Tough Love: My Father-in-Law Is Spoiled

Dear Abigail,

My wife and I both work full-time, and I grew up around working women: My mother and my grandmothers had careers. My mother-in-law did, too. In fact, she is what you’d call an old-school feminist: educated, opinionated, independent, the kind of woman who spent decades rejecting traditional gender roles. Which is why I find her marriage so baffling.

My father-in-law is treated like someone who cannot function independently. When they visit us, he sits at the table waiting to be served. If food arrives while others are still bringing dishes from the kitchen, he simply starts eating. When he finishes, he leaves the plate there for someone else to clear. If he wants something, he asks his wife to get it. If he wakes up before her, he waits for her to get up and make breakfast. It’s honestly astonishing to watch.

What bothers me isn’t some abstract political issue about household labor. I have three boys, aged between 10 and 15. And though I’m not trying to raise my sons according to internet slogans about fairness—in fact, we’re probably more conservative than liberal in most ways—I do want them to grow up understanding that a competent adult man should know how to take care of himself, contribute to a household, and not behave like a dependent child waiting for women to orbit around him.

My kids see me cook, clean, fold laundry, and do dishes. I take them to doctor and dentist appointments because my schedule is more flexible than my wife’s. Not because I’m trying to make a statement but because that’s what functioning adults do.

Now, my oldest son is beginning to notice his grandfather’s behavior and is asking: “Why doesn’t he help?” I usually say something diplomatic like “he grew up in a different time,” but what I really think is: Because everyone around him enabled him to become spoiled and helpless.

The truth is that watching this dynamic unfold in my house makes me angry. Not occasionally irritated—genuinely angry. Partly because of the example it sets, and partly because my wife and I are both exhausted professionals and he contributes nothing, spending most of the day watching videos on his phone. Increasingly I find myself wanting to say, politely but firmly: “When you visit our house, you’re expected to participate. Clear your plate. Help carry things. Get up and get what you need.”

Am I being unreasonable? Is this something I should address directly? Or is it one of those family dynamics where keeping the peace matters more than trying to correct behavior that will realistically never change?

—Eli, 49

Dear Eli,

All marriages are idiosyncratic. Every single one “baffling” to outsiders. How can she smile while he bloviates? How does he deal with her crazy?

I sometimes imagine that, like George Washington in his lifetime, I’d never seen a bicycle. An inventor approaches me with his prototype. “This is my human-powered, two-wheeled transporter,” he says. There’s no doubt I’d have laughed, thinking this thing was obviously going to topple over and crash the moment the rider climbed on.

And yet it moves.

Despite so many glaring offenses to your ideal of parity or even your mother-in-law’s, their marriage balances, rolls forward, and works.

Which is enough for them, apparently, and ought to be for you. If you don’t like the bargain your mother-in-law has struck with your father-in-law, then I suggest you don’t marry him.