A new baby being born into a family is an exciting time that should bring joy to everyone, but sometimes there is also some drama.

What would you do if after your baby was born, your mother-in-law rarely visited and often made snide remarks about you or the baby, even mentioning how much money is being spent on it?

That is what happened to the guy in this story, and he isn’t sure if he was out of line for calling her out and criticizing how she has been acting.

AITAH for telling my MIL that her daughter isn’t an investment and she doesn’t act like she even likes our family?

So- We had a kid. This is some time ago now and is when the downwards slope of realization started hitting us that my MIL seemed to not care very much for her daughter, or our little family.

Cultural differences can be very significant in some cases.

I wanna clarify that there can be cultural differences as my wife is Asian and I’m Caucasian. Her mom and dad met in our country, moved here when they were young adults.

I’ve wanted to make a family as long as I remember, and my dream, a wonderful little baby came to the world.

Of course, everyone is excited about a new member of the family.

We were ecstatic, and of course expected excitement from everyone. And that we got!

On my side my parents have several grandchildren before ours, so they knew the rodeo. On my wife’s side, we’re got the first grandchild (and great grandchild, as her grandparents are alive.)

Everyone is different.

I wanna make sure that you, the reader, understands that I’m not trying to compare my mom to my MIL, but the difference in behavior only highlights my MILs actions, so much so that my wife told me how lucky she was that my mom was now hers too.

First weeks of baby:
All of my family wants to visit (not at once) and see the new little wonder. Everyone asks how the birth went, if my wife is okay and how she’s doing.

All is how it should be.

Everyone’s focus is rightly on her and her well being first, baby second.

My MIL wanted to visit the day of the birth, where we had been up all night and were too tired. We told her we definitely needed sleep, but we’d let them know when they could come visit ASAP.

This definitely seems to be something of a cultural difference.

They came by and saw the baby, took pictures, and hung around for a bit until they seemed bored and then left. The only one who asked how my wife was doing, was one of her sisters when she visited later on.

Post first weeks:
My mom immediately began bargaining for how much she could come visit. We settled for what was “Once a week, plus change” so she came over every week, and later on (when the baby was more… Interactive) she’d ask if we wanna eat together and whatnot, to get some more time with her new grandchild.

While it can definitely be too much for some people to see other people, let alone your MIL that much, we are just happy to show off the star of our lives whenever possible. My mom’s excitement to see our kid obviously made us happy.

Well, you can’t expect everyone to act the way your family does.

My MIL (and her family) barely reached out after a first wave of initial excitement. We’d invite them over and they had busy schedules or were too tired. It can happen, I don’t particularly blame them for this.

Periods seem longer and longer between visits from the in-laws, and until we’re celebrating a first birthday. We had set a date months prior, that kept getting changed (to suit them) and whenever we agreed on a date, they wanted to change it again because of some new(?) or other factor.

At least they showed up.

We finally agreed and they came to celebrate.

Beyond:
Some time later we get an invitation to a gathering of (essentially) all Asian family and friends and whatnot. Only non-Asians were their spouses. It became pretty evident that we were invited just to show extended family the baby.

Well, the baby is barely over a year old. What talents could it have?

And several times my MIL highlighted how talented and smart my wife’s cousin’s kid is. Doesn’t speak much about ours. At some point during this gathering, she wants to hold our kid and gets rejected (By our kid).

She asked why she got rejected, and if I couldn’t just hand our kid to her anyway. Where my reply was “She probably doesn’t recognize you, or feel comfortable enough”.

Honestly, that was kind of petty.

She rolled her eyes at that statement, even clicked her tongue. At that I just replied “Maybe if you’d come visit more often, you wouldn’t get rejected”.

On one occasion my wife asked if she’d like to come visit every two weeks, as like a plan/agreement, so our kid would actually know her.

MIL has to make it a priority too.

Her response was “What if I make other plans?” Which was just a pretty clear indicator where the priorities were. Her parents live about 20-30 minutes away, and at one point she said “It’s too far to drive to hang out for a few hours.”

To hang out with her one and only grandchild. She will frequently drive my wife’s younger sisters somewhere, even the one who doesn’t live at home anymore.

Clearly she is playing favorites a bit.

She once picked her up to bring her home for dinner, and then drove her home again. Which was at least 1½ hour of transport total. Dinner was at most 3½ hour.

Recently she brought up a vacation by “Oh, we’re thinking we’re (her parents, grandparents and sisters+boyfriends) gonna go to location around month.”

Well, this is awkward.

And my wife’s reply was “Oh, I’ll have to check our calendars”

She replied, “Oh, we didn’t mean with you guys” at which point my wife said that that hurt and seemed really inconsiderate when everyone was gonna go.

I can’t blame her for being hurt.

That her feelings were actually pretty badly hurt by this, and spilled that she didn’t feel like she was getting the same effort and care her sisters are.

Despite even having a kid – their grandchild – that she wants them to love as grandparents.

There is clearly a major communication issue between them.

Her response was how she didn’t mean for that, but then began to let out her side, that she feels like we wouldn’t want to come anyway, because she doesn’t seem to appreciate her own family.

She never invites them out to eat (we’ve invited them to our house a million times, but this doesn’t count) and how if we ever went out to eat for an occasion or something, she(wife) didn’t pick up the tab. And a whole bunch about monetary things. —

So…This is about money? That’s sad.

My wife literally has been upgrading their wardrobe to be better quality, better shoes, replaced their worn out kitchen equipment and more.

She’d buy things they mention they don’t have or are worn out – winter gloves, towels, literally anything they could think of mentioning, my wife has spent on them. -Except dinners out where we’ve paid (for everyone, not just ourselves) only a few times.

The money conversation should be entirely separate.

She proceeded to then mention how much money they’ve spent on her, how expensive kids are and in general just mentioning things parents SHOULD do/buy for their kids, as well as helped us for a loan (actual loan being paid back, not free money) at one point.

Then she finished by saying they weren’t getting the respect elders should get.

While correct, that isn’t going to help fix the relationship.

This was the point where I pointed out that her daughter is not an investment, she isn’t supposed to pay parents back for being parents and at this point it just seems like she doesn’t even like our family at all.

AITA?

This whole family needs to work on their communication skills or they will end up entirely estranged.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

Here is someone who makes a good point.

While fun, this is a bad idea.

The wife needs to lead this situation.

Here is someone who recommends therapy.

He is in a very hard spot.

This family is going to need some therapy for sure.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.