Source: Reddit
My husband and I don’t want kids. My MIL is big into family in the traditional sense. She has been pushy with us about having kids since we got married. Literally the week after we got engaged, she started asking.
My husband has always changed the subject, and has even told her that it’s really none of her business. Every time we see her, she asks. Everything we do is built around the idea of having kids. 3 years into our marriage, my husband said “We might not even have kids” and MIL would not hear it. In year 4, my husband had a vasectomy and I had a tubal.
So this weekend we were all at their home enjoying some BBQ and drinks and everything. When I get up to grab a beer, my MIL asks me if maybe I should drink water instead, because wink wink nudge nudge, you never know.
I was annoyed by this and said “There’s really no chance.”
MIL, all wide-grin, said, “Oh come on! It’s time for you two to finally get serious! Put down the beer and tell us when we can finally expect you two to finally make your family official!”
I said “We’ve been official for about 5 years now, MIL,” and drank the beer. Husband laughs with me.
MIL gets more annoyed and says “Well, you won’t be REAL (Lastnames) until you bless us with babies!”
Husband said, “Mom, enough.” MIL pushed again. Husband repeated.
After about fifteen minutes of the usual comments, I finally snapped and said “MIL, Husband got snipped. I had my tubes tied. We’re not having kids. You need to stop bringing it up. Period.”
Well, I thought I started WWIII. She started crying and stormed off. Family looked at us with disgust and stormed off to comfort her. We left. Party kinda ended. The social media bullsh*t started shortly after. Vague posts, links about how motherhood is a woman’s greatest calling, listicles about how unhappy childless women are, etc. Some memes about how “I guess I wasn’t a good enough mother and won’t be graduating to grandmother.” It’s obnoxious to the point that I just muted all of them.
My MIL finally called me this morning and told me that she was willing to put this all behind us if Husband and I came over and listened to her reasons that we really “need” to have kids. I told her no, that we are tired of her pushing this on us, and then she said “Well then, I guess you two aren’t prepared to be REAL (Lastname)s. I’d like a refund for what we paid for the wedding.” (It wasn’t that much. It was like $400 for the rehearsal dinner.)
I hung up on her. When recounting this to my friends, a few of them said that I was the AH here for dropping it like that. But I don’t think she was ever going to drop it if I didn’t finally make a serious, direct comment about it. Did I go too far here?
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