saas-bahu fight: a research based article

The fight of chivalry between the daughter-in-law & mother-in-law is an age old phenomena. We should look into the crux of this struggle that persists even in this era of globalization where everybody lacks time. Everyday, in the news papers we find several cases of women reporting in police stations against atrocities committed upon them in their in-laws house. However, every coin as two sides, its been reported that almost 90% cases of wife torture put up in Delhi are actually false cases put up by the women to put their family members in trouble by skewing the facts & ignorant use of the article 498(A) of the IPC. However, if we dare to look further the superficial causes it’s actually a fight between two women. But, why?

Independent Mentality?

A maximum portion of today’s urban women population has a more or less financial independence and a tendency to live on their terms. For every 100 men opting for higher education there are 68 female counterparts doing the same. Women are successfully competing in every field or profession with the men folk, right from a daily wage basis laborer to premiership of the nation! Every one out of six earning people in a city are women. There’s a long queue of female jobseeker in the online job portals. Out of all these above mentioned facts, it’s quite evident that today’s women are ready to take up the challenge of balancing their respective careers and family. Hence, the demands of their profession & tension of managing a family are eventually draining them off the patience they used to have earlier to face ardent criticism from their mother-in-laws back at home, and thus the hell breaks loose. The face of Indian women is never the same again, she retaliates. Thus, the struggle of supremacy starts…

Desired profile for mother-in- law; Today

A majority of today’s urbane, socialite working women are not willing to stay with their mother-in-laws., and rather they prefer a separate pad for the married couple. To, have a glimpse of the matter, we looked upon the marriage packages offered in many of the Shaadi portals in the country, the most lucrative, on-demand and expensive are the ones that doesn’t include the eventual prospect(danger) of a mother-in-law. What if, she exists?

Complexities?

The relationship between mom-in-laws & their daughter-in-laws has always been very complex for an outsider to understand. Only, if you keenly observe the processes at home you’ll be able to feel its heat. Upon asking, how does he exactly manages or rather juggles the tumbling relationship between her wife & mother, one of my closest relative joking said,

“The tension is not always cursory, it’s often underlying, If u know about the black hole, it’s like that, we all know it’s there only be feeling it’s pull and the relationship is as complex as the working of ∏ (pi)-mesons inside a proton.”

he chuckled.

Psyche of the mother-in-law:

On delving ourselves into this very important matter, we got to find, that on of the main causes of clash between the wife & mother-in-law is the over-possessive nature of the husband’s mother. Since of the most of the families today are nuclear ones, thus the entire attention of the mothers are directed towards bringing up their son. Since, traditionally in our society the head of the family, i.e., the father of the child is away at work place for most of the time in a day, the child finds an emotional vent through her mother and forms a bond of intimate friendship. Also, the mothers keep on rearing their child in a uni-directional fashion feeling that their son have been & ever will be a part of them. Again, when an arranged marriage is fixed, the mother generally thinks that it’s her actually who has brought the girl or daughter-in-law into their house-hold and rightly holds the right to govern this new family. Mainly, non-working mother-in-laws find the family as an only place to prove their might and intimidate the meekly newcomer girl to their house hold as to who is the boss. The bitterness in the relationship initiates from here. Initially, the daughter-in-law tries her level best to compromise but as time goes on, she refuses to agree with the tantrums of the mom-in-law. But, if it’s a love marriage, then the mother-in-law feels to be in a back-foot from the debut day, but doesn’t hesitate to step out over a slightest fault on the young girl’s part. Hence, trouble again!

Psyche of the daughter-in-law:

While the mother-in-law is busy being possessive her son, it also strikes the wife. The wife has the prime right to her husband as this relationship essentially involves physicality. Most of the mother-in-law considers this as a dangerous as well a weakening factor in this struggle. The daughter-in-laws are also clever enough to take advantage of this physical factor. When she uses this factor to score over her mother-in-law in a day-to-day basis, the opponent party starts sledging, quite literally. The mother-in-law often interrupts or prevents the couple to be close and pass comment upon her son mimicking manhood as she feels, her son is henpecked & being governed by a lady, his wife.

Husband’s role:

It’s a difficult case for the husband who has to juggle through this marital woe in the family. They are sandwiched between this clash of titans and mostly try to say aloof from all this. But eventually they have to take a side which is very difficult for them as both of the individuals have a very deep impact into his life. However, generally the mother-in-laws never want a divorce between her son & his wife. It’s mostly the wife who opts for a divorce.

Conclusion:Does the complexity and grave quotient of this conflict even beat the cold war between the Pentagon & the Kremlin? Will they forever be in war? The relationship between a woman & her mother-in-law is very sensitive. The Hindu mythology portrays Sita-Koushalya & Draupadi-Kunti as ideal daughter-in-law-mother-in-law pair. This conflict of power & jealousy within a family actually harms the child of the family who is been deprived of equal love from both of the parties at war.

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