q: my husband and i are expecting our second child this fall. as long as we’ve been together, we’ve planned to have 2 children. when we told my mother-in-law the happy news she took me aside and said that if we have another girl we will need to try a few more times so that we can produce a boy to “carry on the family name.” my in-laws are are not as interested in our daughter as i would have expected. sometimes i think if we had a son, they would be more involved.
my husband is an only child as his brother died several years ago. i don’t really know what to say to her, but i do know that i don’t want to or plan on having any more children. how should i respond to her?
- baby daddy mama drama
a: it ENRAGES me to think that your husband’s parents would love a baby boy more than they love your existing baby girl and the one you will be having soon. you know what that is? it’s completely and totally shitty of them, and you don’t owe them anything in the way of explanation for when and how many children you are planning to have.
mind, you don’t actually ever owe ANYONE an explanation for when or if you are going to have children, how many, what you might name them, or how you might raise them. having children or not is completely personal, and if you want to tell people “i’d rather not discuss that,” that is what you should do.
since this is your mother-in-law and you are probably going to have a long relationship with her, you should clear this up now, or have your husband talk to her about the way her behavior is affecting you. “look, we know you would love it if we had more children and you would love it if we had a boy, but we’ve decided not to have any more children.” if pressed for a why? “we’ve decided that two children is best for us.” and it would also be good to tell her now that you have noticed she seems disinterested in your daughter(s), rather than just resent her for this for the rest of your/her life. maybe she doesn’t realize what an asshole she is being. “it seems like you sometimes wish we’d given you a grandson instead of a granddaughter - we would hate for that to affect your relationship with us or with either of your granddaughters.”
it’s crummy that one of her sons died, and it’s a shame there’s no one to “carry on the family name,” but those are not reasons for you to keep having kids until you make one with a penis.
while understanding that it is not generally considered polite to tell your in-laws to fuck off, in this situation you should still try to convey “please respect our decisions, our family, and our children” as firmly as possible.
