Dear Queenie,
My mother-in-law always sends my son a card with a check in it for his birthday, but she never sends my daughters anything at all. Nobody else in either family does this.
Queenie, my girls are still too young to notice this, but what do I tell them when they get older? And should I ask my mother-in-law why she neglects her granddaughters?—Offended mother
Dear Mother,
Is it possible that your mother-in-law is from a culture that places higher value on male children than on girls? Or that she remembers the date of her grandson’s birthday, but not her granddaughters’?
You could make her a calendar with everyone’s birthday noted on it, and you could ask your husband to speak to his mother about this. And, of course, if you invite your mother-in-law to all the children’s birthday parties, she will have no excuse for “forgetting” the girls’ birthdays.
