After we got married, we went to live with my husband’s parents, because they have a big two-bedroom apartment, and we can’t afford to rent right now. We live together, and I have a wonderful relationship with my father-in-law.
Since we had a daughter, my husband’s parents help me with everything, and I am always free to go out to meet someone and go about my business. When my daughter was very tiny, my in-laws and I used to take over for each other around the crib. That is, at night, if my daughter cried, I, my mother-in-law, or father-in-law would take turns getting up to her. My husband had the image of a breadwinner and intellectual in the eyes of his parents. He works as a surgeon, leaves early, comes back late, sometimes even stays with his colleagues to drink what grateful patients gave him.
He is so accustomed to the fact that only his parents and I are involved in raising the child, that when I ask him on his day off to run to get milk for his daughter, he just goes to his father’s room and asks him to comply with my request. When my daughter was smaller and started crying over something, my husband would go up to one of the three of us and ask him to make it stop.
I guess part of the reason he started treating child care this way was because his mother had worn him out. Often times I even ask my husband to literally at least hold the baby, but then his mother runs up and says she’d better do it because her son is already very tired at work. She does the same after any of my other requests to him.
Even though my husband is not exactly burning to take care of the baby himself, his mother has further convinced him that this approach is more than okay. At the same time, if my husband ever helps me in any way, his mother almost shouts “bravo,” blurting out what a great dad her son is. I find their attitude towards my husband very annoying, because it makes him even more irresponsible.
I think living with husband’s parents has really spoiled him. If it were just the two of us, he would have no one to pass on my requests, and he would be forced to help and participate in his daughter’s upbringing at least occasionally.
