People Seek Help With Judging Their "Am I The Jerk?" Stories

"I (27) have been married to my husband (I’ll refer to him as Alex, 36M) for 7 years and we have 2 children together - a 3-year-old girl and a baby (2 weeks).

A week ago my MIL (we’ll call her Kathy) recently had a pretty bad breakup with a long-term partner of hers. Following this, Kathy asked Alex if she could stay with us for a while, and he obliged. Alex didn’t run this by me but as this is his mother and she is going through a rough patch, I let it go.

Now here’s where the problem begins:

MIL has been constantly critiquing my parenting and even inserting herself in my and Alex’s finances. I’m no stranger to her bashing my parenting when we would see her on holidays with my toddler but this was her first time staying with us for so long.

Some of MIL’s bashing goes as follows — The baby is mainly formula-fed (I want to breastfeed exclusively but my milk supply is low and I’ve been working with my baby’s pediatrician). She goes on long rants about how I’m 'feeding my baby poison' and 'throwing money down the drain' and how she 'breastfed her children with no problems!' And that I need to stop being lazy.

As well as a thousand critiques about how I’m holding the baby too much and I'll spoil her. (No amount of telling her my conversations with my baby’s pediatrician put an end to this.)

And when I make my 3-year-old something quick for breakfast or lunch, MIL goes on about how 'I’m home all day doing nothing and can’t be bothered to cook my child a real meal'.

My final straw happened last night:

I’m currently on maternity leave (elementary school teacher). My husband is working and makes about 3x what I make. When my husband got home from work, I asked him to watch the kids for a few minutes while I took a shower.

MIL says I’m being lazy and a gold digger and that I expect her son to do all the work and then come home and babysit. I lost it. I shouted at her to go back to her own house, and to mind her own parenting. My husband then said I couldn’t do that to my own MIL, that she lives all on her own now, and that I was being cruel. I shouted at him that she has 3 other children she can stay with, that he lets her get away with talking to his wife that way and what kind of husband is he.

MIL and Alex left, Alex said he’d stay with his mother for a night or two. I called my sister and mom over to help with the kids and to talk to them.

I feel like I may be a jerk because even though Alex has heard many of the remarks she’s made about me and my parenting, I probably should’ve talked to him about it and how it made me feel."

Another User Comments:

"There are three people mentioned here and two of them are jerks. You’re not one of them. I know you might feel like one for blowing up at her and your husband taking her side but the way I see it: You are a good, loving mother.

You might parent differently than your MIL did but that doesn’t make her way better.

Your husband should be standing up for you rather than enabling her cruelty toward you. He must see that you’re a good mother, why else would he trust you to care for the kids, or have a second child with you?

So he needed to put a stop to the criticism. Instead, he sided with her! Staying with HER for a few nights leaving you with a newborn? Because of a breakup? Yeah they suck, but she’s a grown woman." [deleted]

Another User Comments:

"NTJ and your husband is a trashy husband.

No matter what he does to be a good husband, his behavior and unwillingness to stand up to his mother and understand she is wrong is not ok, and that outranks the parts of being a good husband and makes him a trashy one. You need to give him an ultimatum and come up with an exit plan, just in case it ever gets to that stage. Regardless of her being his mother, you and the kids are his family and it’s your home, she does not get to dictate or disrespect you and he is a crappy husband and father for allowing that behavior under his roof." RileysVoice