Another saga with in-laws and their demands

In my opinion, It is the parent who is overly attached to their son who becomes very possive and demands answers to every minute thing. They are simply afraid that the daughter-in-law would seperate theboy from them. But still, it is very sad and trust me when i say it happens not only to us asians but even for the westerners. But this is very said, the the parents need to know that they cant rule their children's lives forever. I hope you will find some way to sort out the problem.

 

hi sunita,

that is really sad for you to have such demanding in-laws refusing to understand the priorities of life. yes, it surprises me how they can be so unbending.... it might still be worth thinking about sponsoring their GC but as you mention if they have such expensive tastes they obviosuly fall under that vast category of in-laws who think they "own" their son and his money for the worth of bringing him up. ashrita, i know it is not fair to give up on old parents who brought you up and gave you education, but isn't it also on the parents to try to be open enough so that the son is not scared to tell them his real issues? and also, is it not also the parents responsibility to stay within their limits and spend only what is necessary for their old age comforts instead of having expensive demands? i am not assuming all this about sunita's in-laws: i am only guessing this from her own words and reading between the lines. i request her to correct me if i am wrong about their unnecessary spendings. otherwise i wud have agreed that parents have to be taken care during old age, but when parents r so single-minded about their own comfort without making an effort to understand the son and dauther-in-law's concerns, i doubt if they deserve the consideration you are talking about. i would keep them in india and send them money. that's it. to sunita, i suggest to really leave it alone and keep an eye on ur husband's mind abt it. bcoz if i am correct he is also aware of what difficulties lie with that arrangement. there is nothing he doesnt know that u have to tell him - in such matters if u repeat the same issues to him aloud what he already knows he will feel nagged and have a negative thing going on. perhaps if u just leave him alone, he will find a way to tell NO to his parents himself. what say?

at the risk of stirring a hornet's nest here, i would like to agree with sheeta here and disagree with ashrita. perhaps what sheeta said may have sounded "rude" to some people, but i have to agree it is true in every word. espcially when she says dont underestimate the financial burden here. nobody here is saying that we r suffering or anything - indians here live pretty well and comfortably on their own - without the additional burden of extra family members. yes, there r also people who do sponsor their parents GC and everyone lives together here. they do a lot of penny-pinching here and there and manage that. but then, that is their priority. one should truly feel their in-laws/parents are worth all that (serious) penny pinching to do it. and that worth, from daughter-in-law's side atleast comes when she is treated like an insider and a family member by them - when they discuss matters with her together with their son, thats when she will feel like family; when they ask her opinion on things that really matter, thats when she will feel a bondng to them. without that, it is not easy to make her respect them.

pls dont misunderstand any of my remarks here. my only point is that, if really sunita's in-laws were like this she wud not be here stating this as a problem. she wud be talking it out with her husband about how to work it out - rather than trying to figure out a way out of it. so i appreciate her side of the circumustance and hope she thinks of what i said earlier.

be well all,
sunita

 

Thank you SunithaGN for your kind words.

My dear Ashrita.
Please read my post and yours and please see who is being rude by using terms like "you dont have any business". Please re-read your post and see how crude you are. When someone gives really bad advice, it is other people's business to put things in perspective. Thats what an open forum is. Please provide your counter points, but please dont thwart the purpose of this forum. Also please read the full forum to see my suggesstion before responding.

I am happy for you that you have wonderful inlaws who get along great. In my case bringing both the inlaws under one roof for more than an hour is like food poisoning. Everyone gets upset with everyone else because of ego problems, everyone yells either outwardly or gets upset and cries. There are no families I know where it is advisable to bring both inlaws together under one roof for even a few days, leave alone months. You are advising that both sets of inlaws (especially inlaws who as per the DIL do not get along) to stay under the same roof for months. Giving such advise is very carelss, useless and actually harmful. My dear, your advice will cause more pain than anything else.

Its very easy to write in bold letters "will you abandon your parents?" but my dear if you dont understand the consequences of having uninsured parents in the US, YOU are the one endagering their life.

My dear, you see life in black and white. You are obviously not mature enough to know that it is all grey. There should lways be a balance in life. I am not at all saying that Sunitha should abandon her in-laws. That is what YOU are saying my dear. You seem to have no concern for their health at all.

Maybe some families are rich enough so that they can afford to buy great private insurance for their parents. But the point that you seem to miss is that in the US, if you dont spend extravagant amounts of money on insurance, you are basically endagering your parent's lives. You might want to to do that, but I will never do that to mine or advice someone else to do it. Thats the difference here.
They are much better off in India where healthcare is not as prohibitively costly as in the US. The money sent home by children from the US will easily cover medicals costs in good hospitals in India. The same amount of money will not even buy you one doctor's visit in a lousy HMO in the US.

Dear, you just cant say "work around the money factor" and think you have given great advice. Again this advice from you is careless and harmful my dear. The money factor is not a small factor in this issue. Please remember that when the whole family is penny pinching, the parents too have penny pinch and live a hard and difficult life at that old age. I would not want my parents to live a pauper's life in the US when they can live a king's life in India.

Both sets of our parents live in India for the reason that the healthcare in India is cheaper and better than in the US. This is precisely the reaosn why Medical Tourism has become a big industry in the past few years. Many elderly people from the US who cannot afford the best insurance go to India for healthcare because healthcare is cheaper and better there.
During a time in their life when they need healthcare, you are suggesting that we give them the worst access to good healthcare. And you are taking pride in that.
I will always make sure they have best access to healthcare, not worst. but thats just me.

Think of these consequences before yelling and shouting at people who are trying to put things in perspective and truly care about the family's welfare. Your speech is full of rhetoric and no substance my dear.

Parents coming here permanently using a GC should always be the last resport for the sake of the parent's welfare. When parents come here, they are caged inside the house and have to depend on their children to even buy a simple sundry item. They cannot drive, their is no public transportation, they wont have any friends, they cant understand why their granddaughter is dating at the age of 13. They go into a lot of depression. In india, they are masters of their home. They can have tons of household help. They dont have to lift a finger to do any household work. They can take an auto and go anywhere. They dont have to see the clash between american and Indian values. They are definitely much more happier in India. Again my dear, this is for normal parents. you might have super parents. That does not apply to the rest of the world.

If it is the last resort and they are unhappy in India and they have no help or support at all in India, then parents have to come here in a GC. No question about that. Until then, I hope folks are not endagering their parents lives and causing depression just because wrongly parents think life in US is some kind of a happy happy Disney vacation.

My dear, I have lived in UK and the US. I know what NHS does. The cost of having a surgery in a hospital with NHS is less than one tenth the cost of having a surgery in a regular US hospital. Healthcare is the biggest crisis facing Domesetic US right now. If it will help you understand better, please watch Micahel Moore's documentary "Sicko" or read any article on it from a repotable US news source.

Also my dear you seem to have forgotten to read my post fully to read my sugggestion. I still suggest that if Sunitha's FIL wants to know everything about the family, he should also know all the details about living in the US without insurance and with insurance. Is he willing to endanger his own life without insurance in the US or is he willing to live a life with zero comforts with great insurance in the US or does he want to live a life of great comfort and great healthcare in India? He needs to know the reality of these choices before he makes a decision. He needs to know what it means to independently work, drive and move around in the US and what it means to be a complete dependent in the US after having lived an entire life of non-dependence in India.

We have not right to hide these pieces of information from our parents and make them face hardships after they have permanently moved here.

As responsible children we have an obligation to try and protect our parent's mental and physical well being using forethought and knowledge. If some children dont want to do that, its their choice. It looks like this might become one more of those sad lessons that will have to be learned from experience. Many children bringing their parents to the US without proper insurance might result in a lot of pain for the parents that could have been easily avoided. I pray to God that he does not allow such hardships to come upon our parents.

May God bless the parents of these folks and the folks themselves and their children.

 

Bow:clap dear Sheetha! Latha

 

I have only posted once before, but I really felt the need to agree with Sheeta... everything you said is very true! In a perfect world, we would all have enough money to take care of our parents, our kids, ourselves... unfortunately money doesn't appear out of thin air. For a long time me and my DH didn't have health insurance, when he had cavity he had to have whole tooth pulled instead of fixing it because we couldn't afford the procedure without insurance. Now just imagine something more serious, how would you feel if you had to chose the wrong option for your parents because you didn't have health insurance for them?

Financial concerns are very real. When planning your life it's best to look with reality, not just ideals and good intentions. It's not my place to tell other people what to do or how to live, but when my children are grown I will never burden them. Me and DH will work until we have enough money to support ourselves. Having children is not a free pass to get the things you need in retirement. The original poster has children, right? I feel her duty is first towards her children, second to her and her husbands parents. I'm sure a rich man and poor man both love their parents equal, but unfortunately love doesn't pay bills. I think "duty" has become too much about money and finances. So what if the poor man can't pay big bills for his parents? Does that make him less of a son??? If our fate is to send prayers instead of dollars, have we not done our duty???

Parents plan for their childrens education, even plan for their weddings and big life events, so where is the initiative to save for retirement so as not to financially ruin the same children you helped to build strong??? :idea

 

So true!! I couldn't agree more with you. This in itself is worthy of a separate thread. Behind all the open and veiled "preference" for sons that Indian parents have, really what precentage (for want of a better word) is driven by money?? Atleast, this here sounds like one of those cases where the percentage is pretty high.

I would like to hear from sunita.ravi to see hoe relevant she thinks of the suggestions given to her here. In any case, I hope it gets easier for her.

Best wishes,
Sunita

 

Ashrita , Sheetha and others,

I as moderator for this forum, wanted to bring out some subtle nuances of discussion here. I feel we are going tangent while suggesting anything to the lady in question.

We all are adult, educated and well-versed people. We really don’t need to belittle others to prove our point. If our point does resonate with other person's thinking, he /she will adopt it or agree with it. We really don’t need to stuff it any further with any cross arguments.

I would like to suggest all of us to follow a simple rule. Make your point, respect other's opinion. Its as precious as your own. After all its a discussion forum. Any discussion is incomplete without all facets being covered. So let discussion be free of "I so agree/I so disagree" standpoint.

Thanks for your attention
Ria

 

Hi ria,

Thanks for intervening at this juncture and pointing out the nuances of posting. But still if you had looked at the posts you would by now come to know who violated them. Since this was getting only ugly, I refrained from posting too.

Regards
Ashritha.

 

I'm sorry if I offended anyone by agreeing with another poster. In many other threads people have agreed with others on a certain point, I didn't realize it was against the rules. And I really don't know what Ashritha2008 is talking when she says "know who violated them." Like I mentioned in my original comment, I rarely remark on anyone else's comments or posts, but I thought Ashritha's comments were particularly rude to Sheetha, not to mention unfair. I feel Sheetha was just trying to get people to look at things realistically. Whether you agreed with her or not, I really didn't see the point of trying to make her feel guilty by saying things like "Are you suggesting to shirk off ones duty at the pretext of money and the extreme consequences you'll face??"

I'm sure Sheetha, me, and every other person on earth would gladly welcome higher salaries, more money to support our families and our parents/in-laws. It was frustrating because some commenters were making it seem like we were simply choosing not to "take care" of our families for no good reason, when in actuality, we're just doing the best we can within the limits we have. Drowning

I wish everyone keeps in mind that we're all wanting the same thing, to love and take care of our families, in whatever way we can.... big or small.

 

Once again i'm posting here just to clarify things a bit. By writing 'who violated them' i meant to point out to moderator that the perpetrator was not me as she had addressed the post to me as much as for others. As much as we all want to discuss and try and find out solutions, its only common knowledge that we be courteous to others which i think i had been. But when posts come directly attacking my post and with name mentioned I cannot but reply back and sometimes we need to put our foot down and make others realise that it is not the right way to disagree.

everyone are entitled to their own opinions but my sincere request is please maintain the sanity and dignity level intact.

asuitable girl, pls feel free to go thru the whole post and then you would understand. Just as you feel that my reply to sheetha was unfair i also felt that her reply to my post was very particularly rude and i had to reply to her as she had directly addressed it to me.

Hope things stand clear now.