By Ben Mathis-Lilley
Care and Feeding is Slate鈥檚 parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My sister 鈥淩ebecca鈥 and her husband have two kids, ages 3 and 5. Recently, Rebecca asked if I would be willing to be named as legal guardian for my niece and nephew if something were to happen to her and my brother-in-law.
This puts me in a difficult position. While I enjoy spending time with my niece and nephew, I have no desire to be a full-time parent and my job requires frequent travel. Our parents have health issues that would make guardianship an impossibility for them, and we don鈥檛 have any other siblings. My brother-in-law鈥檚 parents are abusive alcoholics from whom he is estranged. He has one brother who is serving a life sentence in prison for crimes too heinous to mention. Should I agree to be named as guardian since the odds are heavily in my favor that it will never come to pass, or should I tell Rebecca they will have to look elsewhere?
鈥擭ot Parent Material (she/her)
Dear Material,
There are just certain things you have to do, certain obligations that one has even if they鈥檙e stressful, and this sounds like one of them. Clearly you鈥檙e a better option as a parent than a pair of mean old drunks, a couple in poor health, or a guy who is in prison鈥攁nd I鈥檓 not really sure the life-in-prison person is an option, regardless what your sister does with her will. 3-year-olds are simply not usually welcome in the state penitentiary.
So it falls to you. Don鈥檛 like it? Too bad, you were born into a society and a family, and people in those groups probably did things for you that they didn鈥檛 want to do either. That said, your sister and her husband might have friends who could do the job better, and while I don鈥檛 think you can pass on a request like this, you could gradually prove yourself to be a bit of a clueless supervisor of children (without doing anything dangerous, of course!) in a way that might prompt them to look elsewhere. You know鈥攎aking food for the kids that consists entirely of different forms of zucchini, telling them it鈥檚 鈥淪unday morning fun time鈥 and handing them sections of the Wall Street Journal, that sort of thing. 鈥淢om, your sister is boring.鈥 It鈥檒l be music to your ears!
Dear Care and Feeding,
Like many of your letter writers, I am not the biggest fan of my mother-in-law. She was a stay-at-home mom and will readily say that her life鈥檚 work was being a mother. But what my partner and his siblings have hinted at about their upbringing and what I have observed, she was not a particularly good one. We recently had our first child, and it鈥檚 having a very strange effect on her.
Twice in the last month, she babysat for a few hours and both times did not give my son any of the provided milk, despite my explicit instructions! She gave him solids instead. He is almost 7-months-old, and we have just started him on solids, but just a little bit! There is no guidance anywhere to replace milk/formula with solids at that age! She also ignored other explicit instructions. She seems almost to be competing with me when it comes to mothering my son.Personally, I鈥檓 done asking her to babysit. She鈥檚 terrible with the baby and has made it clear she will not follow instructions.
My partner wants to give her one more chance and if she ignores us again, have a confrontation with her. I think she鈥檚 nuts, and while our son came to no harm, I don鈥檛 know if I鈥檓 comfortable leaving him unsupervised with her again. What would you do?
Dear Non-Fan,
That鈥檚 pretty egregious! I can鈥檛 imagine not following parents鈥 instructions on how to take care of their baby, even for practical reasons: I had a newborn around as recently as four years ago, and I would have no idea what you were supposed to do with one of them. Each time we went back to the maternity ward, I had to ask the nurses to remind me what to do with a human child. You have to forget what it鈥檚 like, or you鈥檇 never have another one鈥攊t鈥檚 biological science! (Probably.)
Crossing someone off the babysitters鈥 list for giving food to a baby who doesn鈥檛 know how to eat food seems fair to me. Getting food stuff right is really the most basic task of babysitting aside from, like, not accidentally locking the baby in a cupboard. As the mom, I think your comfort level is priority number one, and if you don鈥檛 want to leave your child with someone, you don鈥檛 have to. It also doesn鈥檛 sound like you鈥檙e going to be comfortable leaving the baby with your mother-in-law even if you try again and nothing happens, right? It would just be kicking the can down the road.
Which isn鈥檛 to say your husband or mother-in-law are going to be happy about your decision. But that鈥檚 life.
More Parenting Advice From Slate
I was recently out of town on a business trip for a week. This left my wife and my in-laws taking care of our twin preschoolers. As it happened, my wife also had a challenging week at work managing an important out-of-town client. The time I was away was excruciating for my wife, who had to handle a lot of judgment from her mom, who made comments about how the house needed cleaning and about the quality of the food in the fridge (鈥淚 won鈥檛 feed your kids that!鈥). While her mother鈥檚 criticisms were hurtful to both of us鈥攈ousework and meal prep are shared activities鈥攐n the last day, my mother-in-law crossed a line.