THE PEOPLE
Why can’t private life be organized on a businesslike basis? Miss Manners would have thought the answer to be: Because it’s not a business. You can’t fire the children, and you are not likely to make a profit from them. You wouldn’t have hired them in the first place, if you had been aware of their skills and attitudes. That this does not discourage people from having children, Miss Manners understands. There is such a thing as Nature. Unfortunately, neither has it discouraged a great many people from approaching family and social life with the same techniques they apply to work. They compete with their spouses, they plot ways to entertain without incurring personal expense, they advertise for romance and they market what might otherwise be considered the sentimental occasions of their lives to extract cash and goods. If they can’t fire their minor children, they keep giving them notice, and they sever connections with any other relative whom they deem unsatisfactory.
The results have not been encouraging. Private life is full of paradoxes that elude logic, not to mention business techniques. By letting it be known that you are avidly searching for romance, you render yourself unattractive. By requesting donations from friends, you stifle their generosity. By engaging in competition, you drive your spouse into the arms of competitors. When you fire relatives for poor performance, you suffer enormous financial losses.
True, there are areas of the household that do gain from business acumen. The family budget, for example. In organizing a household and keeping it supplied, a systematic approach works wonders. Miss Manners herself uses an inventory system (replacing household staples not when they are used up but when their replacement is used up) for which she understands the United States Navy also claims credit.
One can also contract out tasks that used to be performed at home. A household doesn’t need to grow its own food; Miss Manners wouldn’t dream of checking on whether it even cooked its own food, provided whatever is served makes a decent appearance on platters and plates. It can contract out any number of domestic chores, sometimes to astonishing new services, such as those that will nag the other services.
It is only when it comes to contracting out to commercial companies and professional counselors all the basic services that a family circle of relatives and intimate friends is supposed to supply—compassion, sympathy, companionship, advice-giving, emotional support, teaching morals and manners—that she becomes alarmed. When the personal aspects of family life are all supplied by outside professionals, the family is destroyed. Nor does it get its money’s worth, no matter how esteemed and valuable these services may be. In family life, unlike in the business world, who does the job is even more important than how well it is done. Nepotism is a requirement.
Anyway, the premises on which family life are based would not be considered prudent in business. The family distributes its resources according to need, not merit, and values people without regard to how much money they make (which is why nonproductive children are given allowances). It considers pleasing people to be a better justification for the way things are done than logic or uniformity or speed. It puts extra work into caring for the helpless, instead of unloading them. It expects people to work free for the common good (which is why Miss Manners opposes offering the children money for chores).
All this is amazingly inefficient and not well focused on the bottom line. It is also the only way to live.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – I know that in previous and more refined generations, my question would be unnecessary, but freedom to speak has taken a turn for the worse and I think other women of my generation (the Baby Boomers) and younger would find this an appropriate topic.
I am a single woman with a lively personality, educated, fun to be with, and with a pleasant physique. A number of times, I advertised myself in the personals columns of various publications as looking for a companion and husband. The ads are inviting and straightforward; they do not suggest I am looking for an affair. I have also responded to men’s ads that seem to be age, interest, religion, etc., appropriate.
The problem is that in my initial conversation, on the telephone or when meeting a fellow in person, the man will sometimes say, “So how come you are not (or have ever been) married?” Many of these guys are divorced; perhaps they are envious or jealous of my freedom. My comeback is, “Well, that is a very personal question.” There are reasons I’ve never been married but the reasons aren’t important now, and the question is rude.
I am disappointed by this marriage question. Should I just rip up their letters and not go out with them? Or are they just having a lapse in proper etiquette?
GENTLE READER – The proper etiquette for what, exactly? You want these gentlemen to consider you as a marriage partner, but you don’t want them to get personal?
Miss Manners acknowledges that proper etiquette prohibits strangers from asking such an intimate question. She believes it so very intimate a question that even your relatives should restrain themselves. About once a decade should be about right for your parents or grandparents to take you aside and ask you privately. Even then, you may point out how superfluous such probing is by replying politely, “When I have something to announce, you will be the first to hear it.”
She also admires those who guard—and protect others from—their privacy. As a case in point, there is no conceivable reason that Miss Manners would need to know that you have a pleasant physique. Similarly, a gentleman who was courting you in the conventional fashion would have no claim to ask your reasons for not marrying until he was clearly thinking of marrying you himself.
Forgive Miss Manners for intruding, but isn’t that exactly what you are petitioning those callers to do?
You may guess that Miss Manners does not care for this method of skipping the preliminaries, which she considers to be as unsafe as it is unattractive. She realizes that she, in turn, is considered to be quaint, if not callous, by those who are impatient of the traditional method of cultivating a wide acquaintanceship using social, rather than business, techniques. However, you differ. If you are going to advertise yourself as if marriage were a job, it seems only fair to discuss your qualifications with the applicants.
In the traditional, minimal standard of extended family etiquette—if you could call it that—the rule was that no one could directly insult someone who was not actually a member of the family. In order to be told to your face what was wrong with you, you had to be related.
Those who were tentatively allied to the family through courtship or engagement were not yet eligible for this privilege, and had to be satisfied with being criticized behind their backs. Until they became family, they were guests. Presumably, defending the candidates after they had left was thought to be practice in marital loyalty for their future spouses. Lackluster defenses were considered a sign that further attacks might succeed in blocking the entrance of that person into the family. If they got in anyway, they were in for good and thus eligible for family treatment, such as it is.
Notice the wording in which Miss Manners takes care to distance herself from all this. She considers the premise that it is perfectly all right to insult relatives as rude as it is dangerous. As far as she can make out, neither blood nor marriage contracts remove the sting from being evaluated and found wanting.
The old practice nevertheless contained a clause that is higher than the prevailing standard now: protection of the innocent. This is unfortunately no longer observed. Rather, the idea now seems to be that non-relatives may be slighted or openly insulted all the more easily, precisely because they are not “really” members of the family. The assaults are apt to be less on grounds of personal objectionableness, which just supplies the ammunition, than on the validity of their ties to the family.
This whole new form of rudeness in the family circle is possible because nobody knows, anymore, what defines a relative. Are non-marital partnerships excluded even if they have outlasted all the family marriages? If they are allowed, at what point does somebody’s fond houseguest become part of the family? Are relatives’ step-children also relatives? How much does blood count? How much does custody count? Short of disowning people, is it possible to demote them from full family status if one dislikes them or disapproves of their behavior?
All the above factors have been widely used to declare certain people not quite members of the family and to exclude them from family events or to let them attend in order to treat them shabbily. Miss Manners therefore finds it necessary to issue a new set of rules. Without condoning the way some families treat their undisputed members, she wants to make it clear that there can be no such thing as second-class family membership.
At ceremonial events, relatives are eligible through the relationship, not their personal appeal. For example, you can have a guest list cutoff at second cousins, but then you can’t include the third cousin you like and exclude the first cousin you hate. Nor should there be first-class and coach treatment—presents for bloodline children but not step-children who are in attendance. It is objectionable to make the distinction of “blood” between children born to the family and those acquired by adoption—when it comes to that, the parents have no blood ties to each other. Marriage counts, regardless of whether everybody thinks the new partners are suitable or the old ones could have done better. Non-legal alliances are the call of the family member involved. It’s a full partnership if that person says it is. If not, then the visitor is treated as a guest. If that means better treatment, so be it.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – My sister plans to make up a family tree for our parents’ wedding anniversary, but she wants to omit all steps and list only biologicals, and she wants to change her part by omitting the date and place she and her second husband married.
A nephew had an operation so he wouldn’t have children, but married a gal who was pregnant (not by him) and put his name as father on the birth certificate. My brother married a gal with six children, and they had two together. He wants to include those two plus two of hers that he helped raise. One sister doesn’t want to name either of her husbands because they didn’t contribute to child support. Another sister wants to omit her second husband (no children) but include her fourth husband (no children).
Needless to say, all this has created quite a rift in the family get-along ability. I am all for accepting anybody who wants to be put down, as I believe families have been adding and eliminating at whim throughout the ages. It just rubs me the wrong way for someone to say, “Oh, don’t include him in the picture—he’s not family.”
GENTLE READER – What, pray, does your sister have in mind by drawing up a tree of this family? Binding everyone closer together? Ensuring that next year’s anniversary party may be held in a very small place?
Miss Manners knows of no genealogical society, however strict, that counts only biological ties. Marriage and adoption are undisputed ways of joining a family, and even your relatives have not exhausted all the newer possibilities.
The currently popular idea that truth requires hurting people’s feelings is bad enough; Miss Manners agrees with you that declarations of who is in the family and who is not are never kindly intended, and that the results are always disastrous for the future of the family. What your sister wants is not even defensible as scholarship—it is to paint a false picture, but of her own choosing.
This is a really terrible idea, and your parents will hardly be likely to appreciate her setting off family feuds. The nicest present she could give them is to abandon the project, and get them a rubber plant instead. If she insists on continuing, Miss Manners hopes that the family will agree that the only way to figure out who is in and who is out is to ask each branch of the family to submit its own list.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – My sister, age 50 plus and divorced, has been seeing a married man for over six years. He is invited to family functions, birthdays, etc., and has been privy to a lot of the family problems. All these years, our family has never gotten to meet his grown children or any of his friends. He does not discuss them. His wife lives out of town and, according to my sister, he will never tell her if he’s getting a divorce or what is happening with his personal situation. My sister keeps him around (I think) because he takes her out to eat a lot. They do not have a loving relationship.
I am getting tired of him being around all the family events, hearing about us and never sharing anything of a personal nature. My husband is tired of him also. I would like to exclude the man from certain events because I feel he’s an intruder, but I don’t want to hurt my sister. There have, however, been times that I have told her I just want to be with the family and not him. My husband’s daughter, who is not well acquainted with him, is having an expensive wedding out of town and does not want him to come but will invite all the family. Is it polite to tell my sister that the invitation is for her and not her friend?
GENTLE READER – You have at your disposal two relevant etiquette rules:
1. Although it is not true that single people must be allowed to bring their own guests to weddings (presumably to provide themselves with more emotional sustenance than they could hope to get from witnessing the marriage and to relieve them from the tedium of socializing with the family’s other guests) and dinner parties, it has become customary to invite established couples together.
2. It has always been obligatory, and still is, to invite married couples together, whether or not one knows or likes the spouse of a prospective wedding or dinner guest.
Miss Manners suggests that your husband’s daughter invoke both rules. She should tell your sister that of course she would like to invite her companion, but that she wouldn’t dream of doing so without inviting his wife.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – We have a ticklish situation here. Our son, 41, twice divorced, now lives with his girlfriend (the survivor of three marriages) and claims that they have a commitment. He expects that we treat her like a member of the family, and that she be invited to all family gatherings. We try to keep peace, but it hurts us every time he insists on this. Who knows whom he will commit himself to next month? How should we act?
GENTLE READER – Miss Manners understands your exasperation, after presumably having twice been through welcoming a new daughter-in-law, telling her the family stories, giving her the family pearls or whatever. You may even have to go through it again, perhaps with this particular person.
What you need not do is to allow your weariness with making passersby into members of the family to exaggerate your son’s present request. Surely you can have her at family gatherings, and treat her with the informality due an intimate, without putting her in your will. If you got the pearls back, you can hang on to them.
Can friends fulfill the traditional functions of a family?
Without getting into unpleasant debates about the moral and/or insurance implications of reconfiguring the patterns by which people group themselves into household units, Miss Manners has a simple answer: Sure.
Families no longer routinely fulfill the traditional functions of families, so why shouldn’t ad hoc groups be able to do just as little?
In theory, there is no reason why people unrelated by blood or marriage should not be able to supply one another with the emotional and practical support that society assigns to the family. In fact, there are numerous stunning examples of people who have nurtured the young and the elderly, taken in the abandoned, cared for the sick, educated the ignorant and otherwise opened their homes and lives to people to whom they had no more binding obligation than that of common humanity.
More commonly, romance provides a powerful incentive to behave like a family. For that matter, romance provides a powerful incentive to produce a traditional family. Increasingly, it has also produced an extra-legal version of it among people who cannot, or prefer not to, avail themselves of the legal prototype.
Another sort of romance has a long history of inspiring small groups or communities of like-minded people to set up housekeeping together: a vision of living in harmony through the simple method of rising above the more troublesome human traits. Such communes tend to be dramatically short-lived, but then so do a lot of marriages nowadays.
Milder sentiments than virtue, romance or vision have also motivated the establishment of joint households. Such as tax breaks. Or shared child care. Or the most powerful of all: not being able to afford the rent alone.
Whatever the circumstances, cooperation strikes Miss Manners as a fine idea—as does pooling resources among those who share a roof. The extent of community—how much they also share duties, possessions and leisure time, and supply one another with encouragement and assistance—naturally varies among these different types of groups according to the degree of commitment.
Or so one would think. Roommates thrown together by convenience should respect one another and respond to emergencies but are hardly expected to dip freely into one another’s bank accounts. At the other end, those who consider their bonds to be as stable and strong as those of marriage or blood would be expected to hold jointly not only their goods but their emotional interests. Not anymore. Unrelated groups—taking for the rule the extraordinary exceptions among their kind—tout their ability to supply all the traditional family services. Meanwhile, families have started acting like roommates, with their separate stashes of food, their private schedules and their competing ambitions, so that the unfortunate exception is in danger of becoming the rule.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – I met a fellow from out of town without a proper introduction, and after three months of living with me, he adamantly refused to tell me what he did (or had done) for a living, attributing to Miss Manners that my asking was being rude. Two months later, I asked him to leave because he wasn’t significantly contributing to the well-being of the household. When I moved to his state (I sent out moving announcements) half a year later, his concerned mother tracked me down looking for him. Among other things, she informed me this well-educated, upper-middle class fellow had been living in his car for five years. Was it incorrect to ask what he did?
GENTLE READER – Now have you learned the value of proper introductions? Good. The next lesson is not to take etiquette advice, even if it spuriously carries an impeccable name, from those to whom you have not been properly introduced. Intimate questions may be asked by those on intimate terms. In this case, even Miss Manners could have figured out the answer without asking.
Without claiming that mothers have it harder than other people, Miss Manners does wish to point out that they are more generally picked on. Fathers have children too, and children endure the extreme hardship of being children. Family life surely does not spare them from hearing about their shortcomings.
But they don’t spend nearly as much time on the receiving end of unsolicited advice and uncharitable criticism from the society at large. Fathers have to fail spectacularly, with crime or desertion, to come under attack. Children get to distribute blame without having to observe a statute of limitations or fear reprisal.
No complaint is too petty or too personal when its object is a mother. You don’t have to be a mother to know better than they how they should live their lives, yet mothers have never even been able to count on professional courtesy from their own kind.
Miss Manners used to attribute this rudeness to a lethal combination of prejudice, busybodyness and childishness, and had hoped that social advances would be the cure. Now she is beginning to suspect that the problem actually is caused by faith in social science, which has given us the peculiar notion that we can discern cause and effect in regard to human behavior, and the habit of explaining in those terms the unpleasant human effects that keep appearing. As we can no longer talk about bad eggs and rotten kids (or was it the other way around?), much less shoulder responsibility for doing wrong in spite of knowing better, there is a greater need than ever for a scapegoat. Hi, Ma.
Miss Manners will restrain herself from marching into questions of moral responsibility and character. Not only does she leave that murky field to others who are wearing sturdier boots, but she considers the etiquette insults that sprout there to be more of a nuisance to society.
That the children—and the neighbors and everyone else, besides—can figure out better than Mother how to do Mother’s job is an eternal delusion she cannot hope to change. What she can do is to point out that it is a violation of manners to let on to anyone that you know a great deal better than she what she should be doing. Furthermore, it is a requirement of manners to offer sympathy, gratitude and admiration to someone who is struggling to do a difficult job.
There are a number of ways to do this that children who wish to be good to their very own mothers have at their disposal.
They can refrain from pointing out that they will escape her jurisdiction because of age, financial independence, being out of sight, contrary instructions extracted from Father, teacher or peers, or the ability to be even more stubborn than she is. It is not tactful to call attention to the fact that people’s skills are undesirable and their jobs futile.
They can graciously allow Mother to repeat herself. Although this does not require asking “And then what happened?” when she is reminiscing about the listener’s bout with measles at the age of three, it does require an attentive look. The proper response is a prompting “Ummmm,” rather than “Oh, not that again.” It might help to understand that these stories are told for the sake of maintaining tradition, rather than conveying information, much less surprising or entertaining listeners.
They can forgo pointing out that her version of past events is not in keeping with their knowledge of the facts. An enormous percentage of family conversation time is taken up with this, when it’s really annoying and nobody cares.
They can drop a teasing point that she doesn’t like, such as how much she weighs or what color her hair used to be. Normally cessation of teasing is a matter of family negotiation—you stop telling about how I used to get carsick, and I’ll forget about the time your blouse split—so a free turn is a generous present.
They can make friends with her friends. Failing that, they can make conversation with her friends.
They can say those words Mother needs to hear that are not flowery enough to be emblazoned on Mother’s Day cards, mugs and pillows:
“You’re really the best judge of that.”
“I’m sure you have your reasons.”
“There’s only so much you can do.”
“I wouldn’t dream of telling you how to live your life.”
“It’s amazing what you manage to accomplish under the circumstances.”
“It’s not your fault; you did what you could.”
“By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you that you were right about …”
“Here, let me do that.”
Finally, they can request advice from her, preferably with the preface “You know more about this than I do.” This is such an easy and charming thing to do that Miss Manners wonders why children do not do it more often. Perhaps they confuse it with the more unpleasant task of following a mother’s advice. As grownup children and particularly children-in-law are notoriously slow to realize, advice may be requested and accepted graciously without a future intention of heeding it.
Did Father make a mistake in granting the children permission to question his opinions? To allow his issue to take issue with him?
The audacious practice of contradicting a parent having long since become the rule, Miss Manners hardly expects to find modern children who are aware of the traditional manner of accepting Father’s pronouncements. She doesn’t even expect them to hear about it without a hoot that is highly illustrative of the change. That guy? We were supposed to pretend we thought he knew what he was talking about?
Nevertheless, it was once standard family policy, in theory and occasionally in practice, that Father enjoyed the highest respect simply by virtue of his position, and nobody gave him any lip. Well, Mother did, of course, but she did it after the bed curtains were drawn, because it was also policy for parents to refrain from contradicting each other in front of their children. Mother was not supposed to be questioned by the children either, but in an unfair world, she sometimes had to resort to issuing that vague but thunderous threat “Just wait till your father gets home.”
The change in family standing happened benignly enough, as a result of parental enlightenment rather than childish rebellion. Out of a kindly belief in developing the children’s powers of reason and persuasion, fathers and mothers began to permit rebuttals to their wisdom. Among nice parents, affection, not power, was supposed to sustain filial respect, so they made it possible for anyone to win an argument simply through superior reasoning. Miss Manners admits to cherishing fondness for this presumption, even if it did have the effect of producing a generation of little lawyers.
A lot has happened to fatherhood since then: custody disputes, the defense of single motherhood by characterizing it as equal or superior to married motherhood, unfair competition in consumer goods from those with no responsibility, such as Mother’s beaux, and the wide dissemination of horrific tales about some fathers that sadly cast suspicion upon the position itself. Suddenly it was no longer just the case that negligent or otherwise criminal fathers forfeited respect. Rather, a normal father was expected to prove that he had especially earned it. At the same time, non-custodial fathers with disposable income were setting a standard that no father-in-residence could meet. Even the most dutiful full-time father almost never whisks the children off for exciting weekend adventures—certainly not every, or every other, weekend. Vacations aren’t exotic surprises but are tediously planned and discussed in advance. Allowances may appear regularly, but surprise checks do not. Presents arrive on the holidays when they are expected but rarely between; the occasional extras a residential father produces are chance novelties, not major items.
In sum, he is predictable. He never even has mystery houseguests for breakfast. Wheedle as they will, the children can never get him to give his permission when he knows that Mother has refused hers. Affectionate though he admittedly may be, he is thinking more about rearing the children than about impressing them.
Miss Manners thinks that to be quite enough of a job, and believes that it should entitle him to be restored to his previous status as a figure of respect. She doesn’t feel that she has to restore his claim of infallibility for him to garner that respect.
Quaint evidence indicates that Father’s Day was invented to honor some comfortably rumpled old soul who was more or less permanently planted in a wing chair, reading the newspaper and smoking a pipe. You know this was a long time ago because every father was able to equip himself with an afternoon newspaper.
If such a person could be found nowadays, how would his family honor him?
By telling him how disgusting his pipe was and how it was likely to kill not only his weak-willed self, which would be no more than just, but everyone with the misfortune to live in his vicinity?
By demanding that he move himself out of that chair and pitch in with the housework?
Mind you, Miss Manners is not saying that the standard model of Father did not deserve some polite and loving guidance. But his situation does not shed much light on the modern question of how we should celebrate the paternal holiday.
The traditional method of celebrating Father’s Day was for the children to busy themselves making touchingly lopsided ceramic ashtrays for those pipe ashes. Today’s youth is much more likely to be engaged in the sad process of sizing Father up and finding him wanting. Instead of attending to the kiln, they are asking themselves whether Father really deserves to be honored, or even tolerated. Under what conditions should his claim to the paternal position be rejected?
Suppose he lives elsewhere, with a whole new family.
Suppose he arrived after the children’s birth, on the unseconded invitation of Mother.
Suppose he was there at the crucial time before that birth but not in an official capacity.
Does his having left home disqualify him?
If not, does his having defaulted on child support payments disqualify him?
Suppose he sends birthday presents but doesn’t visit.
Suppose he sends letters but no presents.
Does refusing to pay for the child’s dream wedding oust him from the father position? How about not paying enough? How much is the cutoff?
This process of rating Father, which is born of bitterness, however much provoked, is not going to make for a happy life for either father or child. Miss Manners urges that these questions be settled on the generous side. Every child seems to consider generosity one of the most highly valued qualities of a father. But it is a quality that a child also needs to learn in assessing a father.
There are clear cases of child abuse and child neglect, and Miss Manners is not suggesting that such criminal matters be tolerated. Tragically, a child must sometimes be protected from—or worse, have to attempt to protect himself from—the person who ought to have been one of his or her chief protectors. But such charges against Father are sometimes glibly made. What a child calls abuse may turn out to be what an adult may consider legitimate, even well-advised, strictness. The label of neglect may be applied to what an adult would understand as an inability to do or give everything deemed fitting by a child.
The complicated circumstances of adult life are rarely understood by the next generation, and Miss Manners is afraid that there are instances in which decent fathers are damned by their children over matters which the child is not competent to judge. Choices involving the allocation of discretionary monies—that is to say, for luxuries beyond the basics of child support—are particularly easily condemned by those who do not feel sufficiently benefited. Conflicting duties are even less subject to understanding on the part of the claimants themselves.
Miss Manners does not want to hear how specific grievances against individual fathers justify denying them mercy. Rather, she wants to encourage a Father’s Day present that might be even more affectionately constructed and more useful than the ashtray: the benefit of the doubt. At the very least, it may set Father a good example.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – My wife and I are very recently separated. She said that she was unhappy and needed her “space.” She moved into a very nice apartment with her 15-year-old daughter from a previous marriage and our eight-year-old daughter. We have been very civil to each other throughout this whole matter.
As it turns out, she has an out-of-state boyfriend who financed the whole move. I know that some day, I am going to meet this man, probably when I am picking up my daughter. I would like to know what would be a proper greeting and what I should say (if anything). I know what I want to do, but I wouldn’t want to do the wrong thing in front of the children. I also don’t want to give the impression that I am satisfied with the situation.
GENTLE READER – Oh, yes you do. Not only is that the proper thing to do, and one that will not be offensive in front of the children, but it is the only attitude that will truly give you satisfaction. Allow Miss Manners to explain.
Any nastiness you exhibit will be attributed by everyone who witnesses it to your devastation at losing your wife. That can only add to the triumph of the man who spirited her away from you, surely not the effect you hope to achieve. However, if you greet him not only politely, but enthusiastically, you will plant the idea that he has done you a favor.
Think about that. He is bound to do so.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – In our small, sleepy town, a popular and respected couple is breaking up because of an affair the husband had with an old girlfriend. However, the wife insists she is not seeking a divorce because of the affair per se, but because her husband took their son to meet his lover under cover of a trip to the young man’s college, and because the lover brought her daughter-in-law on one of their weekend trysts, as a “cover,” so that her own husband would not suspect what she was doing.
The wife says that there are “rules of etiquette” for affairs; that she understands that her husband slipped because he was in the midst of a mid-life crisis, but that she could never again trust someone who could callously use young people by making them accomplices to their elders’ cheating. Isn’t this hair-splitting? Isn’t the affair itself the real injury, as it is a moral transgression, and if the wife can forgive that, shouldn’t she forgive the details? When the wife describes the details as “callous,” isn’t she actually making an ethical judgment, rather than talking about bad manners?
Her husband wants to save the marriage, and insists the son was not made an accomplice, since he did not suspect that the woman he met was his father’s lover. He also maintains that the daughter-in-law is too old to be an “innocent,” seemed delighted that her mother-in-law was having such a good time, and so the question of exploiting her was moot.
GENTLE READER – Yes, Miss Manners believes it possible to forgive a moral transgression without being able to stomach a transgression of manners. As our own dear moral philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson put it in his essay “Manners”: “I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person.”
Your particular example is not a clear one, because the involvement of the child could be considered immoral rather than unmannerly. Miss Manners does not consider the august question of manners to be one of mere “details,” but the husband’s argument that the son was protected from knowing, and the daughter-in-law willingly complied, does get him off from an etiquette charge. Yet cannot you imagine, for example, a wife’s being willing to forgive a husband for having a one-night-stand in a distant motel, but not being able to forgive him if it had taken place in their own house where he had allowed someone else to try on her clothes?
It might be nice to say a kind word about step-parents. Well? Miss Manners is waiting for the step-children to speak up.
In the meantime, she hastens to assure birth parents who feel that they were displaced by these interlopers that they need not join in. They are only required to refrain from saying mean things, a rule designed as much for their own sakes as for the sake of politeness. Unpleasant comments have the effect of suggesting that similar unpleasantness, applied to other subjects or to life in general, speeded the departing spouse on his or her way. (An etiquette bonus in this difficult situation is that the person who speaks most generously of a successor is considered to be the winner, because the gracious one is presumed to have either happily acquired or happily unloaded the spouse in question. Miss Manners also believes that dissatisfied ex-wives should all have friends who report back, “She’s put on a tremendous amount of weight,” and dissatisfied ex-husbands, friends who report, “He’s losing his hair.” The correct reply to such remarks, pronounced sweetly and then allowed to hang in the air without elaboration, is “Oh, now, come on, that doesn’t matter,” or if they can’t manage that, at least “I’m sure they’re well suited for each other.”)
It is step-children and other maritally acquired relatives in whom Miss Manners wishes to encourage active kindness towards step-parents. Some of the worst offenders are not small children in the throes of painful bewilderment about their parents’ divorce, but grown-ups, sometimes those with families of their own.
The idea that step-parents need not be treated politely because they entered the family with some sort of second-class status violates a basic principle of manners. Relatives are relatives, and few of them were acquired on purpose; yet they must all be treated to consideration and loyalty, right up until a lucrative offer is received for one’s autobiography. Etiquette does not engage in the futile task of trying to mandate emotions, any more than a less-than-eagerly welcomed step-parent should do. It does insist on good manners—and so should step-parents, and, even more vehemently, the parents responsible for bringing them into the family.
Miss Manners cannot be in each household—and what a relief that is for her—to point out the fine difference between distance and disrespect. Trying to soften the former while forbidding the latter, and being alert to nuances, is the least parents can do for those to whom they subject their ready-made children. It is her hope that being required to practice manners will encourage appreciation and, ultimately, compassion, both of which are needed in great quantities by anyone who enters a partially assembled family—rarely with a welcome but usually with the expectation of having to tread carefully and absorb slights and with the resolve to provide guidance and warmth.
Miss Manners doesn’t doubt that terrible step-parents also exist but condemns etiquette’s being used as the weapon of choice between closely linked enemies. Coldness is sometimes justified among adult step-relatives, although not towards children, but rudeness never is. There is such a thing as a dignified agreement to maintain distance between family members who do not get along, which is best expressed—if it cannot be mended—by letter-perfect formal correctness. Unfortunately, unhappy people do not seem to be able to leave it at that. To Miss Manners’ dismay, they keep peppering the situation with slights—say omitted invitations or unpleasant presents—from the arsenal of etiquette violations. That she cannot permit.
Small children who are regrettably untutored should be used not as proof of one’s predecessor’s shortcomings but as an opportunity for true step-parental heroism. Miss Manners has heard from many a one who despairs at having to put up with children who were never required to practice good manners—not just towards them but in any situation. Rather than enter a doomed popularity contest to see who can neglect the children’s education more, the step-parent can represent an alternative way of living. Children who are required to behave politely, even if only for weekends and holidays, will at least be aware of a higher standard than they would otherwise know. Pleas that standards are laxer in the other parent’s household are irrelevant. The answer is noncritical but firm: “I’m sorry, dear, but I do things differently.”
Here is the minimum honor one must do a step-parent if one wishes to honor a parent:
1. Recognize his or her existence. Miss Manners shouldn’t have to say this, because the refusal to recognize the existence of a human being with whom one is thrown into contact is the highest insult there is and usually reserved for mass murderers. Nevertheless, she has heard of the technique’s being used to indicate mere distaste. This establishes the shunner as being rude.
2. Recognize the position of a married couple. This means that step-parents are invited to ceremonial occasions such as graduations, weddings and funerals, along with their husbands or wives. However, anyone whose presence is known to create a hardship for a predecessor gets extra etiquette credit from Miss Manners for gracefully declining such invitations or staying in the background.
3. Recognize the authority of both people who preside over a household. After all, the children are expected to follow their beloved Granny’s rules when they visit her, and not blast her out of her senses with noise, or appear in their underwear at the breakfast table, however reasonable this behavior may be considered under their own roof. Parents-in-residence should set their household customs together and support each other’s authority, however much they may debate privately, and the children must respect them, even in a household once shared by both parents but now under the jurisdiction of a step-parent. It may be of comfort to know that grown-up children returning to their own married parents’ house to find that changes were made after they moved away feel something of the same resentment.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – Due to many necessary forms for school, Brownies or church, we are always asked “Who is an emergency contact person?” and “What is the relationship to the child?” We always use my husband’s daughter’s mother (from a previous relationship, not by marriage), and state her relationship as “friend.” “Step-Mom, -Dad, -child” is not usually used because our children (I have a daughter from a previous marriage) prefer to call us Mom and Dad. All parents involved (except my ex) are, and have been, on friendly terms.
Should we continue to use “friend” or leave it blank? Also, what would my relationship be to “previous relationship”? Obviously “husband’s daughter’s mother” is too complicated, and “friend” does not explain it thoroughly. I jokingly call our relationship “mothers-in-law.”
GENTLE READER – “Mothers-in-law” is adorable, but Miss Manners suspects that if the other lady finds you have identified her as merely a “friend” to her own daughter, there is going to be another person no longer on friendly terms with you. That lady is the child’s mother. That the girl addresses you as Mom and your daughter addresses your husband as Dad is fine, so long as this doesn’t deprive others of their rightful titles.
Allow Miss Manners to say that it is a pity that you are perpetuating the prejudice against the term “step-mother,” because that is what you are, and saying so on forms would eliminate the confusion of the children’s having multiple parents. Although now that Miss Manners comes to think of it, no one is confused by anything of the sort these days.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – What place, if any, does the mother of my stepdaughter have in the events of my husband’s family? I certainly welcome the presence of my stepdaughter, who is married and almost thirty years old, but both my husband and I are dismayed that her mother still tags along to funerals, weddings and other gatherings. The girl was a result of an affair and although my husband financially supported the girl, he never married the woman. This woman never married and hasn’t had any involvement with my husband or his family for nearly 19 years.
GENTLE READER – Presuming that you acknowledge the mother’s involvement in any family matter pertaining to her own daughter, Miss Manners will admit, as you wish her to do, that someone who never joined a family can hardly claim to be a part of it. She can also understand that this lady’s presence is something of a nuisance to you and your husband. Still, she hopes you will allow for the pathos of the situation. Clinging to such an identification after all these years is so sad that Miss Manners finds herself hoping that you will put up gamely with the presence of someone who is, although not a relative, the relative of a relative.
A great many people have been eagerly looking forward to receiving summer visitors who will stay for weeks, disparage and quarrel with the rest of the family, make themselves at home in the sense of doing whatever they want but not in the sense of going along with the customs of the house, complain about household conditions and gather critical personal information about them to take back to the hosts’ adversaries.
Why would anyone allow such guests in the door—especially since they are all people who have been there before—much less look forward to their visits?
Because these are their own children. Children who annually spend part of the summer in the homes of a non-custodial parent are not guests at all but members of the family who can legitimately consider that they have a claim to being at home wherever a parent lives. Theirs is not an easy situation, and Miss Manners does not mean to suggest that it is their fault that these visits are often hard on the full-time residents. They are likely to be even harder on the children.
What visitor would want to spend weeks away from home but not exactly on vacation, being expected to take part in the routines of a household in which he or she is neither treated as a guest nor successfully made to feel part of the family, subjected to unfamiliar rules and conditions and perhaps made to hear criticism of a parent and other relatives?
Who, then, is to blame for the unfortunate fact that so many of these joyously anticipated visits turn out to be disappointing for everyone concerned? Reluctant to blame each other, parents and children traditionally identify other villains: The non-custodial parent blames the custodial parent, and the child blames the non-custodial step-parent. Miss Manners does not think that this solves the problem.
Perhaps there are some parents who train their children to be disgruntled spies, and step-parents whose desire it is to make children feel tyrannized and unwanted, but Miss Manners tends to doubt that there are as many such monsters as she hears claimed. She is aware that the situation itself is capable of producing misery all around, totally without the assistance of ill will.
Polite guests stay for a short period of time, take care to show their gratitude for being entertained, and are on the lookout to fit in with their hosts’ expectations, even if it means suspending their own wishes; while polite children-of-the-house can expect to be in a relaxing atmosphere where the customs are familiar and were, indeed, made with their needs in mind. Polite hosts devote themselves to amusing guests and adjusting the family routines in order to make them comfortable, while polite parents can expect to be in unquestioned charge without their devotion being questioned.
So what we have here is an etiquette crisis waiting to happen—a situation in which no one quite knows which form of behavior to follow. An etiquette conference is called for, in which the mixture of expectations and rules for such a hybrid situation is made explicit:
“We keep rather a neat household, so the best place to sprawl out is in your sleeping quarters, or on the porch. But the living room is fine too, if you just take things with you when you leave the room. We’ll try to get out of the house quietly in the morning because you like to sleep in, but when we’re home, please use the headphones when you’re listening to music. Want to come along on the grocery shopping and help get things you like? Is there anything you particularly don’t like? No, we don’t have television on during dinner, but if there’s a particular program you want to see, perhaps we could eat before or after …”
Miss Manners is giving the adult side of the dialogue because she does not mean to say that everything is negotiable; by virtue of their being parents and the heads of that particular household, the adults are in charge. She is assuming that they are also entertaining requests by the child, whenever possible.
What is meant to be missing here is any critical comparison of the two households where the child has parents. The etiquette rule against criticizing anyone else’s home and relatives applies equally to adult and child, no matter how closely they may be related.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – We have an every-other-weekend visitation with my husband’s ten-year-old son by a previous marriage, and I do everything I can to make the visits go well, including meal planning, grocery shopping and cleanup after the child leaves. My husband seems to think that I do not need any notice—or very little—regarding changes in the visitation schedule. I have asked for a week, or at least two days’, notice—which I seldom get. He says the child should be able to go freely between homes.
I say if I’m going to play hostess, I need notice, otherwise things will not flow smoothly and I get stressed out and am expected to run to the store at the last minute, or spread our meal thinner. Am I being too uptight, or is he not using appropriate manners?
GENTLE READER – Your husband is using perfectly proper manners for members of the family. What you are asking him to do is to use the manners appropriate for guests, not his own child. Miss Manners suggests you think less about playing hostess and more about being a mother. She believes it is crucial for children to feel that any home in which a parent lives is also their home.
If you want to enlist Miss Manners in encouraging your husband to do chores when you are feeling stressed—or even when you’re not—she would be more agreeable—provided you make the point that you need more cooperation in running the household, and refrain from suggesting that it is the child who has created the problem. It should be the child’s household, too. If you get into the habit of being really welcoming, not to say motherly, Miss Manners will even allow you to throw in a reminder that notice, if possible, does help. The way you can put it is, “If you can possibly give me warning when Brian is coming, I’d appreciate it, because I’d like to run out and get him some of his favorite treats.”
DEAR MISS MANNERS – My fiancé and I began living together eight months ago. His 17 year old son lives with us also. He will be 18 in April. My step-son-to-be holds a full time job, but does not contribute to the household expenses. He does not seem to be concerned about the cost of utilities or food and does not make any effort to conserve or contribute. When and how would it be appropriate for us to approach him about contributing to his living expenses?
GENTLE READER – Forgive Miss Manners for saying this, but could this problem be stated another way? Perhaps “I moved in with my fiancé and his son and want to know how to make the son start paying his household expenses.”
Moving into an existing family and attempting to demote one of its members to boarder status is a really bad idea. It raises unpleasant questions about who the outsider really is.
Presumably, you are on confidential terms with your fiancé, and he is on confidential terms with his son. So you need only worry about making the suggestion politely to him (Miss Manners advises something along the lines of “Don’t you think it would be a good thing for Sean to have him learn financial responsibility?”) and, if he agrees, allow him the pleasure of taking it up with his son.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – May I limit my visits with my spouse’s grown children to pre-arranged restaurant meals? He’s agreeing that we should perhaps consider that alternative.
We met six months after his wife of 34 years and the mother of his three grown children left the family home to continue an affair with a co-worker. She wanted nothing to do with marriage counseling—only adjustments-to-divorce professional help. We live happily in the modest (middle-middle class) neighborhood home in which these three children spent their childhood and adolescence. The former wife and her co-worker also live in this city. Even though they misused this house as a trysting place during my spouse’s out-of-state trips, we like the house’s low maintenance and established yard features and so decided not to relocate. The children live out of state.
My efforts to be generous—not haughty—to the children on their yearly visits have been mixed. I have had difficulty with their opening drawer after drawer and exclaiming, “I can’t find anything any more!” They fill our plastic bags full of trail snacks and remove fruit from a fruit bowl as they head out of our house for a hike with their mom and her co-worker. When I saw this fill ’em up activity, the wife of the older son told me with sardonic glee, “I don’t ask—I just take!” When they left, she said, “It’s been fun!” instead of any heartfelt thanks. They are medical doctors, teaching and doing research. My spouse has been extremely supportive and acknowledges that these children still have some growing up to do. He applauds me for steering clear of any unseemly contest with his former wife and her co-worker.
The bigger picture here is a comedy of manners. My wonderful spouse even laughed and said he felt complimented when he learned that at a convention, the cuckolding co-worker and the mother of these three children had arranged an impersonator for my spouse. We feel sure you’ll dismiss that new euphemistic term, “blended families,” as ironic at best.
GENTLE READER – Do not take offense when Miss Manners says that all those vivid and interesting details are irrelevant. She enjoyed hearing them, and naturally shares your admirable view of life as a comedy of manners. However, the problem here has nothing to do with co-workers and trysting places. It is simply that the children think of this house still as their home, in which you are a newcomer if not, in their view, an intruder; while you see them as your guests, who do not know how to behave as guests.
Miss Manners does not defend their behavior. Announcing that one “just takes” and never thanks is unpardonable. It’s just that banning them from their father’s house, which is also their own childhood home, is rather a drastic solution to what is, after all, a misunderstanding of manners.
Your husband sounds like a true and much tried gentleman. Perhaps he can explain to them that the house is your home now, not theirs; and to you, that they are family, not merely houseguests. Dissatisfied hosts and guests defer to each other during the visit and then resolve never to repeat it. Families have to work out compromises, and a compromise could be reached between their feeling free to ransack your drawers and your feeling that they should have to ask permission to take fruit from a fruit bowl.
What, after all, is the alternative to a blended family in these circumstances? When Miss Manners’ last kitchen blender died, it was replaced by a vicious weapon of a kitchen machine that approaches nearly everything with a mean chopping blade.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – My husband’s son, now 16, who has grown up in a cave surrounded by social idiots, moved in with us last summer. He has absolutely no knowledge of any of the social skills that I’ve always taken for granted. He has the table manners of a five-year-old: He does not know how to use basic utensils properly; he cuts up all of his meat prior to eating; he places used utensils directly on the tablecloth or placemat; he has terrible posture; he doesn’t know how to put his napkin on his lap, etc. etc. The list goes on and on. He also thinks I’m crazy for making him take off his cap when he comes to the table.
It’s driving me absolutely nuts! I grew up in a family that taught and practiced proper table manners. The same is obviously not true of him. Should I try to change 15 years of ill-mannered behavior? How can I convince him this isn’t stuff I’m just dreaming up to torture him?
GENTLE READER – Perhaps by changing your attitude. One of the social skills Miss Manners would like to take for granted is that a lady does not speak of her husband’s former home and that of the mother of her step-son as a cave of social idiots. This is especially necessary since the first person you should enlist to help you is a former resident of that establishment, or, as you might put it, an idiot from that cave, namely, your husband. Presuming that he did nothing previously to teach manners, you need to persuade him to insist upon them now.
Miss Manners recognizes it as a sufficient argument that this is the way you wish to live. She would throw in the fact that the boy will do better in life if he does not disgust those who might evaluate him even more coldly than his step-mother. Once the principle is established that good manners will be practiced in your home, your part will be to use good manners to enforce them. In other words, the approach to take daily is “Darling, do put your napkin on your lap—now what was it you were saying?” rather than “You’re driving me absolutely nuts,” which could be taken as encouragement to continue until the job is done.
If all you parents don’t stop bad-mouthing the children, Miss Manners is going to have to send you to your own quarters. That, you have made it abundantly clear, is where you want to be. Alone.
Everywhere, one hears parents rejoicing that they no longer have to bear the company of their very own children in their very own houses. Mind you, those are children whom they were supposed to bring up to have enough manners so that when they did get out on their own, the rest of society would find them bearable.
“Thank goodness school has started,” the parents of small children say. “It wouldn’t have been possible to stand them another minute.”
“Alone at last,” say those whose children have gone off to college. “It’s great to have the house back.”
“Isn’t it dreadful that so many children are moving back with their parents these days?” ask the parents of grown-up children who have returned home. “Just when we thought we were finally rid of them.”
Is this a polite way to talk about one’s relatives—publicly to express pleasure and relief at getting away from them? Suppose the children talked that way about the parents?
Many of them do. The little ones may not rejoice that school has started, but they learn early to trade complaints about their parents, and many of them never stop complaining about their parents to everyone they meet.
This doesn’t make it right for the parents to do so. Parents are supposed to have a higher standard of behavior than the children have yet mastered. And they are supposed to teach family loyalty—for the sake of their own reputations, if not for the sake of good manners.
Why are they setting such a poor example?
Miss Manners, who had rather thought parental fondness was a natural instinct, suspects that some of it is bravado. The “empty-nest syndrome” having been popularized as the natural punishment for having devoted one’s life to the nurturing of others, these people are trying not to sound pathetic.
Or they are trying to counter the bad manners of their children, who engage in teasing that unpleasantly suggests that the parents are emotionally absorbed by a tie that they find annoying or trivial. It may be true that parents enjoy visits from their grown-up children and grandchildren, who find the duty of visiting a drag, but it is rude to let on.
Miss Manners has even heard versions in which the object seems to be to make it clear that parental friskiness and intimacy have been renewed. People will use any excuse nowadays to make their private lives public.
But perhaps these people really are glad to be rid of their children. Given her belief that parents tend to be fond of their children, Miss Manners suspects an etiquette crisis. The children have not been taught to respect the parents or their privacy or their property. Or perhaps the parents have not imposed such requirements—because they didn’t want the children to grow up inhibited, or because they no longer feel that they can set house rules now that the children have grown up. But every household will be unbearable if there are no regulations enforced. Ask any student who has lived with peers who borrow his belongings unasked, leave messes they refuse to clean, and run up bills to which they refuse to contribute.
Miss Manners suggests that it is never too late to insist that anybody living in one’s house refrain from conduct that makes life unlivable for other residents. Failing that, however, there is still a rule of etiquette saying that if you don’t like your relatives, you should at least not brag about it.
Some years ago, there was an outbreak of nostalgia in society—not only, as is customary, for the junk items of generations past but for their owners: the extended family. People were lamenting the isolation of what is not so gently called the nuclear family, and musing about how nice it would be to have grandparents and other relatives within easy reach if not actually in the same dwelling, as in societies they admired from a distance.
Miss Manners found this curious, considering that in this particular society, family attachments are considered to cease when the young become teenagers. “They’ll hate you,” well-wishers say to those parents who are not yet at the stage to receive either condolences for having the children around or congratulations on having gotten rid of them. The normal ambition of children is supposed to be to leave home as soon as possible, to the extent that those who tarry are considered damaged. Their destination is assumed to be chosen without regard to its distance from family of origin, unless it is to ensure their emotional welfare by being far enough to make visiting difficult.
Now that paradoxical wish for clan living has come true for many people, although perhaps not in the way they had envisioned. The thought—extremely appealing to Miss Manners, who was never willing to accept the idea of natural antagonism between the generations—was of a family where the old would share their wisdom (not to mention household and child care duties), while the young offered their more robust protection in reciprocation.
Here’s what has happened instead:
Grandparents found themselves to be the primary guardians of the children of their divorced or never-married children, sometimes when the original children were still young enough to require parenting themselves, and sometimes in their total absence.
Grown children found themselves living with their parents, not for the satisfactions of continued family life but for the sort of landlord-boarder arrangement that both would frankly characterize as motivated only by financial necessity. Even more children found themselves to be the primary guardians of parents in need of nursing care.
Amid all the talk of burdens and mooching and separation-anxiety complexes, Miss Manners has also heard about extended families whose reasons for living together are love and compassion. However, she recognizes that even they are not immune to the special etiquette problem of having more than one grown-up generation in a household.
The difficulty is in redistributing the amount of autonomy, jurisdiction, responsibility and authority that exists between parents and minor children without altering the respect owed to all members of the family, and particularly to the elders. Adult children acquire more autonomy and responsibility, both of which may have to be lessened for the oldest members. Nevertheless, a family household is not a boardinghouse, where people are supposed to pretend they have no stake in one another’s private lives, even while they are keeping careful and critical track.
Generally, the generation that established the household, parents or grandparents, has jurisdiction over how it is used, such as the distribution of space. They are not landlords who arrange things as they please, inviting anyone who doesn’t like it to leave; they are supposed to check that they are acting in everyone’s interest.
While the household rules may have been developed by the eldest generation in residence, the household is not a business controlled by those with the most stock. Among its grown-up members, the trick is to accommodate opinions through compromise, not through a dictatorship or majority rule. Each family must make its adjustments to take into account the others’ preferences and requirements.
Miss Manners is not claiming that any of this is easy—psychologically or logistically. This does not prevent her from having vehement objections to the usual way of doing it, which is distributing power according to how much money each contributes. Families may pool their resources, but even those who are hard up are not supposed to offer for sale power and respect in the family hierarchy.
Some warnings are themselves dangerous. How do you alert people to the nature of a wrongdoing, supplying sufficient detail so that they will be able to recognize and avoid it—but without inadvertently providing instructions for people who would like to commit it?
This is the problem that confronts Miss Manners when she wants to help people avoid treating in-laws and assorted family newcomers in ways that will accidentally make them feel criticized and excluded. There are some people, she is aware, who would be only too happy to learn techniques for alienating those with whom their relatives are inexplicably in love.
That is not only impolite but unwise. If you tell your daughter that the gentleman she brought home looks like an axe murderer to you, and he, in fact, turns out to have been an axe murderer, she will not say gratefully, “Father, dear, you were right, and I was wrong not to have listened to you.” She will say huffily, “Well, maybe he is, but you were just awful to him. You always hate all my friends. You’re just trying to ruin my life.” So you might as well be nice to these people. Some may stay and others may depart, but at least you will not be considered at fault. As your rudeness will probably not drive them away, and has been known to cement an otherwise shaky relationship, you have nothing to gain by it.
The typical situation occurs after someone’s serious interest is first brought home for inspection. That the initial encounter is a notoriously difficult situation for everyone concerned is often what saves it. When all participants are nervous and on their best behavior, there is a high tolerance level. It is after that that the real etiquette difficulties begin.
No matter how much good will is expended, the initiation period begins to be fraught with trouble—and not just any trouble, but etiquette trouble. To Miss Manners’ dismay, most such clashes are provoked by explicit or implicit differences of etiquette. The complaint is almost never “We don’t want an addition to the family” or “This is a horrid person” but that he or she “just doesn’t know how to behave.”
Mind you, this does not occur because the family is etiquette-conscious. On the contrary, students of etiquette understand the idea that just as the surface rules of etiquette vary among societies, the habits governing intimacy vary among families, and therefore not understanding new ones is, well, understandable.
A family may be known to friends as being friendly, easygoing and warmhearted, and still strike a prospective or new member as hostile, exacting and cold. This is because family members refrain, in front of company, from speaking a language of inside jokes and memories, whereas they feel free to do this in the family circle, even if it includes candidates or members who do not yet know that language. The family does not expect even its friends to know all its routines and habits, but a new family member who doesn’t—one, for example, who doesn’t know whether help in the kitchen is expected or resented—is likely to be faulted for bad intentions.
The teasing level of a particular family is known only to its members. What might strike one family as insulting is the language of love to another. Conversely, what might seem innocuous to an outsider might be known in the family to be poisonous. Family lore gets abbreviated, so that an expression that sets off laughter or sentimentality might be incomprehensible to a newcomer. The question of how things are done comes to mean that not only the common etiquette of the society but the family customs carry so much weight of tradition that a family member who violates them seems ill-willed, rather than just uninformed.
One reason people dread in-law visits, from either generation, is that the household customs are so often violated by people who seem to be members of the inner circle but can’t behave that way. The best-intentioned person in the world can mistake jokes for serious comment or help out in ways that irritate everyone and create more work. The family then resents it, and the newcomer feels like a fool. This is why polite people, confronted with an addition to the family circle, all join in providing an introduction with translations:
“That’s a line from our favorite movie … We use the blue dishes for breakfast, not the white ones … Oh, he doesn’t mean anything by that … Mamma likes to sit there when she reads the paper … They’re talking about batty Uncle Oscar … It’s a standing joke that Daddy can’t carve the turkey … That’s a reference to the time we went camping in the hurricane … No, there wasn’t another sister—that was the name of our old car … Oops, I forgot to tell you that the hot water is on the right.”
It is obligatory that this commentary be delivered in a tone of delight at sharing, not impatience at ignorance. The effect to aim at is “We know we’re weird, but we’re glad you put up with us.” That’s how you make someone feel welcome.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – I am a 22-year-old gay man and I live with my lover, Tom, who is 26. We have been together for over a year and consider ourselves a “married” couple. Tom’s family knows about our relationship and we attend many family dinners, birthday parties, barbecues and other social occasions together. Tom’s family is not totally comfortable with our relationship, but they include me in invitations, knowing that Tom will not attend if I am not invited. They are polite to me.
I no longer feel it is appropriate to call his parents Mr. and Mrs., yet they have not told me to call them Bob and Jan. Should I take the initiative myself, or should I ask my lover to do so?
GENTLE READER – Miss Manners finds it interesting that you accept the graciousness of Tom’s parents towards you although you know they are not totally comfortable with the relationship, and yet are unwilling to sustain your own discomfort in order to allow them to choose how they want to be addressed. Why should all the comfort be on your side? Having made the substantive point, cannot you allow them to decide a stylistic one?
The relevant factor for this etiquette rule is not any of the circumstances you have set out except one: Tom’s parents are a generation older than you. They therefore get the choice about forms of address. Do not brood that their formality indicates disapproval. Among legally married couples, the question of what in-laws should be called is far from settled, and there are as many young people professing themselves uncomfortable with being asked to say Mom and Dad to a spouse’s parents as there are ones who squirm at Mr. and Mrs. So Miss Manners suggests that all of them, and you too, learn a lesson in graciously sustained discomfort.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – I went to my daughter’s house and stayed overnight. She had her in-laws there, and it ruined my day. This is not because they aren’t great people. That’s the problem. They are well read, musical and talented, and even though I am not a stupid woman, I felt so intimidated. They were talking about authors, etc., that I knew nothing about. I guess that comes from a lack of education. Also, I felt the gifts I gave, even though they were expensive, were not appropriate. Their son was happy with song books and art books, instead of the leaf blower I gave him.
I am widowed and decided if this happens again I will just stay for the day and not overnight. Perhaps I’m making too much of this. My friends say I am well read and have a good sense of humor and other qualities. I just feel that they have so much to offer our new grandson and I have so little that it depresses me.
GENTLE READER – It is not how much you are making of this, but what you are making: Trouble. Miss Manners is horrified that you seem to have declared a competition with your daughter’s in-laws, and that you have worked yourself into a dreadful state because you feel you are losing.
People you yourself characterize as “great,” who have many interests, are unlikely to count among them a passion for showing up a connection on the grounds that she has less education. Your grandson is probably not very interested in whether you know the same authors as his other grandparents. As appreciative as your son-in-law may be of getting song books, he probably doesn’t want a double load of them any more than he wants two leaf blowers.
In other words, Miss Manners believes that it is you, not they, who have invented this unseemly and unpleasant situation. As a cure for your depression, Miss Manners recommends not withdrawal but the opposite. How about attempting to make friends with these people to whom you are so closely connected? If they are discussing something you don’t know, ask them about it. They will be infinitely more charmed than if you had been able to attempt to top them. If they are making music, applaud, which will delight them.
What you have to offer your grandson is the same thing they have to offer him—love, attention and the sharing of your experiences and interests. You should be offering it, instead of attempting to divide the family. Miss Manners is sorry to be stern with you, but she is determined to wrest from you an attitude that has already caused you misery, which you apparently contemplate spreading.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – I am a lawyer who has married into a family of tradesmen. My wife is devoted to her family and enjoys their company during the summer and for most holidays. My problem is that I can’t seem to carry on a conversation with my brothers-in-law. They enjoy talking to each other and to the other male in-laws, who are also tradesmen or factory workers, but they seem to feel uncomfortable with me, and we have little in common. No one reads the newspaper, and the topics of conversation are either their work or sports. I make attempts to strike up a conversation, but after a few minutes, they turn to each other and leave me standing. I then usually defer to the company of the ladies, supervise my children’s play or sit quietly. This only makes me feel I look like a snob. These affairs last an eternity for me.
I would like to enjoy their company. They are really decent people. Curiously, I have a good time when I’m their host. That means that I may be the problem, not them.
Would it be proper to bring a trades magazine with me? I do a lot of building projects around the house, and I thought if I could delve into a book on a subject in which my in-laws are proficient, it would serve to bring me into the conversation by asking for their ideas. If it didn’t, I’d at least have an excuse to read. However, it may make me out to be a worse snob to be reading and seeming to make a deliberate effort to separate myself.
If I have to live with this the way it is, I will. I’ve got 30 more years of this to look forward to, and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
GENTLE READER – What do you mean that you don’t have anything in common with these people? You have your wife, who is their sister. You have your children, who are their nieces and nephews, and their children, who are your nieces and nephews.
In other words, you have the well-being of the extended family in common, with the interest that ought to create in all the ups and downs of each relative. Miss Manners submits that that is a great deal more in common than you have with, say, a law partner whose only stake in your welfare is in connection with mutual business concerns.
The small talk of family life differs from that of ordinary social life, in which one must reach for such outside topics as are found in the news. Among relatives of good will, which you say these are, private successes can be shared without fear of bragging, and difficulties without fear of whining.
Because you have a good time when they visit you, Miss Manners suspects that your brothers-in-law may be more astute at picking up such clues for conversation—commenting on a building project in your house, for example, or a new possession, or a project of one of your children’s. You might try doing that when you visit, by way of showing an interest in them. You don’t have to confine your sociability to talking to the brothers-in-law. Talking to the ladies, playing with the children and asking the hosts if you can do something useful are all proper ways of participating in family parties. Reading is not.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – My mother used to have a good job with a great deal of free time and a good salary, so she would write and buy gifts for her very large extended family. She lost her job and has less time to write and no money for gifts. This Christmas, many of these family members didn’t even send a card! How can I suggest to my aunts, uncles and cousins that my mother would appreciate this attention?
GENTLE READER – Miss Manners was prepared to join your indignation at your relatives’ cruelty in snubbing your mother in her misfortunes—until the slight suspicion arose that perhaps your mother had dropped them first. When she lost her job, your mother didn’t just stop sending presents—she stopped writing as well. No matter how little time she has, this carries the unfortunate implication that wishing her relatives well was a pastime of leisure, rather than an act of love. This by no means excuses the relatives from having dropped her, but it should soften your blame to realize that for whatever reason, they merely acted as she did. That should enable you to tell them in a friendly way, “Mother’s too proud to say so, but she really misses hearing from you.”
DEAR MISS MANNERS – My husband’s sister lies by omission. It has happened again and again, and I have endured it for 40 years—she tells mutual acquaintances the worst stories about me, simply by omitting the final truth. The latest was a story (told with proper sighs and eyebrow raisings) that I did not attend her daughter’s funeral—neglecting to add that I had been hospitalized just a few days prior, with multiple fractures due to a fall at a shopping mall. I do my best to be pleasant during the infrequent times we meet, and direct confrontation only leads to more of the same. My husband is too weak to handle this problem by correction.
GENTLE READER – Miss Manners congratulates you on having endured this horrid treatment for 40 years. Perhaps she can talk you back from the cracking point so you can put in a few more, rather than mar that excellent record.
The comfort she can offer you is the assurance that everybody who hears these stories is onto the person who tells them. It is impossible for anyone to go around telling nasty stories for 40 years without being found out—especially when she tips people off by exhibiting the rudeness of bad-mouthing a relative. You may be sure that no one who hears these stories believes that you are the person who has been behaving badly. So there is really no need for you to retaliate against someone who is doing so effective a job against herself.
In a household of non-relatives, where each person pays a share of the rent and does a share of the chores, what do you call the person who stays for a prolonged period of time through a connection with one of the householders?
“Guest” is not exactly the term, because social visits are set for finite periods of time, and for recreational purposes in which it would be rude to consider the convenience of room and board to be a factor. As for the words the other householders begin to use after a week or two, Miss Manners does not care for them, no matter how severe the provocation.
“Non-member resident” is the term suggested by a gentleman of Miss Manners’ acquaintance. He based it on the position of “non-resident member” at some college residences—the graduate student who provides tutoring and other services but has decided that a free room is not worth being known to be available in the middle of the night when messy, party-related illnesses strike the inmates.
To the householder involved, there is all the difference in the world between a non-member who is in residence because of a romantic bond, and a former college roommate or other friend who is passing through town, looking for a job, broke or otherwise eligible to be put up out of necessity. Other rent payers find the distinction increasingly hard to make as time moves on. Three days, or one shampoo while someone else wants to use the bathroom, will usually do it. Any such household should decide its etiquette rules in advance for non-member residents, beginning with the definition of how long it takes for a social visit to be declared a temporary residence—and therefore how long for the rules to shift from those appropriate to genuine guests, on whom all comforts should be freely showered even if they hog the shower.
The rules for non-member residents (conveyed via the inviting householder as “I hate to have to tell you this, but my roommates are really strict about how things are done around here”) should certainly include cleaning up whatever mess they make, checking before using up any supplies and quickly replenishing them and taking messages. Staying out of the way of major traffic during a morning rush when everyone else has to go to work is not unreasonable.
The visitor who wishes to remain will take these as only a starting point. The idea, if you do not wish suddenly to find your clothes on the porch, is to assume neither the privileges of a guest, in consuming hospitality without the need for immediate repayment, nor those of the host, in voicing opinions about how the place ought to be run.
The obligations of a guest, in being agreeable to everyone and to all arrangements, are required, along with the obligation of a host in keeping things going. In lieu of rent, the visitor thinks of charming things to do: any stray cooking or cleaning that seems helpful; doing repairs or at least the tedious work of arranging to have them done; being home when deliveries are expected.
Miss Manners is aware that it is difficult to have the manners of both host and guest simultaneously—to be useful without having a say in how things should be done. That’s the etiquette toll for free rent. Besides, it is useful training should one ever seek political asylum in an embassy.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – My roommate wants to have his girlfriend stay the night about five nights a week, and I’ve objected. He and I have been friends for ten years, and this is putting a real strain on our friendship. She comes over in the evening, stays the night and leaves rather early.
She has not been a nuisance other than that I don’t enjoy having to share my evenings with someone. I have said I could tolerate her being over three nights per week or, if he wanted her to stay more often, that they contribute $50 to the rent (about 10% of the rent). Have I stepped out of line to set limitations on visitors?
GENTLE READER – What you have there is not a visitor but a third roommate. What you badly need is a retroactive agreement with your original roommate about who else can move in and what the responsibilities will be.
Every living arrangement needs to have its terms spelled out to the mutual satisfaction of everyone participating, although if that sounds as if children should have an equal voice with their parents in the household rules, Miss Manners apologizes because she means no such thing.
In the case of roommates, it is a good idea to discuss a third-party contingency ahead of time, although understandable that the need for this may not appear important until it suddenly strikes. People of good will ought to be able to reach an agreement that recognizes the comfort of both, and does not insist that love trumps all previous considerations.
Love does sometimes require new living arrangements, but as you do not dislike the lady, yours seems salvageable. You and your roommate are in urgent need of a private session in which you can work out a compromise (in terms of how much time the new resident spends with you, and how much she or her host contributes to the rent) that both of you would consider pleasant and equitable.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – My boyfriend has keys to my apartment. He is welcome to come and go as he pleases, eat whatever is in the refrigerator (he’s the cook), use my art supplies, and wear my jeans (even skirts, if he so desires). I walk home from work for lunch every day, and enjoy his company when he’s around.
Today at noon, I arrived just as a mutual friend did, who was dropping something off for Boyfriend and then taking him for a spin. Boyfriend had invited her in to see our holiday craft projects. My place was a mess of glitter and junk and yesterday’s clothes, so I voice my objection as she parks her car, but say, “Too late, you invited her in, she comes in, anyway.”
Now he’s angry, tells her I don’t want her in, please wait outside, but she boldly enters and makes jokes. (Glad she did.) Even if my apartment hadn’t been so ugly, I object to such intrusions on my lunch at home without prior consultation. I don’t have keys to Boyfriend’s place. Was I justifiably disgruntled?
GENTLE READER – It is a bit hard to slap house rules on someone who has been invited to go through your closets and wear your skirts. Having done everything you can to make your boyfriend feel at home in your apartment (hospitality that has conspicuously not been reciprocated), you now wish to claim that he is merely a guest who is not allowed to let anyone in in your absence. You could, of course, take your apartment back, but Miss Manners believes that had you wanted to throw him out, you would have done so without her help. Well, then, let us consider the alternative. How about saying “If you’re going to have anyone over, please clean up first”? That should ensure you a quiet lunch hour.