Mother-In-Law

I was watching a video from Jessi Kaur on Gurmat and saw she was a TED speaker. I fell upon her video on mother-in-laws where she talks about the fact that people notoriously complain about the mother-in-law daughter-in-law conflict in all cultures. I clearly remember watching the movie “Monster-In-Law” as a kid where Jennifer Lawrence is in a conflict with her mother-in-law right up until the wedding where they both agree to get along. This isn’t just a common movie theme, but also just a really common family conflict. I think it is a hugely important issue in a family because it affects the nature of the interaction. In Punjabi families, it is typically more of an issue for the guy’s mom and the girl just because of the nature of the bride going to live with her in-laws family, but it can obviously go both ways. If you’re Punjabi you really do marry into the whole family. I see a lot of posts on Sikh discussion groups about in-law conflicts and I think this can be a huge source of strain in a marriage. At its extreme, women have been murdered by their in-law families. That type of in-law relationship is not one that we are discussing today.  

We should think about changing the narrative of the mother-in-law story. I’m not sure how we can do that, but it is something to think about. I think it is something to think about on various aspects of understanding, that a mother is now having to share her son or daughter with this other person. A mother always hold a very special place for her child. For a mom “giving away” her daughter, it can be a really big step in emptying out the nest and going on to let her leave and live her own life. She wants to be a part of that process. The involvement of the bride's parents after marriage was traditionally little because of physical distance (being in different villages), and often now still can be minimal. For a mom whose son is getting married, it is also a big step to be able to realize that the time and attention of her son will be divided to someone else now. What is supposed to be a natural transition in life, I think perhaps isn’t that easy when we are really close to our families. Especially since marriages are happening later in life now, we spend a lot more years with our families before we move on to building our own. It takes time and adjustment to settle into a new life. In Punjabi families, we have families with kids and we want them to be able to share time with both sets of grandparents so it is important for us to work on relationships on both sides and be happy to get together for family celebrations. From the perspective of a new bride I think people do have to understand the hardships of starting up in an already-established household and the way people do things. If the couple chooses to go out and live on their own, this is true for both of them. It will be interesting to see how living in western society changes the in-law relationships, and the fact that we are more likely to choose our own matches rather than having an arranged marriage so the families are less involved upfront. 

I think often we hear from people’s stories that there was a misunderstanding or conflict from the beginning that was never cleared up. I think our conflict management skills in Punjabi culture are generally lacking. We really don’t clearly just talk openly and resolve the misunderstanding, or clear up the assumption. A lot of conflict resolution is integral to Sikhi Gurmat. It is letting one’s ego go, it is meditation together, it is getting the thoughts on the same page, it is humility, it is accepting that you made a mistake, it is empathy for the other and putting yourself in their shoes. Sikhi also teaches us about not attaching ourselves too deeply to our relationships. I think that we can bring all of these things up when we have discussions about a conflict. I get that no one wants a monster of a mother-in-law, or a daughter-in-law that comes and destroys the household. It is the worst nightmare to have a peaceful family disrupted. At the same time if we change our language and our expectations, that also changes things. If we think that this will always be true and there’s no way of changing it, that is setting us up for failure. Just because things are one way, doesn’t mean they can’t change; Jessi Kaur shows that in her example. One of the things we can imagine is how Mata Jito Ji would have interacted with Mata Gujri Ji as her mother-in-law. I think that conflict isn’t as hard to resolve sometimes as we think it is, but we have to be willing to put in the work to just have that discussion. Personally I have realized a lot of misunderstandings can be clarified by discussion and perspective. 

Here's the video below: