The Mother in-Law’s Manual

CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN, promised Barack Obama during his presidential campaign. I believed him, but I had no idea his promise would include something as dear to my heart as the image of mothers-in-law.

As a mother-in-law, one who works hard at creating healthy relationships with my children and their partners, it is painful to be stereotyped as a toxic force without good sense or good skills.  Now, thanks to the Obamas, we are seeing a mother-in-law valued enough, loved enough, respected enough to be invited to move into the White House along with the first family.  Oh well, a cynical sort might think, grandma is a good baby sitter.  Do you think people living in the White House have trouble finding suitable sitters?

Marian Robinson, Michele Obama’s mother, brings love, stability, and wisdom.  According to Mr. Obama, she also helps her daughter stay confident. There is, it appears, a relationship of mutual respect.  In response to a reporter’s question, Obama said, “I don’t tell my mother-law what to do.”  In turn, it seems Mrs. Robinson doesn’t tell her children what do to but rather listens, gives her opinion when asked, loves hard and makes her children and grandchildren feel valued and respected.  When she disagrees with a parental decision, she speaks her mind: “Television for only an hour? “That’s just not enough time,” she is quoted as saying in the New York Times, — but she also acknowledges the parents’ decision. In return, she is accorded honesty, respect and love. She is a new icon for mother-in-law, and it is about time.

Mothers-in-law seem to have been left out of the wave of political correctness that followed from the women’s movement.  While sexism is now unfashionable, mothers-in-law are still commonly cast as jokes or complaints.  Mommy blogs are rife with descriptions of supposedly awful people doing and saying hurtful things. Can it really be true that so many women — seemingly functional, fit, and successful, — become awful people when their kids marry?  At the moment of marriage, do perfectly sane women become swept away by malevolent forces?  What a relief to have a very public person publicly demonstrate that his mother-in-law is, well, lovely, and makes positive contributions to his family.

Recent research by a British psychologist suggests that 60% women have some unhappiness with their female in-law.  Daughters-in-law feel their mothers-in-law are competitors for the son’s affection. Mothers-in-law feel shut out.  But doesn’t it make sense that tensions can easily arise from the normal result of restructuring family roles   when children marry?  Is it possible that public expectations of trouble feed the tensions?  Instead of seeing tensions as bumps to be worked out, both older and young woman  identify them as early signals of expected disaster, talk them up, react to them, and make worries become reality.

As a mother, I had the starring role in our family life. I played the lead, and I did it for a couple of decades. I did it well, and I liked it.  Now, with my sons grown, I find I am no longer the leading lady but assigned to a character part.  There are new leading ladies.  Even if I am delighted to have my sons cast their own family leads – and I AM delighted – it is an adjustment.  I have to recalibrate, learn new lines, modulate my voice differently, reposition my place on stage at the same time the young women my sons have married are learning how to step into their new roles and play them with grace and ease.  Why should we be surprised that we may need some rehearsal time?  If we expect tensions and also expect to work on them and find resolution, the possibilities for long term happiness go up.  The more images of healthy mother-in-law relationships that we have, the more we can hold to a less contentious and demeaning view of mothers-in-law.

I, for one, am delighted for Mother’s Day 2009 to have a highly visible mother-in-law who is seen as a force for good in the family, a grounding influence, maybe a reality check sometimes.  Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson, who so graciously gives to her family and in so doing, is saying YES WE CAN to portraying mothers-in-law in a more positive light.