“Why I Owe No Duty to My Mother-in-Law in Her Old Age”
“I will not lift a finger for my mother-in-law—let her abandon any hope of that!” Anna declares bitterly, her voice trembling with years of pent-up resentment. “That woman has no right to expect my support. In all the seventeen years of our marriage to her son, she never once offered us help—not a shilling, nor a moment of her time. Worse still, I never heard a single kind word from her! She always insisted she owed nothing to anyone. Now I understand she was right. And I owe her nothing in return!”
Anna recounts her story from the modest but cosy parlour of her home in a quiet Yorkshire village. She has two teenage sons and a mortgage she and her husband have been battling like an unyielding foe. Anna is certain: had it not been for her own mother, they would have crumpled under the weight. Her mother never gave them money, but she took upon herself the care of the grandchildren. She fetched them from school, nursed them through fevers, walked them to cricket practice, helped with sums, and kept them fed. Because of her, Anna and her husband could work without distraction.
All those years, they toiled unceasingly to pay the mortgage and secure their sons’ futures. Anna remembers the strain of juggling work and motherhood, especially when the boys were small. Without her mother’s aid, she says, their family would have faltered. “Had it not been for Mum, we’d have had nothing,” Anna sighs. “With two children, I could never have worked as I did.”
And what of her mother-in-law? All these years, she lived for herself alone. She saw the grandchildren only at Christmas or the rare birthday, and only in passing. There was always some grander affair—a trip to Bath with friends or some private preoccupation. Anna swallowed her pride more than once, asking the woman to mind the children, only to be met with frosty refusal. “I raised my son alone, and you’ll manage as I did,” the mother-in-law would say. “Expect no help from me.” After a few attempts, Anna stopped asking. Why humiliate herself when the answer was always the same?
“My mother practically raised my boys!” Anna says, warmth softening her voice. “I’ll be forever grateful. If ever she needs aid, my husband and I will move heaven and earth for her. But with his mother, it’s different. Yes, she bore him, and perhaps some unwritten moral law insists we must assist her. But there’s no bond between us, no tenderness. She chose this distance herself.”
Anna falls silent, gazing out the window where the first snowflakes drift past. Her eyes hold pain, mixed with resolve. She wonders: what does this woman expect? Does her mother-in-law truly believe age will spare her? That she’ll remain forever strong and self-sufficient? Anna shakes her head, as if dispelling the thought. “Life is a boomerang,” she murmurs. “As you sow, so shall you reap. Love, respect, kindness—these must be earned. And she never tried.”
Yet deep down, unease gnaws at her. Ought she rise above old wounds? Does duty to family demand she care for this woman as she would her own mother, despite years of indifference? Age spares no one, and perhaps the bond of marriage compels her to forget the past. Or is it justice that each must answer for their choices? Anna has no answer, and the question torments her.
What do you say? Should Anna, teeth gritted, tend to her mother-in-law despite her cold shoulders and long absences? Or is it only fair that we reap what we sow? Life has a way of settling debts—but who decides how they’re paid? Perhaps there’s no right answer here. But one thing is certain: family is a trial, testing our strength, forcing us to walk the line between duty and what’s right.
