I love my mother-in-law. She is a very caring and generous woman but there are times when she drives me crazy. I work 3rd shift and because she is a night owl she often calls me when shes bored and can't sleep.

I enjoy hearing from her and she alway has interesting stories from when she was younger however sometimes she can be very old fashioned and it comes off insulting.


Like last night my weight was brought up and i mentioned i was trying to lose weight. she's like "but you're not trying very hard...are you?"

And recently when i didn't know if i was pregnant or not (before i found out) she was like "well, you know marvin doesn't want kids.....kids are a lot of work.....if you feel the need for a baby, just a hug a stuffed animal instead"

i was like WHAT???!!??? Hugging a stuffed animal is not the same as raising a living, breathing child. I think there's a lot more joy and reward in the latter. And its like duh! i know kids are a lot of work...and this is from a person who goes on and on about how she loves her kids and loved raising her kids more than anyhting.



another time she was nagging at me because she was appalled i don't cook, do the wash etc. she's like "well, when i was your age or younger i had 3 kids, 2 still in diapers and i always had supper waiting for my husband when he got home"




she's always painting herself as the perfect person. i love her but it annoys me when she acts like this. and the times i do feel insulted by her my husband gets defensive. i know she's from a different generation and probably just overprotective of her son but sometimes it gets to me.

she really had a good one last night: she was saying how she went through natural childbirth without any drugs and did not make 1 sound, then went on putting down her other sister because she screamed so much.



and another time i was talking to her about my mom being an alcoholic and she was like "did you cause your mother to drink?"

does anyone have these in-law problems?

I didn't see this thread until now. Your mother-in-law does sound a little old fashioned. The comment about hugging a Teddy bair was a little out there too. Infact, she sounds not unlike the way my grandparents used to talk.

My grandfather (my mon's father) was a veteran of World War II. I was very pround that he served our country and enjoyed his war stories, but it seemed with him like eveything came back to the war. No matter what, he always found away to tie it into the war.