The daughter-in-law problem that mostly is not one
By Delia Marchetti, Staff writer · · 3 min read
We get more letters about daughters-in-law than about any other person. I went back through a year of them last week. Thirty-one.
In twenty-two of the thirty-one, when I read them again slowly, the daughter-in-law had not done anything. She had not called. She had not written the thank-you note. She had not asked the mother to the baby's first birthday. She had not, she had not.
The son had not either. Nobody mentioned the son.
Here is one, with the names changed. The daughter-in-law did not call on Mother's Day. The letter is two pages. On the second page, in passing, it says that the son texted at nine that night, from the car, "happy mother's day ma," no capitals, and that the writer was grateful. She was grateful. For the son. Who texted from a car at nine. The daughter-in-law, who did not call, had, the letter also mentions, mailed a card that arrived on the Tuesday, with a photo of the baby in it. That is the one who got the letter written about her.
Here is the pattern. The son used to call. He got married. The calls got shorter and then rarer. The mother, who cannot be angry at the son, because the son is hers and because being angry at him would mean something about the thirty years before the wedding, finds the other person in the house and is angry at her instead.
The daughter-in-law is not stopping him from calling. She is, in most of these letters, the one who remembers the birthday card. She is the one who texts the photo of the baby. She gets the blame for the silence and the credit for nothing.
My colleague wrote last spring that the trouble with advice to grown daughters is that it lands as a verdict. I think she was being generous. In the letters I read, the trouble is not the landing. It is the address. The sentence is being delivered to the wrong person on purpose, because the right person is too expensive to be upset with.
I understand it. I have a son. I know what it costs to say to him, out loud, that he has let me down, and I know what it does not cost to say it about his wife, who is not mine, who did not grow up in this kitchen, and who cannot look at me the way he can.
I wrote back to nine of the thirty-one. I asked the same question each time. When did you last call your son, not his wife, him, and ask him to call you more?
Four answered. Two said they would think about it. One said he would not know how to answer. One said she had, last Christmas, and he had said "I know, Ma," and that was the whole conversation, and nothing changed, and she did not know whether to ask again.