Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
Every year, our kids’ school offers two Parent-Teacher conference opportunities; one at the start of the year and one at the end. I feel it is important that my husband and I attend these meetings together so we can both participate and hear the feedback. Inevitably, I end up having to uphold the parent part of the conversation—my husband never has questions or comments; he barely says hello, and at the last conference he spent half the time picking at the zipper of his fleece. He comes across as rude and uncaring. It is embarrassing, and I wonder whether it makes sense for him to come at all, or if I should make him go alone and be forced to interact with the teachers. He loves our children dearly, but I am the primary parent. I generally am okay with this, but I feel it is hurtful to the kids and disrespectful to me and the teachers not to participate more in these meetings. He says that I cover everything he would have brought up, so there’s no need for him to do anything other than sit there. What’s the best course of action?
—Conference Conundrum
Dear Conference Conundrum,
In the short term: You and your husband should find some time before the fall parent-teacher conference to discuss what your kids have told you about school is going for them, any feedback you may have already gotten from their teachers, academic areas in which you think they need help, social/emotional concerns, curriculum-related questions, etc. I realize that you’ll probably be supplying most of the information and guiding this discussion with your spouse, and want to acknowledge that this is labor you shouldn’t have to do because he should already know how school is going—which I’ll address in a minute. The purpose of this pre-conference talk is to get the two of you on the same page, so you can both go into the fall conference knowing what you want to ask about. Have your shared list ready, and make sure you aren’t the one asking all the questions. (This strategy will also be helpful if he ever goes to a parent-teacher conference without you.)
That you are “the primary parent,” despite having a husband who could and should be equally involved in parenting your children, strikes me as a much larger issue. But since you say you are not generally worried about this and just want your husband to be better at communicating with teachers, I think this is one area in which he could start to make an effort to share labor with you over the long term. It would require him to share in ongoing communication with your kids as well as the school staff. He would need to be copied on all the relevant emails, actually read them, and sometimes be the one to respond. He would have to regularly ask your children about school and listen to what they say. He would need to look at schoolwork that comes home, help with homework, be aware of your kids’ specific strengths, know what they struggle with, and do as much as you do to make sure they’re learning and making progress. If he asks why he should do all of this—not that he should need to be told—you can point out that he is also your children’s parent, he has a responsibility to support their education, and your kids are the ones who ultimately stand to benefit from his involvement.
I realize that even if he decides to do better in this area, it won’t necessarily mean less labor for you, especially at first. And to be clear, I don’t think you should have to point any of this out or make the case for his involvement. But if your husband can understand just how important it is for both of you to support your kids’ learning, then perhaps over the long term it can be a responsibility you share, and you won’t find yourself driving every school-related conversation and parent-teacher conference alone.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
My sister lives down the street and has kids similar ages to my own. She has two daughters, I have a son and two daughters, all between 8 and 11 years old. The kids get along great.
When my kids ask me to buy something for them, my wife and I don’t usually outright say no, but I try to limit extravagant purchases. The kids can earn money doing chores around the house, and often if a kid wants a new video game, we’ll pay for half of it and they can pay for the other half. Same goes for trendy clothes or other things. When my kids ask me for something and I say no, they’ve started to get annoyed, because they know that if my nieces asked their dad he’d say yes. He’s always complaining to me about how much money his kids “force” him to spend (obviously he’s not forced to do anything, he just refuses to say no to his kids). My wife and I both have higher salaries than my sister and her husband. We want to be responsible with our money, and we also have added expenses since our youngest daughter has a condition that means she needs regular physical therapy, frequent surgeries/hospitalizations, and expensive purchases not covered by health insurance, so even if I had any interest in doing so, I couldn’t keep up with my brother-in-law in frivolous spending. We’ve tried explaining why we can’t do what my brother-in-law does, but it’s hard finding an explanation that doesn’t vilify my brother-in-law and sister, or blame our daughter’s condition.
—Frugal Father
Dear Frugal Father,
While I can sense and understand your annoyance with your brother-in-law and what you view as him spoiling his kids, I can’t think of any reason why any explanation you offer your children about your own spending choices would need to “vilify” their uncle and aunt. There’s also no need to mention, let alone blame, your daughter’s medical situation (which I get, by the way, as a parent in a fairly high-needs family). Your kids really don’t need to be read into the specifics of your family’s financial needs or your budget; you don’t have to offer a long-winded explanation just because they’re complaining about not getting something they want. You can just let them know that you and your wife, like a solid majority of parents out there, do not have the ability to buy absolutely everything your kids desire. They may not like that fact—and they’re entitled to their feelings about it—but it is a fact, one they can and hopefully will learn to accept.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband and I are fortunate enough to get to take a couple of cool vacations each year. This is primarily due to the generosity of family members who let us use their second homes for free. We have an almost-2-year-old, and she is a total joy almost all of the time. At home, my husband is an engaged father. He works part-time, is home with her part-time, and she is in daycare part-time. This arrangement was his choice, as he “doesn’t want our daughter to be raised by other people.” I work full-time in a really stressful job and I am the primary breadwinner.
I’ve found that the times we’ve been on vacation since she was born, he takes as much “me time” as he can. He points to all the time he spends with our daughter when we are home. I can appreciate a need for alone time. I don’t begrudge him that. But I never get any. I go on these vacations and I parent in a different location while he goes on long walks alone and spends long evenings in the hotel hot tub. And when we are both home, I am certainly the default parent. I love my daughter with every fiber of my being, but I am really out-touched right now. I am an introvert that sort of accidentally chose an extrovert’s job. He looks at this as me being selfish.
What can I say to him to make him understand?
—Seeking Silence
Dear Seeking Silence,
Vacation can be a break from many things, including work, but it’s not a true break from parenting unless your child stays with another caregiver (or you bring a caregiver along). It’s not easy to relax while actively parenting a toddler—which isn’t to say it’s not worthwhile. But your husband shouldn’t be the only one getting time to unwind when you go on vacation. You’re not being selfish; he is, by refusing to acknowledge that your rest and “you time” is just as important as his.
I’m not sure how to make him understand what should already be obvious, but I’d start with being clear that you have a genuine need for vacation, too. We all need and deserve rest and restoration—not because we’re working or stay-at-home parents, but because we’re human. It’s important for your husband to recognize and care about your needs, not think only of his own.
If he refuses to share any parenting responsibilities when you go on vacation, maybe it’s worth thinking about a separate vacation—even if it’s just a long weekend, either solo or with friends or other family you like to spend time with. I’m not saying you should skip out on family trips entirely. But you should get some real vacation time, too, and taking the occasional break without your husband seems preferable to never getting any sort of break at all.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My brother-in-law isn’t easy to befriend, but I put a lot of effort in to grow a relationship with him—and it worked! We were close. Then he started dating Cindy, which I was so excited about. I tried to also grow a relationship with her but kept bumping up against our personality differences. Our relationship is okay, but not close. Eventually they got married and then one day, my BIL stopped acknowledging my existence. This lasted two years and broke my heart. I tried my best to continue being warm and kind, but my heart wasn’t in it, so I have pulled back my effort.
Recently, I have been going through challenging times and my BIL has yet to mention anything about it. They have kids and I am the one who buys gifts for them. I told my husband I want to hand this task over to him, because I don’t really want to keep investing in these people who are very happy keeping me at arm’s length, to which he replied that the kids won’t be getting gifts then. The kids are fine and have lots of toys, but as someone who was raised to value family, I wonder if I am using my own hurt to be petty. My husband doesn’t think bringing my feelings up to his brother is a good idea, and he is also fine not seeing them, as his brother makes no effort to have a relationship with him either. But if we stop showing up and sending gifts, I feel like it’s just passive aggressive and we should at least tell them why we are pulling back. What do you think?
—Nothing in Law
Dear Nothing in Law,
You don’t have to keep putting the work into your relationship with your brother-in-law or try to see him and his wife if there’s no interest or effort on their side. It is also not your responsibility to maintain a sibling relationship that your husband and his brother can’t be bothered to maintain themselves. Nor do you have to buy presents for your brother-in-law’s children if you don’t want to, though I’ll point out that doing something nice for the kids in your family really has little to do with their parents—you can still send gifts to the kids just because you like the kids.
I get how it might feel passive aggressive to just quietly distance yourself from your in-laws instead of asking them why or telling them how you feel. Do I think it might be good and much healthier if your husband and his brother could talk about the distance between them, and between your families, to see if they both wanted things to change? Sure. But apparently neither of them feels a particular need to do so, and a lot of families and siblings choose not to have those sorts of conversations. While you might believe that your husband and his brother are wrong or misguided, know that you are probably not going to be able to single-handedly change whether and how they choose to communicate.
Your husband has also told you he doesn’t believe it’s a good idea for you to confront his brother. In your place, I would want to at least try to respect his wishes, because this is his brother—you can’t just think about your own wants or the values about “family” you happened to have been raised with; you have to think about the repercussions for their relationship (such as it is). That doesn’t mean you can’t feel hurt or frustrated by the situation. It’s okay to be sad and wish that things were different. But given how you’ve described both your brother-in-law and your husband, I don’t see how making an announcement before you distance yourself from your in-laws will help or change anything. And telling them that you’re done trying to be part of their lives could also risk turning what is now rather awkward distance into resentful open conflict, a rift that would be even harder to mend.
—Nicole
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My fiancé was raised as a Reform Jew; I am a casual Christian. We have mutually decided not to circumcise our forthcoming son. His family is, to put it lightly, up in arms about our not hosting a bris. (“Because it’s a Jewish rite of passage!”) Through my fiancé’s sister, we were warned of my future mother-in-law’s plan to host a “surprise” bris at our house a week after the birth! I’m ready to fly off the handle. This isn’t completely out of character for her, but it seems like a new level of crazy and violation. How do I confront her about this and, God forbid, deal with a “surprise bris” if family and a rabbi show up at our door in a few months?
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