It is a part of marital commitment and pledge between the two people that that the other will be the most important person in his/her life. So it is normal for someone to expect his/her spouse to be on his/her side when there is a conflict with an outsider. Imagine you are having a talk with your spouse about the events of the day. You narrate your encounter with a friend, or a colleague or someone who came home to fix something, and your spouse takes a stand with the other person justifying him/her. You wouldn’t expect your spouse to take such a stand. It feels like a breach of your initial marital pledge. This outsider that your spouse stands with could be an in-law.
Let us try to see the situation objectively. Imagine a new-born child. The child develops a love-relationship with the parents. Although this is blood relationship, which is different from romantic relationship, still it involves a bonding. Look at how a mother and child look at each other, and enjoy the company of each other. This is very much similar to how romantic love partners do. This intimacy creates a life-long attachment between parents and children. There cannot be such unconditional love with a parent-in-law.
There could be situations when your commitment to your parents conflict with your commitment to your spouse. You may find it very difficult to be a loyal souse as well as a loyal son/daughter. Terri Apter, in her book on this issue, concludes that there is not any easy solution to this conflict. All that we can do is to be aware of the situation as much as we can, which may help us to face the situation calmly.
Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships are often described as "uncomfortable", "tense", "uneasy", and each is likely to describe the other as "difficult", "unwelcoming" or "hostile". In Terri Apter’s study of 49 couples and their in-laws, 60% of the mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law said that they experienced disappointment or frustration with one another.
In-law tension is common across cultures, and may be universal. Someone who is close to you, with influence over your genetic offspring but not themselves genetically linked to you, will be carefully, suspiciously observed. Marriage involves the paradox that it is both necessary to the continuation of the family, and threatens family solidarity by introducing strangers into its midst. From parents' point of view, a child's marriage displaces them as next of kin, with primary influence over a child's well being. From the perspective of a new spouse, marriage marks the start of her own family, and her aim is usually to limit others' influence. Daughter-in-law and mother-in-law tend to monitor their status and influence relative to one another far more carefully than the men. Domestic matters, such as housework, mealtimes and menus, retain symbolic meaning to women in the family: even women who are proud to have too much to do to maintain a perfectly tidy and dust-free house, may feel profoundly criticized by a mother-in-law's quizzical appraisal of untended laundry and a muddy floor.
When children are born to the couple, the question may arise as to whose experience and values provide the final authority. Different attiudes towards child-care can lead to new battles about status and control. In-law conflict is likely to spread into marital conflict, as a wife says to her husband, "Why aren't you supporting me?" In-law conflict can breach mother/son relations as a husband says to his mother, "Why aren't you respecting my wife's maternal authority?"
Terri Apter found in her research that men often choose to protect their mothers against their wives. They saw a wife as stronger, tougher, and therefore as the one who should make allowances. But when a wife is told, "That's just the way my mother is; you have to accept that," she feels betrayed. "Whose side are you on?" she demands.
Let us try to understand this situation better. Imagine Jack marries Jill, and she comes to stay with jack at his home. Jack’s mother manages the home. Jack has a blood-bond with his mother. Also he has a romantic bond with Jill. But Jill and Jack’s mother have no bond directly with each other. Jill’s relationship with her is through Jack. Soon conflicts erupt between Jill and Jack’s mother in the absence of any natural bond between them. When Jill and Jack’s mother are on two sides, they both pull Jack to join their sides. This situation will create great strain and stress for Jack. He expects Jill to be like him and feel the same love to his mother as he feels. He blames Jill for the lack of understanding and maturity. When the pull to both sides become intolerable, he may most probably side with his mother.
An understanding of how a man and a woman behave in such situations might help people face similar situations. Usually when the stress mounts, a man usually tries to remove himself from that situation.
Jill, feeling that her mother-in-law was rude to her, complains to Jack about it. She shouts at him, but he gets froze and goes for a drive. When he comes back, he pretends nothing had happened, so Jill starts shouting again, and Jack leaves again.
Men have a lower tolerance for probing conversation and verbal conflict. John Gottman at the University of Washington monitored heart rate, blood pressure, and adrenaline levels of both spouses during marital quarrels, and found that men become physiologically overwhelmed much more quickly than women. With his pulse rate rising rapidly during an argument, with his elevated pressure, a husband may instinctively remove himself from the fray. This "stonewalling" technique of shutting down receptors and turning your body and mind into a stone wall is a defense against the stimuli that flood our system when we sense danger. Going blank, refusing to show a response, or leaving the room are all defensive acts. Jack withdraws from Jill to protect both of them. But to Jill, Jack's withdrawal conveys disdain, icy anger, and rejection. His attempt to defuse the argument actually escalates it.
Jack refuses to consider his own family norms from Jill’s perspective. "She doesn't mean anything by it" and "That's just how she is," and "You have no right to complain about my mother," are means of marking a fixed position and signalling that Jill is closed to reassessment. Sometimes this is employed gently ("I don't really see a problem,") or with a pointed accusation ("If you see a problem there's something wrong with you,"). Jack asks: "Do you understand what I'm feeling?" or "Do you have empathy and concern for me?" Nothing disappoints us or ignites a quarrel as quickly as the message, "Your feelings don't make any sense."
Women are generally better at tolerating criticism of their parents, and simultaneously enjoying what's positive about them. As teenagers, girls bond with their friends through complaints about their "impossible mothers". Women also have had more practice during their teen years at staking out their boundaries with a mother. Boys tend to have less practice in fine-tuning relational positions; because of that gender gulf between mother and son, they may have to do less work to set boundaries during their teens. This means that more negotiation with a mother over boundaries may be required when he marries. Yet all too often a husband will leave such boundary-work to a wife.
In-law relationships are not simple. Balancing loyalties, drawing boundaries between ourselves and the people we love, and resisting the self-protective biases that blind us to our own unfairness are all essential to prevent in-law conflict from overwhelming a marriage - and to silence those cries of "Whose side are you on?"
Grand-parenting as a Positive Aspect
In ancient societies, when grandmothers lived long enough to care for their children's children, they provided an extra pair of hands for child care and food gathering, and passed on their accumulated parenting experience.
In modern times, the grandmother effect translates into continued emotional and practical support. Grandmothers now are a staple in the portfolio of child-care provision across all classes, across all ethnic groups. Grandparents Association reports that in the United Kingdom, 60 percent of child-care provision is provided by grandparents. School records throughout Britain show that a grandparent is, in a majority of cases, the person listed as the back-up contact if the parents are not available. This suggests that parents recognize and depend upon grandparents as a reliable source of care.
From children's perspective, too, grandparents are common sources of support; children often say they find it easy to confide in grandparents, and identify them as key members of their family. The emotional closeness and stability grandparents provide, particularly during times of family stress (such as divorce), has been shown to facilitate children's emotional adjustment. The increase in divorce rate over the past sixty years is often seen as evidence that the family as a whole is in decline, but the bonds between grandparent, parent and child remain strong, and endure as a key social and emotional structure.
These important connections between grandparent and grandchild, however, often depend on good relationships between the parents and grandparents. Mothers remain the gatekeeper to their children, and maternal grandparents are far more likely to have close and regular contact with their grandchildren than paternal grandparents. For paternal grandparents, key to continuing closeness to a grandchild is a good relationship with a daughter-in-law.
Negotiating the trips and switches of overlapping families so that parents and grandparents alike can maintain those precious bonds is an essential skill, because so much is at stake. The balance between a grandmother's emotional involvement and the modern assumption that a mother has primary control is difficult to achieve, but the cost of failure is high. I observed a gamut of unnecessary suffering-from the daughter-in-law who says, "My mother-in-law has made my life a misery. She tries to control everything I do because I'm the mother of her grandson," to the mother-in-law who asks, "What have I done to deserve this ban against seeing my grandchildren. Look at me! Do you see the evil woman my daughter-in-law sees? The one who isn't fit to have contact with the boys who matter more to her than anything in the world? How can she break my heart like this?" Such suffering lays waste to the possible benefits to children of contact with grandparents, and the emotional and practical contributions that grandparents might make to the entire family.
When we acknowledge and understand common patterns of in-law conflict, we shall be better placed to negotiate these complex alliances and make good use of the invaluable bonds of the extended family.
No comments:
Post a Comment