A father who can't stand her

A dad writes in about his son's wife, a woman in her early 30s he has decided he cannot be around. The dislike has built up over a few years of marriage.

“I cannot stand my son's wife.”

She ticked every box

At the start they were pleased. She was polite, well-spoken, attractive, and had a serious job in corporate law. Nothing about her looked like trouble.

Success read as bossy

The same career that impressed him now reads differently. He calls her successful and then calls her bossy and opinionated in the same breath.

He thinks she runs his son

His real grievance is power. He believes she dominates his son, even though the son has a good career of his own.

Then came the baby talk

The couple have started talking about children. That is when the father's vague irritation turned into a specific objection.

The son offers to stay home

At a recent visit, the son said he might be the one to stay home part time and take care of the children himself.

She earns double

The reason is not ideology, it is arithmetic. Her salary is twice his, so his hours are the cheaper ones to give up.

But what about his career

The father's first worry is lost ground. He is sure his son will fall behind if he steps back for the kids.

“What about his career? He will fall behind.”

The word he actually used

Underneath the career talk sits something blunter. He thinks being a househusband would strip his son of something, and he offers the degree as proof it would be a waste.

“I think it would be emasculating for my son to be a househusband.”

His own wife disagrees

He is already outnumbered at home. His wife has told him plainly that he is being old-fashioned, which is why he is asking a stranger instead.

“My wife tells me not to be so old-fashioned”

The missing person

Caroline's first move is to notice who is absent from the letter. The son's own feelings never appear in it once.

“What you don't mention is what your son thinks.”

Is he even unhappy

Does the son feel controlled? Would he resent the step back? If the answer is no to all of it, the father is defending his son from a life his son chose.

Nobody calls a man bossy

Caroline allows that big salaries can make people full of themselves, then asks him to hear his own vocabulary. The label only ever lands on women.

“have you noticed that only women are ever referred to as bossy?”

Or she's just decisive

Confident and decisive are the words he might use for the same behaviour in himself. He may be reading his own traits as faults in her.

Start from what you liked

He liked her once, and that is the opening. Accepting a person's faults gets easier when you go looking for the qualities you noticed first.

The degree does not expire

Caring for a child is not a demotion, and time at home does not delete a CV. The credential he keeps citing survives the nappy years intact.

“Your son's first-class degree and career do not disappear because he takes time out to care for them.”

Look through his son's eyes

Try the version where the son is proud of his wife, glad to back her career, and genuinely wants to be a hands-on father. Then the plan stops looking like a defeat.

“And your grandchild will be very lucky to have a loving parent to care for them.”

Step back and trust them

The hardest parental job is not fixing an adult child's choices. Sometimes love looks like letting a decision you dislike stand.

The colleague who always says yes

A second letter shifts the scene to work. A woman in her 50s, divorced and child-free, has spent years swapping evening and weekend shifts with a colleague who has young kids.

One no, and real anger

Now she has met someone and wants her weekends. The first refusal was met with fury, and Caroline's answer is that years of kindness became an expectation. Sympathy is not the same as duty.

“You can sympathise with her situation without taking responsibility for solving it.”