Radio Australia Today Editorial

Mothers-in-law. Dragons or just undervalued people?

29 April 2009

Mothers-in-Law have been lampooned on television for about as long as there’s been television. The most famous dragon M-in-L was actually a witch. Literally. It was Samantha Stevens’ mother Endora in the TV series Bewitched. Men across the world laughed nervously at Endora’s running battle with her son Darren, who could just not let up, even after she changed him into a donkey/pig/coffee table.

Fast forward forty years and Ray Barrone’s mother in Everybody Loves Raymond brought us a more real M-in-L, the kind that comes into her daughter-in-law’s house at all hours, giving unsolicited opinions on her cooking and curtains. The whole program is based on the presence of this dragon M-in-L and it was hilarious. Nervously hilarious.

But according to British researcher Luisa Dillner, the whole M-in-L issue has been around for a lot longer than the last sixty years. She uncovered jokes about the M-in-L made as far back as the Roman times.

I had a great M-in-L, but part of the affection could be because she lived halfway around the world. It’s hard to get annoyed about familial interference when you only see the M-in-L once every two years. Dillner does say that it is the proximity of the M-in-L that can cause the problem. These women have been through the raising of a family. They have experience, having been through every conceivable problem a married woman would have to face, and so would find it very hard not to want to put in an opinion about important things like child raising.

Given this proximity, it might be surprising that Dillner advocates spending more time with your M-in-L. She says you should become friends, and talk about things outside of the family unit. After all, you have something in common ie: her son or daughter.

With Mother’s Day not that far away (May 10), at the very least I think we ought to cut them some slack. They may feel like a chief executive who is usurped by a younger replacement. Of course this is not what’s happened, but the feeling  might be there.

So why do I still laugh at Ray Barrone’s M-in-L jokes? Dunno. I’ve got a cruel nature I guess. Well that’s what my M-in-L says.

                                                             – Phil