Daughter-in-law vs mother-in-law: A battle without winners

Lydia Spencer-Elliott, The Independent

Sharing can be difficult — especially when it’s sharing the man you love with another woman. And perhaps no one knows this better than mothers and their daughters-in-law, who have historically butted heads to epic proportions. Big celebrations, like birthdays or Christmas, often spark conflict over who gets to host the festivities. Meanwhile, landmark life events — say, weddings — may trigger fallings out so severe that they take months, or even years, to recover from. In pop culture most recently: Victoria Beckham allegedly leaving her son Brooklyn Beckham’s wife Nicola Peltz “in tears” after “hijacking” the couple’s first dance by dancing “on” Brooklyn “very inappropriately”, as revealed in his bombshell Instagram statement this week.

“I do not want to reconcile with my family. I’m not being controlled, I’m standing up for myself for the first time in my life,” Brooklyn wrote, addressing accusations Peltz had him under her thumb. “My parents have been trying endlessly to ruin my relationship since before my wedding, and it hasn’t stopped,” he said, claiming David and Victoria had made clear that Peltz (daughter of billionaire businessman Nelson Peltz and former model Claudia Heffner Peltz) was “not blood” and “not family”.

Last year, a YouGov survey found that almost a third of women have “quarrelled” with their mother-in-law at some point in their relationship. Meanwhile, separate research found that 60 per cent of women admitted the relationship with their female in-law caused them long-term unhappiness and stress. This type of enduring familial power struggle between a man’s blood relations and his partner was recently explored in the Prime Video adaptation of Michelle Frances’s psychological thriller The Girlfriend, which follows wealthy woman Laura (Robin Wright) as she grows suspicious of her son’s new partner Cherry (Olivia Cooke), who she fears is manipulative and dishonest. As Laura attempts to uncover Cherry’s corrupt intentions, tension bubbles between them in the kitchen, on holiday, in the workplace — and even in the bedroom. But a cursory glance at Reddit’s infamous “Am I the A****le” forum — where users have long shared their domestic disputes to gauge whether they’re in the wrong in altercations with their loved ones — shows that real-life feuds between a girlfriend and their boyfriend’s mother have spawned under far less sinister circumstances. One woman wanted to hold her daughter-in-law’s baby before her son. Another continually asked her son’s girlfriend whether she was a lesbian. A third woman fled her holiday after her mother-in-law turned up at the airport.

Psychologist and author of What Do You Want from Me? Learning to Get Along with In-Laws Terri Apter says trouble commonly starts to emerge when a mother is worried about whether a partner is good enough for her son, or selfishly thinks that their own bond could be challenged by an outsider. Girlfriends, meanwhile, want their relationship and the rules that surround it to be taken seriously.

If they start to feel that their boyfriend’s mother is interfering or intruding in their partnership, feathers are ruffled. “Your family has rules you don’t notice because they fade into the background,” Apter says of this adaptation period. “The new in-law steps into this family and sees all these strange dynamics and expectations. How do you express affection? How much anger is it OK to show? All these things you think should be accepted, you can suddenly see through your in-laws’ eyes — that they’re a bit weird and they’re questioned. That’s a threat.”

Margot, 30, (not real name), initially liked her boyfriend’s mum, whom she describes as “welcoming and extremely cool”. But a rift started to emerge due to the couple living in London, near to Margot’s family, rather than in northern England, closer to his. “Over time, it became very clear that, for them, there was a palpable sense I’d pulled their son away from them, even though he lived in the city when we met,” she says, adding that she senses “friction” over the fact that the couple spend more time with her relatives. “We’re from quite different backgrounds; she has no desire to learn about who I am or about my interests,” Margot adds. “One twist of the knife was her buying me a size 18 jumpsuit for Christmas when I am, quite obviously, a size 12.”

In research conducted by Apter, two-thirds of daughters-in-law believed that their husband’s mother frequently exhibited jealous maternal love towards their son. Sometimes, this can involve something called “emotional incest”, where a mother sources her emotional and partnership support from her child. Obviously, when the child gets a girlfriend, that relationship threatens to disrupt said intimacy, causing them to lash out or cling on tighter; think Jane Fonda slyly trying to ditch Jennifer Lopez from her son’s life in Monster-In-Law, or Charlotte York’s overzealous mother-in-law in Sex and the City, played by Bunny MacDougal, who crashes Charlotte and Trey’s shopping trip to buy a marital bed.