Last week’s viral email story about mother-in-law Carolyn Bourne expressing her sheer distaste in her future daughter-in-law, Heidi Withers, left me a gasp. Can you imagine your mother-in-law writing something so awful about you and then the whole world finds out? If I were having a difficult relationship with my mother-in-law, I would want to control who knows about it.
I can however empathise that if you received such an email from your future mother-in-law, most people would share it with a friend of two, if only to discuss what a horror she is. Unfortunately, for Heidi Withers and Carolyn Bourne, the email went out to thousands of readers. It did make me wonder whether something like this would happen in an Asian household????
I think maybe not. I wonder if an Asian mother-in-law would be so silly to put her thoughts on an email. She may take the son to one side and tell him he could really do better, start talking about other girls he should be looking at or get the father to have a word. Writing an email would be uncouth. Wouldn’t it?
I was surprised when I got my first email from my mother-in-law. Not because of its content but because I wasn’t used to a parent communicating with me via email and I had not even given her credit for using it for social purposes.
A friend’s mother-in-law (who is in her 70’s) has asked to be her friend on Facebook. I find this rather strange and am not sure if I would accept such an invitation. Negative voyeurism comes into my mind. She too hasn’t accepted the invitation which is now 3 months old. For me, Facebook has a lot of visual information that you may prefer to keep away from parents, especially mother-in-laws, who have the potential of using it against you.
New media is inclusive of our parents and all of a sudden, it feels like the generation gap seems to be reducing.
Bunty
