Mom Forcing Her Son & Daughter-In-Law To Have Kids, Gets Schooled

If you’re in your mid-20s anywhere in the world, including India you would know the pressure you feel when you’re at a wedding decked in your very best attire, and a random aunty snuggles up to you, all up in your personal space and says “Beta tumhare liye bhi dhoondna padega ab toh!”

And why keep this exclusive to weddings? With each birthday you celebrate and get closer to 25, your parents, as well as relatives (who can forget relatives?), start cracking “jokes” about you getting married as you sit there like,

Image Source

Let’s assume that you like a boy and you finally decide to get married and for once, everything seems amazing. Right? Wrong. You’re just in the honeymoon hangover, thinking about Paris ki wadiyan when everybody loses their shit again and start pressuring you for children. Like what? I am a kid myself!

A woman had the same question for the Slate’s ‘Dear Prudence’ column. She wrote to the Agony Aunt column asking for guidance on how to convince her son and his wife to have children.

We are concerned our only son isn’t having children. Every time we bring it up with him, he seems to have a new excuse. Recently when we tried to discuss this with our daughter-in-law directly, she said her high-powered career would be severely impacted if she didn’t plan child-bearing carefully because she doesn’t get paid parental leave at her workplace. We tried to encourage her by saying that she doesn’t even need to work since our son is very successful and we have considerable means. This seems to have offended her greatly. How do we convince them that we only want them to be happy?

 

However, her question did not go over well with the person giving her advice. As a result, she got a savage reply which will make you go, “Finally someone said it!”

A great way to convince your children that you want them to be happy is to stop directly contributing to their unhappiness by repeatedly badgering them about their life choices and assuming you know what will make them happy better than they do.
Apologize to your son for pressing the issue, take his excuses at face value—what you consider “excuses” may be, to him, excellent reasons to delay or avoid having children altogether—and apologize to your daughter-in-law for presuming she should quit her job and have children simply because you would find it convenient, and then drop the subject entirely. You have forfeited the right to ask innocently about whether or not they’re planning on having children because you have repeatedly failed to do so politely, respectfully, and appropriately.

 

The reply made me scream in joy, while tears of happiness rolled down my cheeks. This post is dedicated to all those neighbourhood aunties who can’t stop telling all the newly-married couples that it’s time to have children. I am sure that all the married couples want to tell you this,

Image Source

Cover Image Source: Yash Raj Films, 2

📣 Storypick is now on Telegram! Click here to join our channel (@storypick) and never miss another great story.