Mom explains why it’s not her job to be ‘kin-keeper’ to her husband’s family
In a heterosexual marriage, whose job is it to keep in-laws in the loop? If you said the wife’s, you might want to take a moment and think about where that idea comes from. In a viral video, one TikTok mom, Morgan Strickell, is explaining why she refuses to be her husband’s “kin-keeper,” and it makes a whole lot of sense.
“So I refuse to be the primary communicator with my husband’s side of the family, and I want to talk about this,” she says in her video, which has racked up views and comments.
Strickell, who is pregnant, goes on to explain how she was chatting with her mother-in-law, who told her she was hurt that she had to get pregnancy updates from social media and other family members instead of straight from the source.
“Now, this was kind of news to me because I thought my husband had been communicating with his mom and stepdad. I didn’t know he hadn’t been,” Strickell says. “So we were talking about an upcoming ultrasound last night, and I said, ‘Yeah, don’t forget to send that to your mom so that her feelings aren’t hurt.’ And he said, ‘Why don’t you just send it to my mom?’ And I said, ‘No, sir, not my responsibility. I communicate with my side of the family. You communicate with your side of the family.'”
Now this might sound a little harsh on the surface, but Strickell has some important reasoning.
Her husband said it’s “not that much more responsibility” to reach out to his parents (which, if that’s the case, why doesn’t he do it?). But I digress. Strickell has three reasons why she says this falls squarely on him.
“Number one, I’m not his kin-keeper. If he wants to maintain a relationship with people in his life and have them know information about our lives, that is 100% on him,” she says.
Yep. That tracks.
“Number two, I think this tends to fall on women’s shoulders because it’s either assumed that they have a larger social battery or that they have more time. Neither of those things are true in our relationship. My husband has a much larger social battery than I do, and he also tends to have more free time just because I like to take on projects outside of work,” she continues.
That also makes perfect sense.
It’s the third reason that really hits at the patriarchal forces at play here, though.
She concludes, “But third and final, not a single person would look to my husband as it was his responsibility if my mom was left out of the loop. If my mom doesn’t know what’s going on, I’m a bad daughter. If his mom doesn’t know what’s going on, I’m a bad daughter-in-law.”
And there it is.
At the end of the day, Strickell notes that she “married a grown adult who had good communication with his mom before I met him. There’s no reason that that should be shifted onto my responsibility plate now that we’re together.”
Amen to that!
