Everyone has that mother-in-law…or should we say monster-in-law? You know, the one who has an opinion about everything. The one who raises an eyebrow to the fast food you picked up. The one who gets your newborn’s ears pierced.
Yes, you read that right.
What would you do if your mother-in-law took your child to get her ears pierced without telling you—and after you specifically told her no several times? Because this happened to one mother, and she was not exactly thrilled about it. In fact, she was furious, and she turned to Reddit’s popular “Am I The A**hole?” thread to vent about the situation.
The woman begins explaining that she and her husband come from very different backgrounds, so the relationship she has with her in-laws is sometimes a little pushy. While she’s fine with embraces certain aspects of his culture, there are some things she needs to put her foot down on (like how “women are to serve men,” she uses as an example).
But one huge thing that differed in their opinion and hers was the idea of having young girls get their ears pierced.
“It’s a big deal in my husband’s culture that the baby girls get their ears pierced pretty much at birth,” the woman explained in her post. “I wasn’t comfortable with it. I know they won’t remember it and wasn’t so much the pain aspect, but more so I wanted her to be able to decide. Yes, the holes close up, but I’d rather her get to decide when or if she pierces them, when she’s older.”
Though she (and her husband) relayed her feelings about it to her mother-in-law, her nightmare ensued.
“Last weekend, we went out to run a few errands kid free. [My] mother-in-law kept them out a bit later and when she returned….my daughter had pierced ears,” the woman wrote. “She said she had my sister-in-law (husband’s sister) do them. She’s done them for all the babies in the family and it was tradition.”
This obviously did not go over very well.
“I was pissed,” the woman wrote. “I felt so violated, took my kids and told her to leave. My husband was equally as pissed and they argued outside, in their native language, for quite a bit, before mother-in-law left.” The mother has since decided to remove the earrings from her daughter so that she could make the choice later about whether she wanted to have pierced ears.
Most people who read the post agreed that the mom is in no way the jerk here—it’s her daughter and she’s the one who gets to make the decisions. The mother-in-law had no right to go behind her back and do it.
However, a few others posted that when it comes to cultural norms, it’s important to be respectful. Either way, everyone agreed that going behind her back was not right!
What do you think about what this mother-in-law did? Has something like this ever happened to you? How did you handle it?
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