Challenging Their Masculinity For Being Human

MIL the great - always with this kind of attitude only. only few MILs will take this casually. It is a waste of time talking with them, getting tensed up. They cannot bear their son doing house job and they expect DILs are made only for that. IGNORE her completely. My husband will not do any house work and i will do all. What to do? I have accepted my life as it is, thinking about my husband's other +ve factors. the MILs feel pleasure in asking these kind of questions to their sons because they dont like their sons doing house job or helping their wives. let us see what others say.

 

It happens in many Indian families. But I loved your guts! Because in most of the cases, Husbands will not be happy if we question back our MILs. All their answers will be "Let her talk!! Leave it! Am helping you right! Am not going to change right? Then whats your problem!! Why did you talk like that to her?"

It sounds like as if we have talked something terribly bad... But we would have just stood up ourselves! joined families or nuclear families... these things do exist and I really feel bad about it just because I cannot do anything!!

 

So nice that your H will not change and ignore her comments

When your husband has chosen to ignore her comments, why can't you too ignore her ?...understanding the butter truth that a woman is another woman's enemy, not men.

Silence would have been much helpful !!

 

It needs to be said to put a stop to it.
If people ignore,it encourages them to repeat this behavior again and again.Finally one day,the son gives in and stops helping just to avoid hearing it from his mother.

Kudos to SGBV for having the guts to do it.
-------------------------------------------------
Most often,these mothers pamper the sons though out childhood.
These guys have probably never helped their mothers.
These guys raised their feet up when mother was sweeping the floor beneath their feet.
They looked the other way when she was washing their dirty sweaty clothes.
They let her pick up their dirty plates .
They probably never ever offered to make some khichdi if the mother was sick.Never offered to make her a hot cup of tea because she was tired.
They just took and never gave back.

When these women/mothers see the very same son help out some one else's daughter ,they don't understand it and they don't like it.They don't blame their husband or son for not helping them.They try to blame the change in their son.

---------------------------------------------------
I have to give credit to my mil.My mil let her sons help her around the house.Specially my husband did help her out.
When I got married,she told me,if you ask him nicely and with love,he will even wash the dishes for you.
I never did ask him to help with the dishes but whenever I have needed him to help,he has never failed me.

My mil hasn't seen him helping me around the house much but she has seen him taken care of my daughters during vacations and she has never commented.

 

I feel you have done the right thing. Why do some people need to voice their opinion regarding each and everything. These same people will never even point out their child's mistake but would accuse other people's kid of the tiniest mistake. You are someone else's daughter. They'd never feel anything for you. Even more because you are the DIL. They would gives stupid reasons like "My DH never helped" or "My MIL was worse." or "My son was not like this before marriage" etc. The main reason is jelousy.
You have already responded so now forget about the incident. Behave normally with your husband like nothing happened. You were right so no need to keep thinking about it.

 

From a newly married perspective...

The key thing both men and women have to stop attaching gender to the jobs,like kitchen is a women s job and taking car for service is a man's job. Both the genders are capable of doing either job. In my house, both my dad & mom cook; since my brother grew up seeing this, he became an excellent cook. My sil can't cook, she does the cleaning & my brother does the cooking. My mom (who is a MIL) has no issues..(why the heck would she, both are adults over 30)

Coming to my marriage, both my H & I cook alternating. In my H family, my fil has never entered the kitchen to make anything so growing up my H never entered the kitchen as well. But all that changed because of his friends. All his married male friends cook. It is monkey see monkey do. There is no question of loosing masculinity since he cooks. What he did not learn from his family he learned from his friends. He is not "helping" me with household chores..it is his house as well and he takes care of it and the people who live in it. Help is something that you do when it's not your job but still pitching in

Coming to the MIL interference. Yes, my MIL does that too . She will say things in passing..like who cooks in the house or make other passive aggressive comments. My H handles that in a humorous way. But now..she doesn't do that anymore cause I did something really nice for someone in their family and she is just proud of that. Little birdy told me that she says nice things about me...lets see how long this good spell continues

Meanwhile..there is something very difficult to practice..it is called "art of no reaction" . I practice this with my mil..lol..let go of the small things OP..

 

Another thing to add..

When my kids wake up in the morning, they should be able to say.."amma, I want coffee" or "appa, I want coffee". Both my H & I are particular that our kids should not associate only amma to kitchen.

 

Very well said @yellowmango.