Living in a joint family in North America

[starberry1]

Re: Living in a joint family in North America

@Sehrah

Basically living with the mother in law after marriage is asking for difficult time.

Desi MILs, unless they’re really forward thinking or deeni generally see their daughter in law as a competitor and want to give them the same experience they had when they first got married because they don’t know any better. So even if they may not outright be controlling, you will get interfering comments, sometimes hurtful ones and your husband will end up in the middle, with no power to sort out the situation as he’s stuck between the 2 most important women in his life, so even if he takes the right side, he’ll still end up hurting someone he loves.

You need to be able to protect your awrah and modesty easily, if your living conditions cannot protect that and your fiance is not willing to take that into consideration then you may need to reconsider your engagement and your well within your rights to Islamically, because this may be the beginning of a lifetime of playing second fiddle to his parents…

Is this really the norm? I mean do MIL’s ever just accept their DIL as their daughter, without the bashing. I do understand the modesty thing, as if you will have BIL’s etc that are non-mehram, you will have to be sort of on gaurd at all times, although as so many people live in this joint-family system, they must have found some sort of solution.

It does seem sensible of people to be thinking about their future living arrangements, but I feel that should there not be a bit of going as things take you, & working it out with your husband as things progress?