Life is an interlock of twist and turns – a mere existence in the social jungle where the fittest survives. If you happen to be married in a household, where the old lady has kept a tight leash and is not very acquiescent, then finding your way through the murky morass can be a really tough expedition. Compromise, and all the words that cling to the verb, tends to spook the South Asian bride. How much should she give in? Or should she give in at all? After all, she’s educated, financially independent and if need be, can stand on her own.
So why compromise?
Independent mentality: Mira Shah, a newlywed from Brampton says “Today’s urban women have financial independence and a tendency to live on their own terms. According to a market research for every hundred men opting for higher studies there are sixty eight female counterparts doing the same. There’s gender competition right from a daily wage basis laborer to premiership of the nation! There’s a long queue of female jobseekers in the online job portals. Out of all these above-mentioned facts, it’s quite evident that today’s women are ready to take up the challenge of balancing their respective careers and family. Hence, the demands of their profession and tension of managing a family are eventually draining them off the patience they used to have earlier to face ardent criticism from their mother-in-laws back home, and thus all hell breaks loose. The face of South Asian women is never the same again,” she retaliates. Thus, the struggle of supremacy starts…
Desired profiles of (Mother-in-Laws) MIL’s – Today`s majority of socialite working women are not willing to stay with their mother-in-laws, and rather they prefer a separate pad for the married couple. To, have a glimpse of the matter, taking a look upon the marriage packages offered in many of the Shaadi portals, today, the most lucrative, on-demand and expensive are the ones that doesn’t include the eventual prospect (danger) of a mother-in-law. What if, she exists?
“Relationship between MIL’s and their daughter-in-laws has always been very complex for an outsider to understand. Only, if you keenly observe the processes at home you’ll be able to feel it,” says Priti Gupta, a Process Developer at Bell.
Mentality of MIL’s – “The main reason for clash between me and my MIL is her possessive nature. Since most of the families today are nuclear ones, a mother’s complete focus goes on upbringing of her children. Since, traditionally in our society the head of the family, i.e., the father of the child is away at work place for most of the time in a day, the child finds an emotional vent through her mother and forms a bond of intimate friendship. This emotion turns into bossism when the son gets married. Eventually the MIL thinks that she has an authority over her daughter in law. Mainly, non-working mother-in-laws find the family as an only place to prove their might and intimidate the meekly newcomer girl to their house hold as to who is the boss. But things have changed! There’s competition in every field between the males and their female counterparts. So the question of compromise does not exist,” says Priti.
The bitterness in the relationship initiates from here. Initially, the daughter-in-law tries her best to compromise but as time goes on, she refuses to agree with the tantrums of the mother-in-law.
“Now let me talk about daughter in law’s psyche,” says Deepti Kaur, Marriage Counselor from Brampton. “When I was newly married my mother in law was busy being possessive about my husband. But I was also smart enough to understand that wife and husbands’ relation involves physicality. My MIL considered this as a dangerous as well as a weakening factor in the fight between us. But just like all other wives I was clever enough to take the advantage of this factor to score over her. When any daughter in law uses this factor to score over her mother-in-law in a day-to-day basis, the opponent party starts sledging, quite literally. The MIL often interrupts or prevents the couple to be close and pass comment upon her son mimicking manhood as she feels, her son is henpecked and being governed by a lady, his wife.”
This proves that “In the closest relationships of one’s life compromise is a very ill-fitting word. There is no space for compromise,” says Deepti.
Does the complexity and grave quotient of this conflict even beat the cold war between the Pentagon and the Kremlin? Will they forever be in war? This conflict of power and jealousy within a family actually harms the child of the family who is been deprived of equal love from both of the parties at war.
So what do you think? Is the ‘husband’ the real victim in this saas-bahu (daughter-mother in law) war or does the daughter-in-law deserve our sympathies and support?
Author: Ramya Maheshwary
