So, when I hear a so-called devoted wife cast unkind slurs upon her mother-in-law, I wonder how genuine is the affection for her husband which allows her to make him unhappy by awaking in his breast suspicions that his mother is distasteful to his wife.  True love would hardly be so cruel.  What if John’s mother has disagreeable peculiarities?  She is none the less his mother, and, as such, he is bound to love and respect her.  If the love he bears her blinds him to her deficiencies, is it not the part of a true wife to keep his eyes closed to these foibles, since seeing them will make him uncomfortable?  Every man likes to feel that his dear mother and dearer wife are congenial friends.  And it is their duty to be friendly, if not congenial.

The mother-in-law, too, has her task.  It would be folly to state that she is not often and grossly to blame for the uncomfortable state of this relationship.  She is frequently a trifle jealous, sometimes fails to remember how she felt when young, resents her child’s love for, and dependence on, another, feels bitterly that she no longer has it in her power to make her darling’s happiness, and has such a high ideal of what should be the qualities of the partner her girl has chosen that she puts his faults under a magnifying glass of criticism until the molehills become mountains, and appreciation of the good is swallowed up in recognition of every evil trait.  Happily, this is not always the case, and the genuine mother is, as a rule, so grateful to see her child happy that for his or her sake she loves the one who causes this contentment, even if he or she be far from congenial to herself, and “not the man she would have picked out for her daughter to marry.”

I have serious doubts as to whether the existing antagonism would have been half so prevalent had not such a multitude of coarse jokes been perpetrated on the subject.  The best way to perpetuate an evil is to take it for granted and to speak of it as a matter of course.  I am glad to be able to name among my friends more than one man who is large-souled enough to tenderly love and respect his wife’s mother, and several women who frankly acknowledge that their own special mothers-in-law are all goodness and kindness.

It is natural that people brought up differently, and living separately for a long term of years, should, when thrown into close relationship, differ on many subjects, and clash in various opinions, and that occasional misunderstandings should arise.  Even with husband and wife this is true.  But if man and woman can, for the affection they bear each other, forgive and forget these little differences, why may not each, for the same sweet love’s sake, and in the thought of what maternal devotion is, pardon and overlook the foibles of the other’s mother?