THE UNENDING GAME.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21019, 7 May 1930, Page 14

THE UNENDING GAME.

There are some games that you simply cannot win. Robbery and violence are crimes, and living with your son or daughter after that son or daughter is married is not a crime. But it ought to be! And this ought to be the one game of which every one of us learns the same bitter lesson: you can’t win. Some months ago I wrote an article, which I called “When You Lose Your Son—But Not by Death.” In it I spoke about a" young wife being kind and generous to her mother-in-law, and trying to understand how sad and hard it is for the mother-in-law to lose her son, and trying to share with her some of the happiness that his life and love gave his wife. The point of the article was that harmonious family relationships are beautiful and fruitful things, and that since the older woman rarely has the courage and foresight to be generous, it devolves upon the young wife to establish the note of affection and tolerance b 'tween them. It is so easy, and so usual to quarrel with and estrange, your mother in-law at the very beginning of marriage, and then to have coldness and silence where there ought to be love and affection- - ought to be the dignified and picturesque tie between your house and grandma’s house.” More than 700 letters came to me about this article; some from elderly women who had lost their sons to young wives, and were still mourning them, but most from the wives themselves, protesting indignantly against the whole difficult situation. Scores of these women had actually been parted from the men they loved because of the jealous, critical, interfering woman who had happened—some 25 or 28 years before—to bring a man-child into the world. After reading these letters I still feel there ought f to be as much patience, kindness, forbearance, and generosity as each and every son’s wife can bring to this particular problem-—but that the mother who lives with a married daughter, or married son, is making a fatal mistake, losing what legitimate share of the affection of both she might have —and, in short, playing a game she can’t

win. Courteous treatment and resolute gen- ■ erosity to a mother-in-law are one thing, i ' and haying her live in your house is another. Every boy ought to be taught i ■ this at school, and every mother who is wise will teach her boy that his wife ! won’t want her, his mother, in the new i home, and that it is right, natural, and conducive to happiness all round that i that mother shall not be there - even though she herself is the mother in , question. / i It seems to me that we middle-aged women could do no kinder or more help [ ful thing for the rising generation than , .■ to teach our sons, drill it into them as if it were a lesson in a school-book, that ; no man has 'a right to ask his young ; 1 wife to live under the surveillance of I an older woman, 1 These mothers who sweetly, mourn-, i fully predict that the day is coming ! when darling Roy, for whom mamma has slaved and planned and lived for 25 i years, won’t want mother when he\mar- , ries his pretty girl, and that then there i will be nothing for poor mother to do , bui creep away somewhere and die of a > broken heart, are merely acting a part, and a selfish and wicked part at that. , What a woman tells her son when . he is first in love, first engaged, remains 1 with him for a long, long time. Perhaps , at 50 he sees that “mother” was nar- ■ row and selfish, ready to sacrifice his happiness and his young wife’s happi- , ness to her insensate passion for her boy. x i “ I don’t think Elizabeth really wants ,* me,” mother says gently. And poor Elizabeth sees Roy’s eager, loyal eyes im- ‘ ploring her, and stiffly and unwillingly ; she says, “ Why, of course we want you with us, Mother Robinson! ” ' f And from that moment Elizabeth pula the success of her marriage into other hands than her own. Middle-aged mothers won’t see this, and young mothers won’t teach their sons to realise that mother doesn’t have her place in the new family any more than any other elderly lady. And, v consequently, the ungracious job is up to the wives. A man’s mother and his wife cannot live together,' except in those rare cases where two fine characters and two unusual natures happen to be untied by the tie—those cases, in short, where the women would be friends in any case. A mother can’t see her son as a man, with a man’s faults and stupidities and weaknesses. She sees him as a godling, still in rompers. She sees Elizabeth as a lucky, managing girl who somehow contrived to blind the boy into marrying her. The faintest criticism of Roy from Elizabeth causes Mis mother anguish. These maddening mothers-in-law, so much smarter than their sons, so much more subtle than.their daughters-in-law! One wonders if they don’t cause a good many of the marital shipwrecks. One does not have to wonder. Mothers-in-law cause about half the wrecked homes in actual statistics. If we wpre braver women, stronger, more honest and less jealous, we would instruct our sons from their tenth year that marriage is marriage, and that I there cannot be any comparison between I the claims of the two women., i Boys ought to know that, and grow [ itp in the realisation that a man’s first doty‘when he marries is to his wife, ' and that she doesn’t want his mother I around her house—even though she likes I mother —any more than he wants her I dear old father pottering about his ofißce ! telling him how to run things, j If we were wiser women we would I" prepane, each, one of us, for our own lonely time when the children are gone. Better one room with a gasring on a table behind a screen, and the affection and respect of one’s daughter-in.-law, one’s son, and oneself, than this ghastly . attempt to wedge oneself' into the younger lives, and steal from them a pale reflection of the old glow of love and youth. No one ought to ask his wife to have his mother in their home, except for definite visits, and shoit ones. No wife ought to consent to have lief mother-in-law established as a permanent member of the family. And no mother, no matter how affectionate, how useful, how silent, how unobtrusive and tactful, ought to consent to share her son’s house with his wife. For a few years she may indeed triumph, especially if the younger wife is fine-tempered and generous. But in the end she will live to see that it was her hand that did more to wreck His life than the hand of his worst enemy. She may be an angel, this mother of Roy, she may slyly pay the doctor’s bill and stay at home in the evenings with the babies, but she’s throwing the scheme all out of the true. It is sad, of course! But life is sad. Middle-age, with its loneliness, feeling oneself supplanted and superfluous, is not much fun. But there are ways out: in-terests,-studies, travels, services.—Horae Chat.