Dear A&E,
My mother-in-law clearly thinks that I am not measuring up as a homemaker. She is always hinting that I could cook more and saying things like, “how can you live in this tip?”
I agree I am not much of a domestic goddess, but I don’t really care and neither does my husband – perhaps as a reaction to a childhood spent with her plumping sofa cushions as he sat on them. I like my mother-in-law but she is an intensely traditional person and I feel that I am going to have a conversation with her at some point. I just don’t want to upset her.
– Messy
Dear Messy,
There is an old cliché which tells us that mothers watch their sons get married and immediately decide that their new daughters will starve their beloved boys; that these sirens have the audacity to lure their lads away and then keep ’em hungry.
Clearly, Messy, you have gone that extra mile and you are not only denying your husband decent food but the joy of sitting on a perfectly-plumped sofa. Your husband is going hungry in a hovel. How very dare you? Except, no. No one thinks this. Not even your mother-in-law, despite her microaggressions. The fact that you tell us that you like your mother-in-law signals to us that she is not vicious with her critique but rather her Betty Crocker buzzing about the dirty butter dish is an irritant. A tick, almost.
After all, clean, well-fed boys are what she produced; they were her life’s work and it is hard to let go of your life’s work. We often say in this column that change is hard, and that people really struggle with it. Imagine for a second how she feels now that she is no longer the most important woman in her child’s life, and perhaps you might see that these little digs are not, in fact, digs but rather ways to keep a (clean) handprint on the wallpaper of his existence; to keep some semblance of her role intact. Every time she walks into your house, your mother-in-law must feel as if she is in a stranger’s space. And that must be odd, when that space contains one of the people she loves most. So she seeks to… help. As well as make her mark.
That isn’t to say that it is not irritating to feel that you are being inspected, and falling short. In fact, it sounds like her vision of comfort can read to others as control and it clearly drove your husband mad growing up (so much so that he deliberately married someone for whom tidiness and cooking were not priorities). We’ve all had experience in vacuum-packed homes that feel like the oxygen has been sucked out of them; of spaces so clean you could eat off the floors but didn’t want to spend a second longer than you had to in them.
Similarly, we have been unnerved by dereliction and neglect; slept in beds with unchanged sheets and felt… not liberation, but the weight of depression or sadness there. An oppressive lack of care. But you sound delighted in your life, your love, your work, as does your husband in his ability to flop about freely.
You could consider celebrating the differences between your mother-in-law and yourself. When she makes a comment about the fact that you could cook more, why not say something honest like, “I only just manage to cook the amount that I cook. I’m on the verge of resigning. And ready-made stuff is so good. You know, I might just give up altogether at some point.”
If she says something about the tip in the living room, make a joke: “Tip? Tip of the iceberg, more like. If you think this is bad, you should see the cupboards upstairs.” Work on the potential for an inside joke that could become bonding. You both agree that you’re a bit of a slob and she’s a bit of a fanatic. Imagine for a second if you were both in competition for cleanliness and culinary trickery? Comparing window-shine and fridge-filling techniques? Now there’s a chilly vision.
In short, dear Messy, we do not think that you need to have a conversation, right now. That conversation sounds confrontational and unnecessary.
However, if the pressure ramps up and becomes intrusive in a way that isn’t just mildly annoying but aggressive, you could always sit down with her and say something like, “Thank you for your concern. I just want you to try and understand that a tidy house isn’t how I define myself. I know it is important to you but it is not how I measure my success.”
Because it’s not how you define yourself. Do not let her zeal become information about you. You are fine. And anyway you should see the state of Emilie’s butter dish. Annabel can hardly cope.
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