Ask Amy: Mom Wants Daily Check-ins

[cereta]

Dear Amy: My sister, 60, and her daughter (28) are having a dispute.

My niece went to grad school in another country and has opted to stay for a few more years.

Everyone is happy, but being a young single woman far away (five hour time difference), her mom is constantly worrying about her.

She’s made a few visits to see her and my niece gets back home often. However, my sister feels it’s rude of my niece not to respond to texts from her. She believes it’s not too much to ask my niece for a daily text to make sure she’s all right (alive) — she’d be thrilled with just a return emoji – thumbs up.

My niece believes that touching base two or three times a week is enough.

This is causing a rift.

Also, it hurts her that her daughter wouldn’t want to know that her own mother is alive and well, too.

Any thoughts on how to proceed?

– Uncle Who Cares (I live far away, too)

Dear Uncle: Back in the day, if you wanted to check in with an overseas relative, you would wait for that tissue-paper airmail letter to land in your mailbox. Or you would have a weekly call to catch up.

My point is that with the ability to be in constant contact, people seem to have lost the capacity to manage their own anxieties.

Your niece is not serving in a war zone. Constantly worrying about whether a 28-year-old woman is alive seems excessive, as is expecting this daughter to worry every day about whether her mother is alive.

However – because this dynamic does exist, yes I do agree that the daughter should acknowledge her mother’s daily texts.

(no subject)

[conuly]

Dear Care and Feeding,

I’ve got yet another “awful in-laws” letter for you, which I’m sure makes your day (sarcasm, sorry). My mother-in-law is a tactless, emotionally manipulative, toxic narcissist; my father-in-law is a browbeaten, passive enabler. My husband, despite having a miserable childhood, has somehow managed to rise above it all. He’s great, and we have a wonderful marriage. Unfortunately, we still have some interaction with his family once every other month or so. I’ll spare you the details, but these visits are vile.

Recently, my own mother was diagnosed with stage 3 uterine cancer, and because I carry the same genetic mutation and multiple risk factors, I’ll be undergoing a full hysterectomy before the end of the year (I’m 34). When my MIL found out, she said—and I quote precisely—“Well, if you’re not giving me more grandchildren, what good are you?” And then she advised my husband that if he wants more kids—which we do not—he should consider his “other options.” This was after saying that her cancer diagnosis last year was exponentially worse (she had a potentially cancerous patch of skin removed) than my mother’s and that “only the strong survive” even though my mom’s health wasn’t great before the cancer, and she knows that. I told her she was being wretched and that until she could learn some empathy, we would not be seeing her, and then we left. But my husband and I got in a huge fight on the drive home because I told him that under no circumstances was he to share any more information with his family about our lives, my health, or my parents’/siblings’ lives and health. He got defensive and said he had only been talking to his dad (but clearly my FIL talks to his wife). Now hubs and I are at an impasse. I want a strict info diet and zero visits until his parents can learn some respect, but with a line of birthdays coming up, odds are he’ll be guilted into visiting them soon (he’s trying to set boundaries but is inconsistent about it, which his family takes advantage of). Telling him to go without me isn’t an option because his parents will demand that he bring our kids and I refuse to allow my children to be around his family if I’m not there. Am I wrong to want to fully cut them out and move on?

—Need an In-law-ectomy

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(no subject)

[conuly]

Dear Care and Feeding,

Kelly, Susan, Stacy, and I have been friends since we shared a suite in college. I’m Nigerian and Kelly is Japanese; Susan and Stacy are white. Lately, this has led to a big disconnect in how they believe Kelly and I should resolve problems with our families. They are very comfortable with just cutting family members off and/or issuing boundaries and then cutting people off, which is basically anathema to the closely knit immigrant communities and family-based cultures Kelly and I grew up in, but they don’t understand why we won’t just “hold our parents accountable” for our childhood trauma, even though we’ve explained that it really wouldn’t make sense to them.

For example, my mother remarried less than a year after my father died, and Susan’s father also remarried shortly after her parents got divorced. But I know my mother felt pressured to do so by her relatives, and she was alone with a child just two years after immigrating to a new country, so I can understand why she believed it was the safest choice for us (even though I was very angry about it at the time). Susan thinks I should have reduced contact with my mother, the way she did with her dad and stepmother when she turned 18, and she and Stacy have similarly urged Kelly to set boundaries with her parents whenever she’s vented about them. Kelly and I have both explained that we understand where they’re coming from, but that this logic would make no sense to our parents, who grew up in multi-generational, impoverished households. We both feel confident that we won’t replicate our parents’ behavior with our future children, but that doesn’t mean we want them out of our lives, or that we won’t provide for them after seeing how many sacrifices they’ve made for us. It’s gotten to the point where we can’t even bring up family issues without hearing speeches about how we need to break free of our oppressive cultures and parents. How can we get it through to our friends that their methods of dealing with white upper middle-class family members don’t translate to our African and Asian immigrant families? It’s getting seriously frustrating.

—Aggrieved by Advice in Anaheim

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