In-laws, Outlaws and Expectations
Reading this piece by the Indian Homemaker on in-laws and expectations, I was led to thinking on some strange things associated with the phenomenon that is the Indian family. Now, I have really nice parents-in-law (and no, they don’t read this blog, so I’m not saying this to be safe:)), so I don’t have much direct experience of this - but, when a group of married women or even just two get together, it is interesting to see how quickly the topic moves to the in-laws and their (many) shortcomings. A friend of mine has so many issues with her in-laws, she’s named them the outlaws!
Now, this is not to say of course that all fights and problems are due to the older generation only, but perhaps, somewhere, there is a huge disconnect. It’s not even a question of which issues they differ upon; the very fact that many members of the older generation still think that they have a right to dictate what the daughter-in-law should wear, whether she should work, if so, in what kind of a job etc etc is a cause of conflict - increasingly, most people in my age group would not agree that in-laws should be having a say in any of these, regardless of the actual views.
Then, I was also reminded of another strange thing - daughters are often told, when they get married, that they must think of and treat the in-laws as their own parents. First, it’s a bit strange for a 25-26 year old woman to suddenly adopt a new set of parents; it’s not as if affection can be acquired in a moment- it has to build up over time. And, in most cases, it would be honest to admit that it’s not possible to have the same affection as for your own parents. But, the silliest thing about it is, though women are encouraged to think of the in-laws as “parents”, living with even friendly in-laws is rarely as informal as living with your own parents. In most cases where the couple live with parents, the DIL will need to wake up at a *reasonable* time, help around with kitchen chores (even if her husband doesn’t) - and - can’t really object or fight back as easily as she would with her own parents.
I mean, in our Indian context, it’s not as if we don’t argue with parents - often they too try to tell us what we should/shouldn’t wear, when we need to be back home etc - but we’re quite comfortable arguing with them on these; the same informality wouldn’t happen with in-laws. In a sense, you get all the responsibilities but none of the rights of a daughter. Then, it’s time to drop the hypocrisy, no?
Of course, there are also some great MILs whose expectations from the DIL are only that she will read and appreciate her blogging!