I love how most of the posters here seem to take the mother-in-law’s complaints as valid.
I’ve encountered situations in which perfectly normal behavior is misinterpreted as deliberately rude or ill-mannered (not as a DIL, but just in general, but I’ve seen MIL and DIL conflicts based on misinterpretations of behavior). For all we know, the future DIL overslept one morning due to issues unrelated to the visit, and the future MIL misinterpreted that as poor manners or poor breeding rather than those issues.
This is, as usual for the Daily Mail, a non-contextualized brouhaha.
I stand corrected. In fact, the article also notes that she’s the step-mother - she’s only been married to his father for 8 years or so. Which means that she’s probably acting out of jealousy and insecurity. After all, here’s a younger and prettier women joining the family; soon she’ll be the mother of her husband’s grandchildren, making her far more important than a mere second wife. I can understand why she’s lashing out.
There is no manner system out there that simultaneously would consider the DIL’s behavior bad and also deem the emails as acceptable. There are ways to deal with lack of manners, such as discreet discussion with the son, but they do not involve sending angry, unfiltered correspondence.
The mother-in-law to be has revealed herself to be a hypocrite, inconsistent with her own system of manners. She very clearly has a problem with the DIL that is greater than the contents of her message.
And I find it very unlikely that the DIL did anything wrong–or else why bring up these relatively banal faux pas? IF you’re going to be hateful, lead with the biggest offense.
And, no, there is nothing wrong with the DIL’s sharing the email amongst friends. That’s because of something I’ve been harping on for a while now. Any type of etiquette only works between two people who have agreed to certain standards. Nothing about the DIL has revealed that she believes in the older etiquette. She is more likely like Doper etiquette that says we should out bitchy behavior publicly.
I mean, we have a forum for that very thing. We have no right to condemn the daughter-in-law.
What a load of kneejerk, hyper offenderati leap to conclusions hogwash. The host, if a paranoid, easily offended dipstick might choose to get that message, but many guests would just sleep in because that is what they usually do or what usually happens at their house or because they don’t have the manners to get up earlier, or don’t realise it’s expected of them.
Further, most times I’ve stayed with relatives (particularly my parents in law) it’s been because they have invited me to stay. You are assuming that the guests are staying because they need somewhere to stay, which is quite possibly wrong. It’s entirely likely that a son and his fiancee came to stay precisely to stay for its own sake. If sleeping in in such circumstances is seen by the host as a message that the guest sees the host as just a really cheap lodging provider, that probably says more about the host’s paranoid self absorbtion than the guest.
Of course, if the guests were just in town for something else and asked to stay with the parents, then it could be something different but that seems unlikely in the circumstances.
and I like how people are quoting from guides on manners written in 1915. I would have hoped by now that we wouldn’t be shackled by social conventions dreamed up by a bunch of sticks-up-their-asses WASPs for the purpose of setting themselves above “those people.”
Well, it’s not people, it’s just me. And I quoted from it because I had it available. But I don’t think etiquette the sole province of “sticks-up-their-asses WASPS to set themselves up above those people”. It’s a social lubricant, to make it easier for people to get along with each other.
The DiL must know she’s marrying into a Martian family. So to go round to their house and treat it like any other earthling residence is quite naive, and rude tbh. She should have made an effort to observe Martian customs.
I don’t think this is on the up and up, somebody is playing a prank or looking for pubicity or something. Be that as it may, my thoughts…
1. When you are a guest in another’s house, you do not declare what you will and will not eat – unless you are positively allergic to something.
Correct - although a good host would have found out from her son or from the guest ahead of time any dietary needs / restrictions, and have catered to them.
**2. you do not remark that you do not have enough food. You do not start before everyone else. **
Correct - a good host would have made sure there is enough food. However you don’t embarrass a poor host.
**3. You do not take additional helpings without being invited to by your host. **
This one I’m not understanding. If the food was in bowls on the table - then you are free to take more. If not, how can the issue even arise. Unless the guest gets up and goes to the kitchen for more, which would be incredibly rude.
**4. When a guest in another’s house, you do not lie in bed until late morning in households that rise early – you fall in line with house norms. **
Totally true - a good guest would check when breakfast was. At the same time a good host would inform if there was an expectation of breakfast OR go to pains to emphasise that the guest was free to relax and sleep in. There have been times when I have sat twiddling thumbs in a bedroom waiting for my host to wake up. There have been other times I have set alarm to see host before they go to work or whatever. Even other times I have quitly let myself out of the house to go for a stroll.
**5. You should have hand-written a card to me. You have never written to thank me when you have stayed. **
handwritten note is not neccessary, but I would suspect that if the guest had expressed her gratitude it would never have arisen as an issue.
**6. You regularly draw attention to yourself. Perhaps you should ask yourself why. **
Perhaps the girl is a narcisscist?
7. No one gets married in a castle unless they own it. It is brash, celebrity style behaviour.
True - and even amongst celebrities I think its “look at me” behaviour, rather than a more genuine wish.
You’ve got to have one hell of a stick up your ass in the modern age to get upset that your daughter-in-law (alright, daughter-in-law to be) failed to give you a handwritten thank you card (for, well, anything, but particularly just for visiting close family).
Also, this excerpt I’ve seen from other accounts of the e-mail is suggestive:
It sounds like maybe there was a diabetic incident on “the walk to Mothecombe beach” and now the daughter-in-law is being harangued for it? That’s monstrous.
(I do wonder, though, given that the e-mail allegedly spread virally through forwarding by friends of the daughter-in-law, and that I’ve seen different accounts of just what was in it, if this is all accurate or if some of what we are seeing are embellishments added to the actual diatribe by later links in the e-mail chain…)
I’m actually fairly concerned about the number of references to food with the additional information about her drawing attention to herself being related to diabetes. Not eating regularly and properly could definitely cause high or low blood sugar incidents. A long walk after not eating enough could be a recipe for disaster.
I agree with what a lot of people have said - the daughter-in-law’s behaviour (if it is accurately described) does sound quite rude at times, but the mother-in-law lost any hold on the moral high ground when she drew attention to it like this. Snigger or fume about it to yourself, maybe even have a quiet word to the stepson about it at most, but to confront the ‘offender’ like this is the height of rudeness and trumps any faux pas they may have committed.
The one thing I would say is that the objections to the castle wedding are just rubbish, as far as I’m concerned - unless the objection is really about who is going to be expected to pay for it, and that’s not clear to me at all. Firstly, the term ‘castle’, particularly in the wedding industry could mean everything and anything. Secondly, in England (specifically, the rules are different in other parts of the UK) there are a great many restrictions on where you may marry. If you don’t want a religious service, but you don’t want to use a (sometimes) more sterile, functional register office, there are a number of licensed premises you can hire. These include ‘castles’, hotels, visitor centres at places of interest and so on. I don’t see the slightest thing wrong with hiring a room in a beautiful building to celebrate your wedding, take your photos and perhaps hold your reception. Suggesting that ‘castles’ are only suitable for certain groups of people seems to be the very worst kind of snobbishness.
Indeed! I thought the email was crass at best without this, but as a diabetic who plans to be married in a castle next year, those additional comments show a complete lack of understanding and empathy. I suspect a certain stepmother has just lost future access to her stepson and associated grandchildren. Certainly I’d be keeping my distance from someone who not only doesn’t care about my feelings, but doesn’t care about my health!
Re: sleeping in late - when we have house guests we make sure that a) they know when we (well, my wife) will and won’t be cooking a full sit-down meal (breakfast or otherwise), and we always try to ascertain ahead of time if the guest(s) will be joining us or not. If not, no worries. So if someone wants to sleep in, no harm/no foul, and they can help themselves to the kitchen/fridge etc as they wish if we’ve already eaten (we’d expect 'em to clean up after themselves tho. I’d have a word with anyone just leaving dishes in the sink).
We’re not a hotel. Flip side, these are not strangers. They’re friends, family members etc. It’s easier when there’s an established relationship. It’s harder when the relationship is ‘stranger-but-soon-will-be-family’.
Prior to marriage, when we did stay over at the future in-laws’ house, I tried to strike a balance between ‘on my very bestest of manners’ and just being myself - particularly with the mother-in-law, who I absolutely love. The comment about ‘letting the mother-in-law be a mother’ is spot-on, I think. I tried to give her every opportunity to get to know me as a family member, not as a ‘guest’, and I know that’s how she wanted it.
Since I was a kid I’ve always helped out in the kitchen after meals, and we had some wonderful conversations as I washed and the MIL towel-dried the dishes after meals. It’s a tradition that my wife and I carry on now (who ever cooked, doesn’t have to wash, etc. Although we both end up helping wash & dry).
