Beware of women who idolise their father and always shame their mother

My mother-in-law is a very interesting case. Studying her behaviour taught me that there are so many ways in which internalised misogyny can wreck a woman’s mind.

On paper, my mother-in-law sounds like a feminist dream. She is quite well-known in her field, and she has published some essays in which she also mentions her personal life. I read those essays before I met her, and she sounded wonderful. She is a boomer who devoted herself to her career full time while my father-in-law was a stay-at-home husband and raised their son (my husband). She was very successful in her career, and she completely eschews feminine dress codes: no makeup, no nail polish, frizzy unkept hair. I had not met her in person, and I thought she was just a very liberated woman with a great feminist husband.

Then I went to their house. Gosh, one of the most traumatic days of my life, I will never forget it.

They live in a damp, ramshackle cottage in the countryside, full of mice. I am not joking when I say it is the filthiest hellhole I have ever seen in my life. I am talking decades of dust on every surface, pots and pans encrusted with dirt, a loo that is literally black on the inside from having never been cleaned, clutter, mud on the floor.

It turns out that the lovely stay-at-home husband never did any housework at all. She pays all the bills and he spends her money on collecting antiques for himself and pursuing his hobbies. What is more, he screamed at her and insulted her in front of me as soon as I stepped into the house. He does not even try to hide his emotionally abusive behaviour towards her. Later I talked to one of my husband’s old female friends, whom I adore and who has known my husband for a very long time, and she told me that she hated going to my husband’s parents’ house during the university years because watching my father-in-law yell at his wife, call her incompetent, snap at her, etc. was too distressing.

I felt immensely sorry for my mother-in-law and was ready to defend her, but here comes the worst part: she defends her husband whenever her son, my husband, criticises his behaviour.

My husband, bless his heart, was in some ways highly traumatised by his upbringing. He has never raised his voice with me and gets upset when people get angry, because when he was little he found his father’s outbursts very distressing. I heard him tell his mother over the phone that he found the way his father was behaving lately really too much, and she replied that he is actually a wonderful husband who takes good care of the garden and cooks her dinner (the dinner in question, by the way, is badly boiled vegetables). He told her I could not come over to her house because I have bad allergies that get triggered by all the dirt and dust. She became furious and told him, “I have raised you to not care at all about cleaning! How can you be with a fussy girl like that? You have become prissy like your grandmother!”

And here we come to the root of the story: my mother-in-law loathes her mother, who gave up her career as a doctor to care for her children. My mother-in-law has never shown any gratitude towards her for this. As soon as she met me she ranted to me incessantly about how her mother made her do chores (yes? That’s normal?) and made her shower (how horrible!), while her wonderful father took her on wild walks and let her wear muddy shoes in the house (the mother cleaned up) and only did fun things with her. She does not have the emotional intelligence to realise that her father could do the fun things with her because her mother had given up her career to take care of all the not fun, domestic tasks. She idolised her father and did not have one kind word for her mother, who is still alive and whom I have met; she is a sweetheart who simply cares about keeping a tidy house.

My mother-in-law spent her life rejecting the “feminine role” of the mother she hated: she never had female friends, never wore makeup because she tried to imitate her father in appearance and mannerism. When she met my father-in-law, he was divorced with three young children. Having spoken to one of said children (my husband’s half-sister), I found out that his previous wife divorced him after she went away for a weekend to visit her sick mother, and came home to find out he had only fed the kids chocolate, had not bothered to heat up the meals she had cooked in advance for them, and had generally ignored the kids and read his books instead.

What woman in her right mind would marry someone like this? But my husband always said his mother always blamed the previous wife for being “too domestic” (because she wanted her kids to be properly fed?). My mother-in-law ignored her mother who told her not to marry such a horrible man, and she let him stay home without doing any housework and let him raise my husband in a state of neglect (sometimes, growing up, my husband did not even have clean clothes to go to school in). My husband said his mother always defended his father, even when he emotionally abused her.

Anyway, I wanted to share this to remind you all that things are not always what they seem. We live in a patriarchal society, which means that occasionally you will find women who imitate, enable and defend abusive men because they see women as lesser. Being successful in your career as a woman does not mean being free of misogyny at home, and “stay at home husbands” are not always as wonderful as they sound on paper. Imitating men and living in filth and neglecting the physical needs of your children is not liberation. Allowing your husband to stay home and do nothing while you work all day is not liberation. Enduring his abuse for the sake of “not being like those other nagging women who care about domestic things” is not liberation. Beware of women who always insult their mothers and always defend men: a lot of internalised misogyny lurks under the surface.