It isn’t always easy living with a mother-in-law, especially if you have the old school type like Nyonya Mansoor as portrayed in P. Ramlee’s 1962 heart-rending film, Ibu Mertua-ku.
One cannot imagine the suffering one must endure if your mother-in-law has the heartless characteristics of Nyonya Mansoor. There are many adjectives that can describe your pain, but they cannot do justice. Living with such a “monster-in-law” is beyond words.
What I heard from my mother…
Back in those days, mothers-in-law could be as fierce as a tigress because they possessed great power and influence over the family with their iron-clad beliefs and expectations. Younger women in the household must adhere to the expectations and customs of their mother-in-law’s family, and sometimes there were unsaid rules that she made up according to her whims and fancies.
In the olden days, women in the household must cook – but according to the approval of their mothers-in-law. They have to learn to wake up early in the morning, earlier than everyone else, to prepare breakfast. They must learn the details of “table-setting”: from laying out the saprah, a piece of cloth laid out on the floor, before placing the dishes when the family ate their meals sitting down cross-legged. They must observe the practice of making sure a bowl of clean water was reachable for the men to wash their hands before feasting on the meals – while the women stood by, watching.
The sad thing was that the women had to let their men eat first even though they were the ones who laboured hard all day in preparing the meals – from going to the market to cutting onions and chillies, and then the tedious process of cooking using firewood. All of this was done under the watchful and disapproving eye of the mother-in-law.
Apart from the chores, these women had to be subservient in raising the family the way their mothers-in-law dictated. When their husbands returned home from work, they were told to present themselves well. They should not be smelling of onions, curries or fish when greeting their husbands, but instead well groomed, hair neatly tied and dressed in the cleanest clothes.
In short, they must do what most women did those days — carry on the accomplishments of the generations of mothers-in-law before them.
But when a daughter-in-law enters her family, especially the ones who had been raised differently, the mother-in-law would slyly test her again and again. The test could be on everything and anything — from waking up early to prepare breakfast for the family to using the lesung the correct way, the method of dishing out sambal belacan to cook leftover rice into nasi goreng or even how she draws bath water from a well.
After all, this was the period in the kampung when the blender machine and piped water were not yet available.
An old woman whom I know related a story to me that she was told off by her mother-in-law for waking up late in the morning and not preparing breakfast. Her mother-in-law also reprimanded her for pounding chillies so loudly that the neighbours three houses away could hear the noise early in the morning. This happened just her first month of living with her in-laws and the extended family of her husband. As if the nagging phase was a part of the initiation into the family.
The life of a daughter-in-law can essentially be a stay-at-home job with a long list of neverending tasks
Touching on extended family, it is often said the Malays believed that marrying someone was like marrying the whole family. That rings true, somehow. Imagine this scenario: a newly married woman is introduced to her husband’s siblings — a long list of Along, Kak Char, Angah, Alang, Teh, Tam and Ucu on the day she drops her luggage at her new home to live with the in-laws.
The list can be longer if the parents’ siblings live in the same house. They can be the jobless Pak Ngah or the family eccentric Pak Cik and maybe even Mak Ngah, the conniving spinster. Not only is she supposed to assume housework duties for the family and play the role of a dutiful wife to her husband – she also has to be a filial daughter to her mother-in-law, and perform menial tasks that are delegated to her like the task of feeding the bed-ridden Mak Tok, the grand maternal of the family.
I’m not sure if these old school mothers-in-law still exist today, but I’m sure those horrific days are gone. Modern day mothers-in-law are cool. They are perhaps the next best thing to BFFs. They do not boss their daughters-in-law around or force them to cook their favourite dish, gulai kepala ikan jenahak. In fact, they will shop for new clothes together and you can even see them enjoying their Sunday brunch at a fancy restaurant together.
Today, it’s a whole different game
Mothers-in-law these days can expect their daughters-in-law to continue sleeping even after the sun has come up. They can least expect her to be in the kitchen preparing meals. But it would be socially awkward for daughter-in-laws to keep these habits as they might be seen as discourteous. My daughter’s mother-in-law would always shoo her away whenever she entered the kitchen to help.
“Go rest somewhere or do something else,” insisted her mother-in-law, who always felt a second chef would spoil the broth.
It makes more financial sense anyway
Since the economic downturn over the years, many newly-married couples choose to live with their in-laws to be part of an extended family. It is frugal for them to do so as it shaves off a chunk of their expenses if they live with their more financially stable in-laws rather than on their own.
This lies in total contrast with Western culture, where moving out of your parents’ home by the time you turn 18 is the more common move to make, and those who live with their parents are looked down on as some sort of losers.
In my case, for instance, I insisted that my son-in-law live with me although I have to admit it is tight to live in a four-bedroom home with four remaining children under my guardianship. I told him that he can move out once he is financially ready. Even if he is not my child, he is the man my daughter has married and so I consider him part of my responsibility to care for.
But for those who can afford it, the advantage of living away from in-laws is privacy and freedom. They can do whatever and whenever they want. Couples can choose to wake up late on weekends, eat out and watch television all day long. No one can reprimand them if they want to guling-guling all over on the floor for that matter. Their in-laws will not know.
For more stories like this, read: I Wanted A Small Wedding, But My In-laws Wanted A Grand One and It Cost Us RM30,000 and I Am Finally Accepted by My Parents-In-Law, After 2 Years and a
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