In-Laws from Hell·
THE MOTHER'S DAY MISCOUNT
A mother distributes Mother's Day baskets to two daughters while sparing another, sparking a fierce dispute over whether dogs qualify as grandchildren and who truly earns the title of mother.
Should she apologize and send one now?
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Jenny called demanding to know where her Mother's Day basket was, and the answer was that she had never been sent one.
The 64-year-old poster has three adult children, all married. This year, the family was scattered and busy for Mother's Day, so she made a small decision: instead of trying to coordinate a visit, she would send baskets to the women she thought were in line for them. One was her daughter, who had recently had a child. The other was her expecting daughter-in-law, married to the poster's other son and due next month.
"I thought it would be nice to send my expecting DIL/son and my daughter a Mother's Day basket," the poster said.
That left out Jenny, the wife of her third child. Jenny and her husband have no children because Jenny has struggled with infertility. But Jenny has often talked about her dogs in family conversations, and the poster had always taken it as a joke. Jenny was "big on being a dog mom," and she often said her two dogs were "the first grandkids."
So when the daughter posted photos in the family group chat showing what she got for Mother's Day, the basket was there for everyone to see. The other daughter-in-law chimed in too, thanking the poster for hers. Jenny, seeing the messages, called.
She asked "where her basket was."
The poster said she was confused. Jenny clarified her expectation: since the poster already had two grandkids, and since Jenny had named her dogs as her babies, she believed she should have gotten a basket too. According to the poster, Jenny said "she is her dogs mother and should have gotten a basket."
That was the moment the conversation snapped.
The poster told Jenny she was not a mother, and that Mother's Day was for women who raise human children, not pet owners. In her words: "she is not a mother, Mother's Day is for women that raise human children and not pet owners."
Jenny blew up. She cursed the poster out, insisted she was a parent, and hung onto the idea that her dogs counted as children. The poster didn't budge and repeated the same point: "she is a pet owner."
Now the son is the one pressing for a fix. He wants his mother to apologize to Jenny and send her a Mother's Day basket after all. He says she was wrong not to include Jenny in the first place, and wrong to call her a pet owner.