I should also have noted that if I thought everyone would be on my side on this, I would not have posted it in Great Debates.
I want to post redacted versions of the email exchange I mentioned above, or else I expect most people would picture my wife’s email as being much more aggressive and impolite than it in fact was:
She claimed no one else had noticed it yet in hopes that it would make her grandma feel she could quietly change her policy (perhaps just calling it an oversight) while salvaging her pride.
Maybe. I will be completely honest with you. My extended family has so many steps/halves/adopted kids that I learned to make a strict policy against treating them as equals especially because some of them (especially the steps) are only around for a few years. Family is born and not made in my world. I believe in socio-biology and I am a genealogy buff so if the charts don’t work, you are just a friend through circumstance.
So-called propagated relationships based on who likes to screw who at the moment do not count for my purposes. It is even more important in my family than most because there are large inheritance issues at stake but I felt that way well before that became an issue.
There are ways around it however. My mother likes to claim that she has five sons but the fact of the matter is that she only gave birth to and raised three and we got the other two as teenagers. It makes my blood boil every time I hear it.
Somebody watched the Brady Bunch too many times. One stepbrother is completely dysfunctional and I haven’t spoken to him in years. The other is probably the most genuine person I have ever met in my entire life and I love him even though he isn’t my brother. He and his wife recently had a son and neither of them have any real family at all that can relate to having a young child.
There is a Southern culture concept of giving someone an honorary title of ‘Uncle’ or ‘Aunt’ even if they aren’t biologically related to you. It is almost the same thing as being a biological one except more special because it is voluntary. They asked me to be an honorary uncle for their son when I visited them in April and I accepted.I appreciate them handling it that way because I never appreciated family being thrust on me based on the marriage of the day.
Other family members have brought over adopted children from foreign countries repeatedly. Some of them are technically my first cousins but they are also 25 years or more younger than I am. I am not buying it. As long as they are good to my daughters who they are much closer in age with (and they have so far), I am perfectly fine with that but they will never be my true family.
For the purposes of this question, the OP needs to realize that what you did and who you slept with in earlier versions of your life shouldn’t become an obligation to grandparents that have true grandchildren now.
I can’t imagine what smallness would be in someone’s heart to do something so obviously hurtful to a child to make whatever sort of point. The biggest thing that children need to grow up healthy and happy is love and acceptance by the adults around them, and being caring towards the kids in your family is probably one of the easiest, lowest rent ways to make the world a better place that you are going to find. Favoring one child over another-- especially for a situation they have no control over-- is needlessly cold hearted, and trying to justify it with some half-understood pop Darwinism is outright disgusting. Kids don’t choose their family, and their families largely don’t get to chose them. When kids enter your family, under whatever circumstances, you absolutely owe them the best you have to contribute as a family member, and that definitely means not using them to play games about who is “really” a part of the family and who isn’t.
And yeah, “gramma” sounds like a complete asshole. If she can’t take that [very polite] email in the spirit that it was intended, maybe her suggestion of not seeing your family when they visit should be turned into a permanent one.
Now, I’ll wait for the inevitable chorus of posters lamenting how Dopers always recommend DTMF.
Hmm so mentioning a gift registry in a wedding invitation is tacky but telling an old lady how to spread her gift money is “polite”? Rules is hard.
Old people are old and do stupid old people stuff. If this was the kids’ grandma her (lack of) actions might be sad but this is great grandma. And they have at least one more set of great grandparents who dote on them, plus, what, 4? 6? 8? sets of grandparents who dote on them plus more than the average number of parents who like them a lot too.
The optimum ‘social strategy’ for your wife’s grandmother to do would’ve been to buy all the children presents. Why? Not because of some overriding moral imperative, simply because (in descending order, though obviously YMMV):
Not to do so may cause upset to the children
It would be seen as a nice gesture, regardless of any imagined obligation
The parents, as in this case, may take offence
She didn’t. In many ways this shows that she isn’t an integral part of your small family unit as she didn’t appreciate/respect the dynamics. The best thing to have done however was to recognize this (and not in a passive-aggressive “we’re never going to visit you again!” sort of way) and move on.
At this point your wife did something that was quite rude and tried to dictate to her grandmother whom she should buy presents for. It doesn’t matter that the e-mail was couched in polite terms, the demand that underpinned it was rude. Even worse she backed up her demand with the threat of not visiting her grandmother. Her grandmother’s reaction was non-constructive and the exchange it seems has led to a breakdown of family ties.
What strikes me is the utter stupidity of the situation: your wife and her grandmother have fallen out over a big nothing. The people involved in this situation (you, your wife and her grandmother) strike me as behaving in a self-absorbed manner (try as hard as I could, I don’t think I could muster up the energy to be offended in this situation). In fact the people who come off quite well here are your children: those whose interests are supposedly being protected, who in not actually seeming to give a toss display the most maturity.
I’m sure both parties in the dispute will tell anyone who cares to listen there was a matter of principle at stake, however this is missing the point: social etiquette isn’t about principle as everyone has their own principles (of course sometimes two peoples principles are just not compatible full-stop, but I would proffer that if that extends to the intricacies of gift-buying then one or both of the parties has severe problems), it’s about navigating these principles to achieve the best outcome for oneself. In this case it seems there are two exceptionally poor players at the ‘etiquette game’.
I have two biological children (they live with their mom, I get them a few weeks a year) and I am re-married with for step-children. My family, ie: my parents, sister, aunts, treat my strip-children as if they were flash and blood. The same with my wife’s family when it comes to my two kids.
Really, is this a fortunate turn of events? I would disagree.
Let me ask you this, supposing there was a multimillion dollar fortune involved, do you believe that your children would be equally entitled to an inheritance? What if you and your wife were to separate at some point, would they still be?
If they are 10 and 13 they probably already know that life is not fair. Why make such a big deal over some crappy present? I imagine your wife is not actually happy to have a wedge between her and her grandmother, even if she is in the right. Which I do not think she is.
Unless there is some type of dangerous or abusive situation, I think it is a terrible thing to use children as pawns in adults’ disputes. This woman is being denied the possibility of a relationship with her great grandchildren, and they with her, because someone else’s (you) feelings were hurt. Thats spiteful.
Granted. But no gift-giver is entitled to have their gifts accepted. And until a child attains majority, that is the call of their parents. If a racist uncle gave gifts only to the half-sibling with “pure, Aryan blood” or a grandmother gave gifts only to her granddaughters and not to her grandsons because she “loves to shop for girly outfits” I would hope the parents would not accept that state of affairs.
My biological brother and I grew up with a “stepfather” and our brother (his biological son). We never referred to each other as “step” anything and to this day find it offensive. “Step” feels as if it is belittling the relationship we have with one another… it always has felt this way to us. My father’s mother sent a huge box of expensive Christmas gifts to her biological grandson when we were younger, and sent me and my other brother paper weights. My dad sent the box back and told her why. He explained to my brother why he did it (basically blatant favoritism), and my brother fully supported his decision. The brother who also received the paper weight and I weren’t actually offended, but we are still grateful to this day that our dad and brother stood up for us.
What a load of horseshit. My uncle (who happens to be my godfather), his wife, and their kids may be relatives, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re not family. They’re just a bunch of assholes. On the other side of my family, my godmother, my aunt, died when I was eleven. Yet my uncle STILL comes to all of our big family gatherings on all the major holidays. He could’ve said, “hey kids, let’s have Christmas with my side of the family this year”. Nope. And nowadays he even brings his girlfriend, who attends all the major family events, has been invited to wedding and baby showers, and she just fits right in. (Hell, if they were to get married, I might just call her Aunt!)