What is a Payback Mother or Mother-in-law?

The dynamic of mothers and mothers-in-law wanting their daughter or daughter-in-law to step into their shoes and take over the care-giving role that has defined their lives is common and very misunderstood. In this blog I shed light on what causes this dynamic and why is creates relationship conflict.

A payback mother or mother-in-law is a woman, usually in her sixties or seventies, who is emotionally exhausted. After a lifetime of taking care of her family she is angry and all given out. She is angry that she hasn’t received the care and attention she has lavished on her family, and she now wants some of it back. Having learned from her family and society that it is her role as a mother and woman to selflessly take care of others, she now turns her attention to her daughter or daughter-in-law, expecting her daughter or daughter-in-law to take care of her and make up for all the neglect she has suffered throughout her life.

This dynamic is common between mothers and daughters and mothers and daughters-in-law. It typically manifests itself in families who believe in the Culture of Female Service. The payback mother or mother-in-law dynamic is common in families that do not speak the conversation that inquires after what women feel, think, and need. It is common in families that do not recognize that mothers are people first and who expect the mother to selflessly sacrifice their needs and goals for the good of the family. And this dynamic has no economic or cultural barriers. The more patriarchal the family culture is, the more likely the mother, grandmother, or mother-in-law suffers from being a payback mom because this dynamic is a symptom of how patriarchy and the Culture of Female Service neglects women and sacrifices women’s rights and personhood to the care-giving role.

Being a payback mother or mother-in-law is highly manipulative. It manipulates the daughter or daughter-in-law to take responsibility for her mother’s or mother-in-law’s unmet needs and lifetime of sacrifice and neglect. And it causes a lot of relationship conflict. It causes the daughter or daughter-in-law to resent her mother’s or mother-in-law’s many demands and the lack of help she is receiving from her. And it causes the mother or mother-in-law to become angry with her daughter or daughter-in-law for not doing enough for her. After a lifetime of neglect, a payback mother or mother-in-law is starving hungry for attention and care. This can make her demands unreasonable. And her sense of entitlement to be cared for by her daughter or daughter-in-law can be hard to shift because she has internalized the belief that it is a woman’s duty to take care of everyone. After a lifetime of selfless care-giving, she believes that it is her turn to receive and her daughter’s or daughter-in-law’s turn to give.

Now that I’ve explain this dynamic I want to give a huge word of caution because it is not okay for mothers and mothers-in-law to be labeled or blamed for their payback behavior. This is not a diagnosis! This dynamic must be understood as a symptom of how patriarchal families neglect women and mothers, expecting them to sacrifice their needs, lives, and goals for their family. Understanding this dynamic helps us understand why a mother or mother-in-law has become demanding towards her daughter or daughter-in-law. And it empowers daughters and daughters-in-law to set boundaries and challenge their internalized selflessness and self-neglect. Understanding this dynamic strengthens daughters to end this harmful generational dynamic in their life so that they don’t become a payback mother to their daughter or daughter-in-law, and the generational dynamic of emotional silence and self-neglect ends with them.

For more information about this dynamic and how to heal it read “The Mother-Daughter Puzzle” by Rosjke Hasseldine

Reprinted with permission from my American Counseling Association Blog