I understand and respect that everyone feels differently about these sorts of things. For me, it is an ingrained part of my family background that I wish to pay forward.
Comparing what my parents paid to what things cost now is really not all the relevant to me. Yes, our college educations cost less back then than my kids’ educations cost in modern times. Then again, in my situation, my parents put three kids through college and two of us also through graduate school / law school, and I only have two kids to put through. My kids also received financial aid whereas I, nor my siblings, did back in the day. My parents also contributed a substantial amount to 6 grandchildren’s college educations. In terms of retirement income…my dad owned a business and my mom didn’t work. Retirement income was from investments for them. Also, my parents paid for my entire wedding (though not for their sons’ weddings), whereas I am just contributing a significant sum of money to each daughter’s wedding because I cannot afford to pay for the whole thing, but would if I could.
“I have parties to mark my kid’s milestones in life, and getting married is certainly one of the biggest events. I have no doubt they would throw parties for me when I get older too.”
That’s a great point. How many here have thrown parties for a parent’s milestone birthday or your own parents’ milestone anniversary? I have; I don’t see that as “solving their financial problems” in the least; it’s a gift given freely to share in someone’s special moment.
Speaking of which, I have actually paid for my IL’s wedding Long story short, their actual marriage license was never properly filed and they were technically not married (which was discovered when my MIL went to apply for a passport in her new name). For their 40th anniversary, we threw a surprise party and unbeknownst to them, set up a wedding in our living room - complete with H walking his mother down the aisle and the grandchildren serving as flower children. So we made it legal, so H is no longer a b–tard, ha ha.
I can see that soozievt and I have similar views. My husband and I want to give a party for our daughter and soon to be son-in-law. It won’t break our bank account and will be a fun party. I may be the one paying the most but my daughter is the one making the decisions; although I did say I am not doing the flowers as that is really beyond me! She doesn’t want a deejay or band, so no deejay, no band. She doesn’t want a church wedding, a limo, traditional dress, so be it. We never have parties, so this is probably our one big party for friends and relatives. Everyone does it differently as every family is different. Our oldest daughter did a simple reception with hor d"oeuvres. It was a lot of fun too and fit her personality. We paid for that too, so I guess we will have had two parties!
Glad to hear that at least somebody is interested in this topic, even though the topic could be a controversial one – either side of parents could care too much, could become too intrusive to other (their own child or the other side of family) and could borderline run their offspring’s life, how future in-laws and future SIL/DIL, and two sets of in-laws have their very first experience with each other, working as a team (even remotely) with each other for such a supposedly happy and arguably quite stressful life event, even though they have never grown up with each other. Two sides of family have different culture and/or different expectations. Rarely but it could happen: Two sides of parents even could not communicate with each other, and need the daughter or son as “translators” (yes, I saw the case.) Parents may need to juggle and balance the need for their own retirement and this milestone event of their family at the same time. This could bring up the best side or the worst side of a person.
I think that if we had girls I’d have given it more thought. Right now, it just feels like “borrowing trouble.” They are too young, neither is dating seriously … just doesn’t feel worth it at this point to give it too much thought.
He is not “college age”, right? He is in med school, beyond college age. My 25 year old is contributing to her 401K at work and her Roth every year. This is part of my point… if you enable them by covering all their expenses, they don’t learn financial responsibility and start worrying about their own financial future. No need if parents cover their major expenses… why should he have an interest in it if he has mom & dad covering his costs?
Really…how often are you going to see these inlaws? My guess is not often. You can’t buy their affection or respect. Don’t try.
@intparent, I wrote about a family history event in that paragraph. If I remember correctly, DS was flying to campus but got stuck at a hotel due to a winter storm. (This happened multiple times during his 4 years in college - he flied back home during almost all breaks. Back then, he liked to come home even as a college student – He IS close to us.) He was likely a freshman or sophomore in college at that time.
I think one can be generous to one’s children but also teach them financial responsibility. My just-out-of-college kids are very aware of the importance of contributing the max to their 401K, and they follow stocks they are interested in investing in. H is a great money manager and helps advise them, and they know he has their best interest at heart in helping them learn. I appreciate that he’s doing so, because I didn’t get any lessons in managing money at all from my parents. If anything, my kids don’t spend enough and we have to tell them - you’re young, you do have more money than you think to go do XYZ with your friends.
I know this was not directed at me, but at another member…
However…supporting one’s child in college and grad school is not the same, in my opinion, as supporting a child who is out of school. I covered all my kids’ expenses during the school year in college and grad school (but not summers). I don’t cover any of their expenses once they have graduated. That is time to learn financial responsibility and to “worry about their own financial future.” You mention your D contributing to her 401K and her Roth, but your D is working. My D who works for a firm does that too. That is not the same as someone who is in school and is not earning money yet to support themselves.
As far as the wedding, in my case, my contributions are not related at ALL to my daughters’ future in-laws. Rather, I’m doing it for my kids and their fiancees. I never even thought of my kids’ future in-laws when I offered to contribute to my kids’ wedding costs.
My non reader kid is reading WSJ and the Economist. My husband and I were laughing so hard when she asked for the passwords, she is growing up after all.
"and two sets of in-laws have their very first experience with each other, working as a team (even remotely) with each other for such a supposedly happy and arguably quite stressful life event, even though they have never grown up with each other. "
I have to be honest. I don’t see that the two sets of parents really need to “work as a team” or interact all that much. My parents lived in a different city from my ILs. They met after we became engaged, had a few cordial dinners together, they’re friendly to one another on occasions involving our children (graduations and the like), and now that my mother is divorced, they would always include her in something like Thanksgiving dinner … But there just isn’t all that much interaction that needs to take place that they need to have anything beyond a cordial relationship. And they’ve known one another 30+ years.
And in your case, if I remember correctly, the IL’s don’t even live in the United States. In any case, they certainly don’t live in your city or the city the young people would be in.
I think you are FAR overestimating how much contact and “teamwork” you need to have with the other family.
And frankly how much do you really need to know your child’s in-laws anyway?
We can contribute what we can but we should not contribute what we can’t.
I was talking to my brother. His father in law has dementia. His mother in law had a stroke. My brother said the cost of care is probably going to be over $200,000 a year.
I agree with you that two sets of in-laws do not interact with each other.
I personally think that when the parents try to be “nice” (or at least, present themselves in such a way) to the (future) inlaws of their loved one, their real purpose is that, by doing so, they wish they could help their loved one to have a good start in his/her relation with his/her inlaws. After all, he/she could not totally avoid the interactions with his/her SO’s parents in general.
As an analogy, the parents prefer to keep a friendly relation with their young child’s kindergarten teacher, hoping that by doing so, the kindergarten teacher might treat their kid a little bit better, or at least would not try to find fault with their kid. The intention is good, even though they will never know how effective this “act” will be.
Maybe this kind of thinking was dated back to my upbringing: In my country of origin, parents would bend forward and backward to please their young kid’s homeroom teacher, to the extent that almost every not-so-poor parent would find every opportunity to give gifts to the teachers. Several times a year! There is even an official day when the parents prepare the gifts for the children to take the gifts to the teacher – the teachers would compare how much gifts they get among them on that day. (I think this is a very bad practice. But it was the case when I was young. I hope this bad practice has been stopped. Hmm…I wonder whether there is a correlation here: There are extensive gift exchanges among all people involved in the wedding event – the groom/bride/their parents/their siblings, occasionally even grandpa/grandma/uncle/aunt as well. I think their intention is that they want their loved one to be welcomed and treated well by the new family he or she joins. But there are always some very bad parents, trying to take advantage of this custom to get some financial gains - have you ever heard that, in the old days, in some country (maybe some parts in India and China?), if one side of family do not bring “sufficient” amount of gifts comparable to their “status”, their loved one would most likely be poorly treated (an extreme case: be even killed!) This bad custom had to be banned.
Mcat, you are here now. Do what feels right for you and your conscience? Leave some of that custom back in the old country. Honestly my mom and my husband’s family, or her in laws never saw each other again after my wedding.
In my culture, on the wedding day the bride changes to 4 different outfits. I paid lots of money to pick up a nice wedding dress so I wore the dress the whole day. Beside, I don’t like the hassle of changing and redo make up. My brother and my family didn’t like it. But they didn’t criticized. But I got a hint of it when it was his time to do his wedding. Again, same culture, same family, just different way of doing things when it comes to the wedding dress. I don’t believe there is a right way or wrong way.
Is some of this from a culture where there isn’t a lot of dating before marriage? My D1 has been dating her probable future H for 6 years. Both have had lots of interaction with their future in laws already. The wedding will just be sealing something formally that has been a given for a long time. She and I get along very well with her BF’s parents. But if the marriage had been arranged, the concerns you have make a bit more sense. Doesn’t sound like anyone posting on this thread has kids that will have arranged marriages, though.
Mcat…my parents each met my inlaws a total of ONE time after our wedding. It was at a HS graduation for one of my kids. It had nothing to do with how much everyone paid towards our wedding. My inlaws lived overseas the first 15 years we were married…and lived over 1000 miles away from my family once they moved stateside. There just weren’t any times when both needed to be together. They did exchange holiday cards for a while…but even that stopped.
Two of my colleagues will get married in 3 months. They came from India. Their courtship were a little bit like the arrange marriage, in the sense that, even the young couple know each other (or their families know each other), the young couple themselves really have not been together for much time before their upcoming weddings. (In both cases, they live far apart now and in the past 4 years, until the wedding day. Then, they live together and start to know each other. In one case, the young couple likely were introduced to each other 3 months ago and have a long distance relationship till their wedding day in the end of this year.)
Can only speak of my own kids’ situations. D2, who is engaged, will have dated her future spouse for 7 years prior to the wedding date and was friends for 3 years prior to dating him. D1 will have dated her future spouse for 3 years prior to their wedding date. My kids are in their upper 20s.
I have met D2’s future spouse countless times and his family has met my D countless times. The young couple lives in NYC, but neither set of parents lives there, nor near one another. Both of these kids have been to future in-laws’ homes as well. Two years ago, when the kids were dating, but not yet engaged, I met D2’s BF’s mom (his parents are married but I met up with the mom in two states, neither of which either of us live in). I am hoping to meet his dad. I recall the meeting with the BF (now groom)'s mom the first time and she asked me if I thought the kids would marry some day and I hadn’t thought too much about it yet, given my D’s age at the time, but told her that I’d be happy if they do one day. She told me she very much wanted them to marry and her whole family adored my daughter. Her parting words to me were: “I hope we walk down the aisle some day together!” And now, two years later, the kids are engaged.
In D1’s case, which has been a shorter courtship than D2’s, I have met the future spouse twice, but they both JUST moved to the city where I live and their apartment is in walking distance to mine. I haven’t yet met the future spouse’s parents. They are divorced. The dad is living overseas. My D has met him and his new family. The mom lives in a state where the kids don’t live and my daughter has yet to meet her. Future spouse is not close to the mom either.
When D2 got engaged, I wrote a very nice note to her future spouse’s parents telling them of my happiness of my daughter marrying their son. D1 just got engaged a little over a month ago. I’d like to do the same with her future spouse’s parents, but I want to ask my D her thoughts on that first, as I haven’t met either of them and future spouse is not close to one parent. So, I’ll check out my D’s comfort level on that, but I’d like to do it.
My parents were always cordial with my in-laws. Both lived in different states from one another, and not the state we lived in. If I recall, they met for the first time on the wedding weekend. They rarely saw one another, but did at graduations, a few of the grandchildren’s events, as well as my parents invited them to a surprise 40th birthday party they threw me, and also invited them for Thanksgiving when my Dad was dying and we wanted to be at my parents that year for that holiday (in fact, my Dad passed away that very weekend). But generally, they did not have much contact.
Long story short, their actual marriage license was never properly filed and they were technically not married (which was discovered when my MIL went to apply for a passport in her new name). For their 40th anniversary, we threw a surprise party and unbeknownst to them, set up a wedding in our living room - complete with H walking his mother down the aisle and the grandchildren serving as flower children. So we made it legal, so H is no longer a b–tard, ha ha.