What we expect of our in-laws

In-laws occupy a singular place: one joins them as a result of a choice made elsewhere. They are neither the family of origin, which one did not choose either but whose customs one knows, nor the circle of friends, which one puts together. Their rules have to be discovered.

Everyone arrives with expectations that are often implicit, inherited from their own family: how often to visit, the tone of exchanges, the place given to meals, celebrations, advice. What one person regards as a mark of affection, the other may experience as an intrusion.

In the nineteenth century, Frédéric Le Play described, under the name of the stem family, an arrangement in which one of the children stayed with their parents to succeed them, their spouse coming to live in the household. In-laws were then a daily living environment, not a place one visited.

The norm that has taken hold since then, that of a couple settled in their own home, has transformed the question. In-laws have become a relationship at a distance, whose intensity is negotiated, and no longer a domestic order into which one was integrated.

The end-of-year holidays concentrate a good share of disagreements, because they force a decision. Alternating between families, bringing them together, splitting up, staying on one's own: each solution reflects a view of what the couple owes to each of its two origins.

The question is not merely logistical. It touches on the recognition of the couple as a unit in its own right, distinct from the families its members come from, and this recognition does not always come at the same moment on both sides.

The law does not entirely ignore this bond. Article 206 of the French Civil Code places a maintenance obligation on sons-in-law and daughters-in-law towards parents-in-law in need. It applies only to married couples, and ends when the spouse who created the relationship by marriage and the children born of the union have died.

Article 371-4 further grants children the right to maintain personal relations with their ascendants, and therefore with the parents of each of their parents. Beyond that, how often to visit, the tone of exchanges or the place of advice are governed by no rule.

Expectations towards in-laws have this peculiarity: they concern third parties, but they are discussed as a couple. The partner whose family of origin it is often finds themselves acting as interpreter, tasked with translating customs they had never needed to explain.

No arrangement stands out as preferable. Some couples live in great closeness with both families, others keep a marked distance, and both arrangements can suit those who have chosen them. Disagreement arises rather from the gap between expectations that were never voiced.