Becoming a daughter-in-law for most women means their lives will change – new husband, new home, in-laws, and possibly a partial new identity through a change of surname. The stories of the late Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson (daughters-in-law in the British royal family) highlight the difficulty some women experience as they try to fit into their husbands’ family
A daughter-in-law in a farm family can also find herself automatically becoming a business partner. Despite great attempts to make her feel welcome, she may still feel like an outsider. The old saying that “there is nothing thicker than blood,” can ring true for a young woman joining a farm family.
Why is being a daughter-in-law challenging for so many women marrying into a farm family? First of all, no two families are alike. Each family has a culture that is somewhat unique. Cultural differences between families can be significant. For example, which parent was the key decision-maker in your family – mother or father? How does this compare to your new husband’s family? What about males doing household tasks in each respective family? How many siblings do you each have? Where in the family hierarchy were you born? While these may seem to be subtle differences, they shape the patterns of an individual’s perception of how family members relate to each other.
When a woman gets married and becomes a member of a new family, she is marrying more than just her new husband. In most cases she is going to be sharing this person with the rest of his farm family.
A daughter-in-law needs to be aware of how she is perceived by her new family. Very few families want to have radical changes forced upon them. If you are seen as an instrument of change, trouble could be brewing around the corner for both you and your husband. Immersing yourself in your husband’s family culture helps to bridge many gaps, yet at the same time caution must be taken not to lose your own personal identity.
For example, in your family birthday celebrations may have been a big event – cake, candles, gifts, flowers, cards, and possibly even an evening out with dinner. But in your husband’s family birthdays were possibly just another day – maybe an occasion for a cake but no gifts, cards or flowers. Gifts and flowers may seem like minor cultural differences on the surface, but to a newly married daughter-in-law, this may feel like a mountain that is beginning to form between you and your new family. Your husband may have tried to impress you with special treatment on your birthday when you were dating, but somehow the magic of celebrating your big day is now getting lost in the day-to-day routines. Over time, hurt, anger and frustration can start to build.
How can a young woman successfully make the transition into the role of daughter-in-law in a farm family business?
Continue to be true to yourself – don’t lose your identity. Try to differentiate between farm business and family issues. Become aware of the differences between your family’s culture and your husband’s, and try to understand and appreciate the different traditions. You and your husband have the opportunity to create new traditions that are unique to you – be creative. Team up with a good mentor. Ideally the best mentor should be your mother-in-law. She probably was also a daughter-in-law. On top of this, she knows your father-in-law and has been a mother to your husband. If anyone should know how to get along with these individuals, it is she. BF
Comments
I often suggest to the new daughter-in-law (who is almost never the problem) that she just-simply flee because I've learned, from some 40+ years as a farm management professional, that this is almost always the "least-worst" as well as the least-disruptive and least legally-expensive option not just for her, but for all concerned.
And fleeing isn't a new phenomenon - many "war brides" fled back to England after finding out, almost always cruelly, that they had chosen a life of hell by coming to Canada.
Not surprisingly, I've never met a lady who, years later, ever regretted her decision to flee.
If that makes me a "bad-guy" in farm management circles, I'll wear that badge with honour.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Sounds like you had our advisors, we had two. We got told gems such as: Mother is number one, her happiness is all that matters (and here we thought our marriage and children came first, I had no idea my purpose in life was to cater to mother in law), marriage is no guarantee but the farm is, just get a divorce and the farm is yours (to my husband in front of me)....all these and more from the so called expert farm advisors. I agree, be very careful with the help you select - check their credentials and past failures and successes.
In these matters, a farm advisor who isn't divorced (and re-connected with someone else) isn't worth anything and is often outright-dangerous - choosing a happily-married and/or never-married advisor, especially one driven by any sense of religiosity, is like asking a celibate priest for advice on how to raise children.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
After marrying my husband and living within a family farming business for 40 years, I can only say that if I knew then what I know now, I would run! In fact, I still may. It is a sad reality that the multi-generational farm lifestyle is usually wrought with overwhelming heartache, confinement, and sadness when it involves an ideal of passing on someone's unattainable dream of a farming legacy using bullying as a management philosophy.
I saw clearly after having sons and working off the farm at a full time job, that I'd never be accepted. So I mentally removed myself, earned advanced degrees (which I paid for with a crappy job while raising kids), and created a successful career of my own. I'm now retired and my father-in-law has passed away. But nothing has changed because my mother in law is still living.
Looking back, I see the folly of it all. I effectively created my own life, raised successful sons (who had no interest in farming - thank God), and over time, unwittingly became numb in my marriage.
My husband and I are still married however I'm not very happy. He works every day and I'm still alone. I see now that my way of adapting to such non-sensical family farming business practices the best I could pretty much destroyed a decent relationship. My husband says he still loves me, but down deep, I feel like Rhett Butler and frankly don't much give a damn. It's too little too late.
Multi-generational family farming will tear you apart. The land is always more important than the people. Run!
Congratulations to the above lady on being one of the few women in her circumstances who had/have the talent, the time and the perseverance to obtain highly-marketable job skills allowing her to develop her sense of self-worth through a rewarding career.
The un-seen tragedy of rural life is that too-many women without marketable job skills marry farmers and are then trapped in this rural "ghetto" and when they get disillusioned, are too beaten-down mentally, emotionally and financially to have the drive, or the ability, to do something to improve.
Even worse is that these women have almost no support because their friends have long-since fled to the city and the wives of other farmers are often too much like the "mother-in-law from Hell" to understand or care.
Regrettably, counselling is almost always of no help whatsoever because too-many farm counselling professionals seem to be men which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't also seem to have a predisposition to traditional family values and the over-riding belief in the preservation of the farm.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Many thanks for the congratulations. I deeply appreciate it. ;)
I would, however, like to mention a couple other coping strategies I used to survive while being married to a farm family. First, forgiveness is key. Don't let in-laws control your life. Work on and pray daily for forgiveness for all parties. It will improve your situation and then resolve to find your own unique path. This will take strength, much faith, and nerves of steel, but do it anyway. Second, cherish your independence. It is truly a blessing! Without it, I wouldn't still be married. Think of it as beating them at their own game. Ha'. And, you may also want to indulge yourself a little. I'm in my 60s and drive a really cool sports car, have vacations planned, and have time to enjoy my grandchildren. LOL.
Good luck to all you young women down on the family farm. I wish I could be there to mentor and encourage each and everyone of you.
I'm in my mid-sixties, happily-divorced, albeit in the "freedom-77" program which is how old I'll be before I finish paying off the mortgage I took out to be in the "program" in the first place and, even with that, I own less land now than I did when I got married.
As for the car, one of the requirements for membership in the Blyth Hotel's "divorced farmers wing night" is a Mercedes, and mine is a convertible, albeit a 2001 model. Since we are "divorced farmers", we're not opposed to adding a divorced lady farmer to the roster as long as she has a Mercedes although, in fairness, very-few divorced farmers of either sex end up with any farm at all after the divorce.
And, go figure, I meet a lot of ladies who tell me they're "happily-widowed" and given the comments posted above, it's not hard to tell why.
The one thing never-mentioned to date in any posting on this matter is the warning people are given by their doctor to the effect that something needs to change in order to fend off looming health issues - therefore, many farm divorces are, I suggest, prompted as much as anything by a warning given by a doctor, meaning that all the non-medical counselling in the world all-of-a-sudden becomes worth diddly-squat.
It's a conversation, I suggest, heard quite-often shortly before many marriages end.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
She took me to lunch yesterday and left me feeling exhausted and sad. She was so nice to me when my husband and I first got married. He's the oldest of four. He has three sisters and they never welcomed us when we moved onto the farm. They have made it obvious they don't like me, and they talk about me behind my back. I suspected it, and my MIL confirmed it. She's as bad as they are. I found out that she gossiped about things I told her. She was nice to my face and poison behind my back. My husband is looking at pulling out of the farm but he still wants to live here. I say, why stay here? We need to get away from his family. I was so hoping for a loving connection, good chats, etc. It could have been so much better. Part of what she was spewing at me was so exaggerated that it was comical, but still, ultimately it's just an awful situation and I wish we had never agreed to farm with them. It does help to know that other daughter-in-laws are in the same situation. I don't feel so alone.
I mean, really, what are you waiting for? Farm divorces ALWAYS increase when land (and/or quota) is selling at stratospheric price/earnings (P/E) multiples, and that's now. Farm wives can figure out P/E multiples even when their husbands, and especially their mother-in-law, cannot and obviously will-not.
Even if you've been there for only a half-dozen years, you're more-than-likely entitled to a million dollars, after tax and there's little anyone can do to prevent this transfer from happening because there's so much case law precedent, all the way back to Irene Murdoch, absolutely and undeniably in your favour.
Don't get mad or keep waiting for someone to die because it could just as easily be you - get even and, like anything involving emotions, extricating yourself from any dysfunctional situation and/or group of people, is a dish best-served cold.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Where did it say she wanted to divorce her husband ? If we all divorced our spouses because we didn't get along with certain in-laws there might not be a safe marriage out there, in farming or elsewhere.
The lady in my life, a very-astute widow, read the original posting and immediately exclaimed - "Oh, my God, it's already too late for that marriage" because if the lady's husband hasn't already long-since figured out what she is going through, he never will.
One of the quirkier things in life is that happily-divorced people have an intuitive understanding of these things and, therefore, talk to other happily-divorced people about these sort of things in a way they never could with their exes, and that, in my experience, is 90% of the reason why ex-spouses are ex-spouses - they, like this lady's husband, just don't get it.
And, when it comes right down to it, what this lady might want to do is irrelevant because she's one visit away from having her doctor tell her that she either end the marriage or suffer serious health issues.
Divorce her husband because of gossip and the perception that "they don't like me"??..if she is even thinking ahead about the money that may come about by said divorce then it is possible that the female in-laws were right in their accessment of her.
There is not a farm succession that does not come without trials and turbulence at times.Thirty five years of marriage and 4 children later, l can attest to some of those turbulent times looking rather minor at this point.
The above poster seems to think that his/her martyrdom should act as a template for others to follow - it doesn't work that way.
Once people get to the point where:
(1) they can't continue to act as an enabler anymore
(2) they've done the best they could for as long as they could
(3) their doctor tells them they need to change their lifestyle or else face serious medical issues.
it doesn't matter whether it's "gossip" or "perception", it's over, period.
Furthermore, I suggest:
(A) it's fairly obvious the above poster doesn't have a sibling, a child or a BFF who's been through the back door of a marriage because it's not as simplistic (or as heroic) as the above poster makes it out to be.
(B) the above posting demonstrates the paltry level of support and/or sympathy anyone ending a farm marriage is likely to receive from some members of the farm community.
As for the money, everyone who makes the decision to end a marriage gets to the point where the money simply doesn't matter regardless whether it's money to be received or money to be paid. Once people get to that point, the rest is easy.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Maybe if the female in laws gave the young wife a chance instead of jumping to the conclusion that she is only after money a lot of these problems could be avoided. Doesn't say much when the mother/sisters think the only reason a woman would marry their son/brother is for money shows they have a very low opinion of the man. If anything it shows that the mother/sisters are only thinking of money. Also, most aging farmers still hold the control ownership and financial side of the business so unless the young son/brother owns the farm himself the "gold digging daughter in law" won't get anything in a divorce since everything is in the old folks name. Another reason for unsuccessful transition from one generation to the next - the young farmer is often left waiting for the parent to pass on before owning anything. (Google Prince Charles syndrome). My husband had been mistreated by his family for years before he met me, but he just took the abuse and kept quite because of the carrot dangling in his face for his entire life "be a good boy and some day the farm will be yours ". Well I came along and ruined the farm by showing my husband love and family without strings attached. For the first time in his life, my husband had someone to stand beside him and be a voice for him to end the mistreatment. Of course my in laws think I've brain washed my husband and I'm the devil and a gold digger. I'm also a farm daughter and my family successfully moved the farm from my parents to my brother and his wife without any major problems. Anyway, my husband choose to walk away from the farm and he says he wishes he had done it years ago. So my advice to the young farm wife as another young wife with young children - don't leave the man you love but support him and show him the wonderful world outside the farm. And every young farm couple should have their own lawyer and accountant separate from what the farm uses since anyone employed by the farm only cares about the farm and does not have the best interest of the young couple in mind and can actually cause harm should the young couple leave the farm. Nobody should take any form of abuse from a family member. If the abuse that went on in farm families happened in the corporate business world....well, it wouldn't because of HR rules, legal rights, and just generally good business practices. If the president of the company started name calling and yelling at the administrative assistant the assistant would be in HR filing a complaint and action would be taken against the president. However; when the farm mother in law or father in law starts laying into the daughter in law or son law...well we're just supposed to keep quiet, forgive and forget, move on,just ignore it and respect our elders all in the name of family and the farm. I'm proud of my husband for standing up for me and our children and taking us out of the toxic hell that was the so called "loving family farm". Remember mothers in law - you where once a young daughter in law new to the farm too. Also, your son grows up, you may have known him best as a child but his wife knows him best as a man and father to his children. If you want respect you must also give it. Not all young people are the lazy gold diggers with no respect for the work of the older generation. Maybe give us young women a chance and you'd discover we are a huge asset to the farm.
In my experience, having a man walk away from a dysfunctional farm environment for his wife is a one in a thousand event - congratulations!
And this lady is likely now dodging the slings and arrows of comments (from older farm women) like - "We went through tough times with my husband's family and made it, why couldn't you?", all the time not being able to see that this mindset means the older lady is a mother-in-law-from hell herself, or at least in-training to become one.
Finally, the most-searing stories (I've heard many) come from widows, both ones who stayed with the farm and/or their husbands, and those who didn't.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Thank you very much for your kind words and your full understanding of the topic of farm mother in laws. I wish I could send your comments to our farm advisor who needs to understand that the older generation is not perfect. Also wish the inlaws could read them too. Thanks again for your continued voice for the younger generation, especially the daughters in laws.
the above post sounds like it is from a very angry person.
attention Editor ...please post my comment
Stan Holmes
According to the on-line Urban Dictionary, "Distrubing" means -
"the state of being so disturbed that one loses the ability to spell properly"
That would mean to me that while Mr. Holmes is "disturbed", my posting is not "disturbing", except, apparently, to Mr. Holmes.
To address the points received, 40% (or more) of all marriages end in divorce, most of them, especially on farms where there is a LOT of money (and pride) involved, acrimoniously - male farmers, for some reason, seem to believe they are, and will always be, immune from and financially unscathed by divorce, even when it happens.
40% of my friends are divorced, as am I, and all of us happily-so. The "angry" people in our lives tend to be our married friends who lash out, probably in fear, at the unknown and especially the possibility that half of their equity and income will unceremoniously walk out the door.
Not surprisingly, I've never met anyone who regretted making the decision to end a marriage and, based on my experience with friends and clients, the marriage described in the posting above is long-since over and looking for a place and time to make it official.
There seems to be three common things to every such decision:
(1) Getting tired of being an enabler to the dysfunctions of others.
(2) Realizing that one has done the best they could for as long as they could.
(3) having no regrets about ending the marriage.
The lady who posted the comment is already long-since past points (1) and (2) and, I suggest, about half-way through the process of the third and the only thing left is deciding when to end things.
If I do harbor any "anger", and I don't believe I do, it's an anger shared by all rational divorced people who decry the "Pollyanna" and "goody-two-shoes" advice given by people, including some professionals, who want to see marriages preserved even when it is abundantly clear it's too late to do so.
Nothing makes our blood boil more than somebody claiming any given marriage needs to be preserved for "the good of the farm".
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
I have been married to a farmer and been the gold-digging daughter in law for 25 years. My husband's siblings never treated me well either. If I did anything nice for my husband's parents then I was "kissing-up". If I did the wrong thing then I was a "gold-digger." I could never win. My kids could never measure up either. The relationship with their cousins was one of constant and unrelenting competition. I never found any self esteem or peace until I got my own job off farm. I went to school to become a nurse and am currently working on becoming a nurse practitioner. Now the "gold-digger" makes more many than any of them. They don't like that either but I don't care anymore. I live in a small town too full of women who won't give me the time of day because of the gossip from my in laws. I don't care about that either. I have tons of nurse friends that live in town and nurture me. I also love my husband and children so this is my life and I'm at peace with it.