have other women in their lives now.

I’ve witnessed similar dynamics in my family, MILs with daughters turned out to be more understanding and supportive than MILs with sons who couldn’t relate to young women.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep she’s right! This is totally going to be me

Mom of 3 boys, currently ages 3, 6 and 8

Me too!

- mom of 4 boys

Me too! :>

Nope. My MIL was used to being the lone princess/queen in her family of 3 boys. I think she resents they all have other women in their lives now.

I think it depends on individual personalities as well, some people are good at sharing and caring, others aren’t, not necessarily because they aren’t good people but because of differences in life experiences which conditioned them differently.

My mil has only sons, but has never tried to cultivate a close relationship with me. She is perfectly nice to me, but doesn’t seem to want to have any sort of deeper relationship. It’s odd to me. I have three boys myself, and I hope to have a good relationships with any DIL’s that I may have but in no way to expect them to do things with me that I would have wanted my daughter to do with me if I had had one. I also am not one of those women who is upset about never having a daughter b

Anonymous wrote:My MIL only has sons, and she 8s not welcoming and expecting me to do housework whenever I am in their place. She thinks I steal her son away.

At some level most MILs feel that, some can rise above that feeling while others can’t. My mom is a SA immigrant who faced and witnesses lots of injustices done to DILs, she made it her mission to break the cycle and built sincere and loving relationships with all of her DILs. It was tough but woman was hell bent to do it right, give space, give time, go easy and be sincere.

I think the MILs who do this always dreamed of having a daughter they could bake cookies and pass on family traditions and do girly things with and never had the chance. Plus being the in a household of only guys maybe felt no one to really understand the female stuff and bond with. Probably trying to make up for that with DILs. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But you can’t change your basic personality to accommodate someone else’s expectations and missed experiences.

Anonymous wrote:It seems to be a pattern among my friends that MILs who only have sons are more welcoming to their DILs....
They want to teach them family recipes, go shopping, in effect make them an adopted daughter. Some of my friends COMPLAIN about how overwhelmed they are by all this! "My MIL wants me to come over and make Christmas candy with her, UGH"
Whereas if she already has a daughter, the DIL is just that girl my son brings with him. There is often no effort made to be inclusive. Of course there are exceptions!!! But it seems very common.

Not always, there are MILs who are loving and welcoming while others are guarded and distant.

Anonymous wrote:It seems to be a pattern among my friends that MILs who only have sons are more welcoming to their DILs....
They want to teach them family recipes, go shopping, in effect make them an adopted daughter. Some of my friends COMPLAIN about how overwhelmed they are by all this! "My MIL wants me to come over and make Christmas candy with her, UGH"
Whereas if she already has a daughter, the DIL is just that girl my son brings with him. There is often no effort made to be inclusive. Of course there are exceptions!!! But it seems very common.

I think there is a vast area between overwhelming and underwhelming, where MIL and DIL can meet, bond and grow to love each other. Being the older and experienced one, MILs bear more responsibility to cultivate this relationship but obviously DIL has to be open to give it a sincere try.

Anonymous wrote:Well, and women probably don’t try to outcompete and snark about their BILs the way they do about their SILs, so there’s that creating less family drama too.

BILs will get married and bring SILs who can be dramatic.

MIL had two kids but they were very far apart in ages, over a decade, so she always said it was like having two only kids. Her daughter was almost grown when my husband was born. She kind of tried to take me in like that but always referred to me and DH as “the kids.” I found it really odd and uncomfortable. Her “kids” comments lasted for ten years until we had children of our own. It wasn’t welcoming and felt more controlling.

My MIL only has sons (3.) She's amazing. We chat several times a week, see each other several times a month. She truly treats me and my two sister-in-laws like loving daughters (we're all local.) Doesn't feel too much either because she is so good about boundaries. Definitely got lucky.

My MIL only has sons. She is not a good MIL. Everything is all my fault always because it can’t possibly be her son saying x or y doesn’t work. It’s all the evil influence of me, the DIL. It’s totally my fault that we live in DC. I must have lured her son here even though I’m also not from here, have no family here, and only moved here because her son was here already with a job when I was graduating from law school (law school not here either). It my fault her son only gets 12 days of vacation per year and will only spend 5 of them on her because all 12 should be spent on her. It’s my fault the kids only have set breaks from school and I’m awful for insisting that they actually attend school when it’s in session instead of bringing them to visit her or making them sit at home when she visits and watch her play on her iPad. It’s my fault we won’t put a 7 year old unaccompanied minor on a plane across the country. And that our 11 year old doesn’t ride horses and wear all pink. And that her son didn’t call her for Mother’s Day. And so on and so on.

Someday the DILs of DCUM might decide to view MILs as just women in their lives rather than assigning all these odd attributes to them just because they are MILs.

Yeah, maybe that will happen...like when all the DCUM DILs become MILS.

Not mine! She saw me as a threat. It’s gotten better but I still think she’s intimidated. I don’t know why, we hardly see each other.