Greg hadn’t expected the challenge that his in-laws represented. Oh, he got along fine with both his mother-in-law and father-in-law, each of whom seemed to genuinely like Greg. They treated him cordially and never told him what to do or not to do. Greg’s problem wasn’t with his in-laws directly but instead indirectly. His wife seemed to have all kinds of new issues managing her new relationship with her parents, now that Greg and she were married. Somehow, their marriage had changed his wife’s parental relationships, in ways that neither Greg nor she seemed to fully understand. Greg had to take a deep breath now and then about the whole issue, while silently praying that things would soon improve.
Parents
Parental relationships change dramatically over the course of a life, even though in some ways they never completely change. Early in life, we depend completely on our parents. After a couple decades of gradually reducing our parental dependency, we finally emancipate, standing on our own two feet. Parents may still provide helpful support or counsel through one’s twenties. But once we marry, parental counsel and support may be more complicating than helpful, even construed as interference by the child’s new spouse. Yet soon, the roles and relationships may change again with the birth of grandchildren. The newly minted grandparents enter the family picture again to spoil, and if nearby perhaps to periodically care for, the grandchildren. Yet before long, the physical and mental decline of one’s elderly parents draws us back into a closer but very different parental relationship, the opposite of the parental relationship with which our lives began. These changes are natural and healthy, although not always easy to navigate.
Marriage
Notice and appreciate the central role of your marriage in these changes in parental relationships. In the years following high school graduation, one’s emancipation may be less than crystal clear. The high school graduate who goes off to college may still return to the parents’ home in summers and even after college graduation, until heading off again to a job or graduate school. The high school graduate who doesn’t attend college and instead goes straight into vocational training and the workforce may still remain at the parents’ home, while gaining a financial and vocational footing. Events like high school graduation, college enrollment, and even one’s first significant employment are thus not necessarily clear breaks with parental support, guidance, and relationship. Marriage, though, most certainly is that break. The biblical injunction to leave and cleave, referring to leaving parents and cleaving to one’s new spouse, comes directly into play. Your marriage changes your parental relationships.
Degrees
The marriage-induced break from parents may come in degrees. Newly married couples may maintain close relationships with one or the other set of parents, for varying reasons like continued participation in a family business, family property available for marital housing, or even care of disabled parents or grandparents. If mom and dad own a thousand acres of farmland, and a quaint vacant farmhouse is available far around the property’s other side from the parents’ home, why shouldn’t the new couple occupy it, especially if it’s rent free? If the new son-in-law can join the family farming business, then perhaps all the better. But in other instances, the new couple has no incentive or opportunity to remain close to parents, and substantial disincentive and good reason not to do so. Both spouses may be fleeing difficult parental relationships involving strife or abuse, or difficult parental circumstances like mental illness or financial bankruptcy. Yet a good number of newly married couples instead find their new parental relationships falling somewhere in the middle of needing to be not too close and not too distant. You may have already perceived or will soon perceive where your new parental relationships will fall on that spectrum. But don’t assume its permanency. Indeed, instead expect that point along the spectrum to change as your parents age and your marriage matures.
Entanglements
Parental entanglements are among the greater concerns in a new marriage. Think again of the admonition to leave and cleave. One apparent goal of that advice or command is to reduce unhealthy entanglements and over-reliance. Mutual reliance and support, if not also mutual dependence, is one of the designs, goals, or functions of marriage. If one or the other spouse instead continues to depend on a parent in some respect, for instance financially, emotionally, or for personal advice or household maintenance, then that spouse may be disabling rather than facilitating the marital relationship. Not in every case. Plenty of happily married couples welcome different forms of support and involvement from parents, including advice, counsel, gifts, loans, home maintenance and repairs, company, and for a hug of encouragement or shoulder on which to cry. But beware of disabling reliance that ignores the offer or responsibility of a spouse. Beware even more the interfering entanglements that fuel marital conflicts. Leave and cleave, at least for a long and healthy season of drawing closer in reliance on one’s spouse.
Distance
Allow parents to remain at a respectful distance, especially in the early years of a marriage. See, parents are not always the ones to blame for disabling entanglements. The newlywed spouses can be to blame for drawing parents into the new marriage when parents would prefer not to be involved. Parents claim empty-nest status when children head off to college. But then, they’re delivering food, clothing, furniture, cash, and other supplies to college, helping their college student get over a low grade or broken relationship at college, and welcoming their college student back home for the summer. Distance may not be needed, wanted, or possible. But once the child marries, the parents are generally ready for distance and the true status of empty nesters. Let parents enjoy it. Don’t run to momma and poppa with every little or big issue, or indeed with any issue, if you can possibly avoid it. Your marriage needs distance from your parents, your spouse needs your distance from your parents, and you need the same distance, whether you feel like it or not. Especially avoid involving parents for marital dispute resolution or marital counseling. Once married, those roles are for others, whether pastors, counselors, or mature friends.
Finances
With food, housing, transportation, education, medical care, and other essentials as expensive as they are, and with a newly married couples’ income as low as it can often be, the temptation may be to rely on parents for financial support. The same leave-and-cleave principle that applies to the parental relationship generally applies equally or even more so to finances. Relying on parents for mental and emotional support within the marriage can deprive the married couple of the privilege and opportunity to rely on one another. If you’re not yet skilled at doing so, that’s half the point: you need to learn, just as your spouse needs to learn. The same is true with finances. Parents are generally much wealthier than newly married children, simply because of their long work history, accumulation of assets, and generally higher income. Newly married life can be like plunging into poverty, compared to the opulence that the new spouses left behind with their parents. So what? Learn to enjoy it. It may be the only significant season that you truly must work to support yourself, spouse, and coming children. Doing so is a privilege, not a burden. Don’t burden your parents with your financial needs while depriving yourself of the privilege of meeting them. Especially don’t borrow money. The injunction that borrowers are slaves to lenders refers to the influence that lenders inevitably have over borrowers. Your marriage doesn’t need or benefit from parental influence, certainly not as lenders. If your parents strongly desire to help you and your new spouse, consider accepting their gift graciously. But don’t desire, ask for, or rely on parental gifts or loans. Use any parental gifts to pay down debt or save for children’s education or your own retirement, not to sustain your marital lifestyle.
Children
The birth of your children within your new marriage marks another shift in your relationship with your parents, just as your marriage marked such a shift. Your parents and your spouse’s parents don’t need and may not expect a change in their relationship with you or your spouse when you have your first child. But your parents and in-laws have a substantial interest, many would say extending to a privilege if not also a right, to form and maintain a relationship with their new grandchildren. The hard thing for you, whether you’ll admit it or not, may be that your parents may suddenly seem to care more for their new grandchild than they care for you. Don’t take it that way. You bore or sired their grandchild, who wouldn’t exist without you. Let your parents and your spouse’s parents dote on your child as much as they wish, provided that you, your spouse, and your parents and in-laws can set reasonable guidelines and adhere to reasonable boundaries and limits on when, where, how, what, and how often they do so. You, not your parents, are your children’s parents. You can set and enforce the rules, if rules are necessary to keep healthy boundaries. Do so respectfully and sensitively, even if, when necessary, firmly.
Care
A time may eventually come, in the natural order of things, when your parents or your spouse’s parents will need your care. That care may begin with subtle assistance in the maintenance or repair of the parents’ home or transition to lower-maintenance housing. Your care for your parents may gradually shift to more overt assistance with their healthcare visits, healthcare and housing decisions, and financial management. Soon, that care may include regular parental visits to deliver groceries, check on health and vitality, provide company, and monitor medications and home safety. If you or your spouse find yourselves primarily or solely responsible for the care of your aging parents, rather than having a sibling take leadership in that care, then you may find yourselves considering a move closer to your parents’ home, reductions in your career commitments, or similar significant modifications in your lifestyles. Respect your spouse’s interest in taking on parental care and in making necessary or appropriate marital lifestyle changes to do so. You may find the care and changes to be outside your personal plans and preferences. Likely, though, your willingness to support them will return substantial blessings your way, such as your own children’s care when you age, after they see you model such profound responsibility. Next to caring for your marriage and children, caring for your aging parents may be your greatest life privilege and priority.
Dependency
Your care for aging parents, along with your spouse’s care for them, may eventually, and blessedly, move to the next stage of having dependent parents. Some couples find that moving a surviving parent into the marital home, after the demise of the parent’s spouse, is the best solution for parental care. Because of the substantial sacrifice that having a dependent parent in one’s home entails, and the difficulty of readily reversing that decision, you and your spouse should be in complete agreement before undertaking that move. Be sure that you both understand what the move will entail and that your marriage can remain strong through it. A better solution may be to find nursing-home care nearby where trained staff can do the heavy lifting, while you and your spouse provide the social and emotional care. These days and decisions are tremendously important and equally precious, as difficult as they may be. Give them your best, even if it means setting some other important or preferred things aside for a time. You won’t regret it.
Death
Again, in the natural order of things, you and your spouse may have the privilege of attending to the last days and final demise of your parents. That natural order could mean not one or two but four successive passings over a relatively short time, counting both parents and in-laws, or even more than four in the case of step-parents or the remarriage of surviving parents. Again, prioritize the commitment and make the effort and time to properly attend to and mourn each passing. To hold a parent’s hand as they say their last words and take their last breath is a moment like no other and one that if you miss you’ll never recover. Your parents did more for you than you’ll ever do for them. Return as much of their care as you can, especially in their last days and moments. Your spouse will see in your care for your dying parents the care you may share with your spouse some day. Moreover, support your spouse through the process, especially as to your spouse’s parents. And recognize the role of your marriage in the process, too, that with the passing of parents the two of you stand together at the head of the family line, with new standing, reputation, responsibility, roles, and privileges.
Reflection
What issues, if any, have you and your spouse faced relative to your parents and in-laws? How well or poorly have the two of you managed those issues together? Do you have parental issues remaining between you and your spouse that you need to address? What options and resources do you have available to you for addressing those issues? Do your parents and in-laws respect your parenting rights and responsibilities as to your own children? Are you adequately recognizing and supporting your parents’ and in-laws’ interest in their relationship with their grandchildren? What adjustments might you need to make regarding grandparents and grandchildren? Are your parents or in-laws in need of your care? Do you and your spouse need to adjust your marital lifestyle to be better care providers for your aging or dependent parents, while continuing to nurture your marriage? Explore your options for improving both your marriage’s nurture and your parents’ or in-laws’ care.
Key Points
Parental relationships can be a major issue in a new marriage.
Leave parents and rely on your new spouse whenever possible.
The degree of parental separation can vary for sound reasons.
Beware parental entanglements no matter how attractive the cause.
Respect your parents’ need for distance, not just your own need.
Avoid relying not just emotionally but also financially on your parents.
Respect your parents’ and in-laws’ interest in loving your children.
Help grandparents keep reasonable boundaries with grandchildren.
Adjust your marital lifestyle appropriately to care for aging parents.
Assume full care for dependent parents only if fully agreed and able.
Attend devotedly to the passing of your parents and in-laws.