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What are some of the hot topics moms are talking about these days?" I asked my pregnant daughter as she helped me stuff a comforter back into the clean duvet cover while her 2-year-old daughter jumped gleefully on the bed.

"Issues with in-laws," she answered without hesitation. "It's one of those relationships you don't get to choose. And it's a pretty touchy subject with lots of my friends."

Just then, her 2-year-old took the inevitable tumble off the bed so our conversation ended, but her comment got me thinking about in-laws …. or out-laws, as the touchiness of the topic might indicate. As a daughter-in-law and now as a mother-in-law, I wondered why this relationship is so touchy.

When I was a mom with young children, some of my friends adored their mothers-in-law and easily fell into step with her in life. Others complained and criticized nearly nonstop. I landed somewhere in the middle, but now, as I reflect back on those early years, I have to admit the relationship often felt tedious.

I entered a honeymoon period with that first "meet the parents" dinner that lasted until our early marriage days when I started bristling way too easily. I probably wanted to clarify that their son was now my husband. Mine first. Our married life had its own priorities, and we would make our own choices, which might not match their choices. Thanksgiving? Not this year. The discussion about getting a dog? Our choice, and you better like our four-legged "child."

Then came the blessing of real grandchildren. These proud and loving grandparents grew up in a more authoritarian era, survived the Depression and World War II. No wonder they thought us too indulgent and too permissive. A "good visit" meant trying to keep squirmy kids still at the Sunday noon dinner table way too long, followed by a session of sitting on the couch and talking. And our time together often ended with a guilt trip because it wasn't long enough.

My differences were an accumulation of mostly small things. Not nearly as hard as my friend's experience. Her mother-in-law marched her 2-year-old granddaughter off to the barber shop for her first haircut without the mom's knowledge. My friend gasped in disbelief at her newly shorn toddler. "She needed a haircut," her mother-in-law explained.

Another friend described her mother-in-law's expectation that her son would continue to carry out the role he had always played in the family—calling several times a week, stopping by for lunch and regularly caring for an elderly grandfather.

Now that I'm a mother-in-law, I hope I'm sensitive to the challenges my children and their spouses face as they create their own families within a larger extended family. I know the roles each person plays in their original families are hard to change. In the process, we work at setting appropriate boundaries and cut each other some slack in living out those boundaries.

My in-laws died several years ago. While my relationship with them often felt a bit out of sync, I increasingly loved and respected them for their eternally important connection in our family circle. Someone once said one of the best ways to love your husband is to love his parents as best you can.

A lot of life is about persevering our way through less-than-perfect relationships, and the in-law relationship is worth that perseverance. It matters to our spouse and his parents, to our children and to God, who tells us to love one another. Not because any of us deserves or earns that love, but because that's the way he loves us.

Carol Kuykendall is a Consulting Editor for MomSense magazine and the author of Five-Star Families and co-author of What Every Mom Needs, available in the MOPShop.

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