A parent-in-law is a person who has a legal affinity with another by being the parent of the other's spouse. Many cultures and legal systems impose duties and responsibilities on persons connected by this relationship. A person is a child-in-law to the parents of the spouse, who are in turn also the parents of those sibling-in-laws (if any) who are siblings of the spouse (as opposed to spouses of siblings). Together, the members of this family affinity group are called the in-laws. [1]
A father-in-law is the father of a person's spouse. [2] Two men who are fathers-in-law to each other's children may be called co-fathers-in-law, or, if there are grandchildren, co-grandfathers.
A mother-in-law is the mother of a person's spouse. [3] Two women who are mothers-in-law to each other's children may be called co-mothers-in-law, or, if there are grandchildren, co-grandmothers.
In comedy and in popular culture, the mother-in-law is stereotyped as bossy, unfriendly, hostile, nosy, overbearing and generally unpleasant. They are often depicted as the bane of the husband, who is married to the mother-in-law's daughter. A mother-in-law joke is a joke that lampoons the obnoxious mother-in-law character.
Some Australian Aboriginal languages use avoidance speech, so-called "mother-in-law languages", special sub-languages used when in hearing distance of taboo relatives, most commonly the mother-in-law.
A mother-in-law suite is also a type of dwelling, usually guest accommodations within a family home that may be used for members of the extended family.
Parent-in-laws are often viewed as either a source of conflict or a source of support in a marriage relationship. Jealousy, competition, differences, and disillusioned expectations can cause conflict to arise in these relationships. The perception of parent-in-laws as negative influences on your marriage leads to the characterization of female in-laws as particularly difficult. The stereotyped mother-in-law joke finds humor in the reality of conflict with in-laws. Positive influences have also been noted as in-laws can be a found family for partners/child-in-laws who are not as close to their own family. [4]
People believe that negative relationships with in-laws will have a disastrous effect on the future of their marriage. [5] However, the amount of connection to parent-in-laws has not been found to influence the success of their children's marriage. The lack of marriage success may not fall on conflict in the parent-in-law relationship, but on whether the children-in-law are on the same page about conflicts. Thus, discordant perceptions exist between spouses and their perceptions of their relationships with their in-laws, and it is disagreements on those connections that negatively affect marriage outcomes. [6]
Incest is sex between close relatives, for example a brother or sister or cousins. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity, and sometimes those related by lineage. It is condemned and considered immoral in most societies, given that it can lead to an increased risk of genetic disorders in children in case of pregnancy from incestuous sex.
A stepfamily is a family where at least one parent has children who are not biologically related to their spouse. Either parent, or both, may have children from previous relationships or marriages. Two known classifications for stepfamilies include "simple" stepfamilies, where only one member of the family's couple has a prior child or children and the couple does not have any children together, and "complex" or "blended" families, where both members of the couple have at least one child from another relationship.
A sibling is a relative that shares at least one parent with the other person. A male sibling is a brother, and a female sibling is a sister. A person with no siblings is an only child.
Consanguinity is the characteristic of having a kinship with a relative who is descended from a common ancestor.
Grandparents, individually known as grandmother and grandfather, or Grandma and Grandpa, are the parents of a person's father or mother – paternal or maternal. Every sexually reproducing living organism who is not a genetic chimera has a maximum of four genetic grandparents, eight genetic great-grandparents, sixteen genetic great-great-grandparents, thirty-two genetic great-great-great-grandparents, sixty-four genetic great-great-great-great grandparents, etc. In the history of modern humanity, around 30,000 years ago, the number of modern humans who lived to be a grandparent increased. It is not known for certain what spurred this increase in longevity, but it is generally believed that a key consequence of three generations being alive together was the preservation of information which could otherwise have been lost; an example of this important information might have been where to find water in times of drought.
Spinster or old maid is a term referring to an unmarried woman who is older than what is perceived as the prime age range during which women usually marry. It can also indicate that a woman is considered unlikely to ever marry. The term originally denoted a woman whose occupation was to spin. The closest equivalent term for males is "bachelor" or "confirmed bachelor", but this generally does not carry the same connotations in reference to age and perceived desirability in marriage.
In Catholic canon law, affinity is an impediment to marriage of a couple due to the relationship which either party has as a result of a kinship relationship created by another marriage or as a result of extramarital intercourse. The relationships that give rise to the impediment have varied over time. Marriages and sexual relations between people in an affinity relationship are regarded as incest.
A cousin is a relative that is the child of a parent's sibling; this is more specifically referred to as a first cousin.
The immediate family is a defined group of relations, used in rules or laws to determine which members of a person's family are affected by those rules. It normally includes a person's parents, siblings, spouse, and children. It can contain others connected by birth, adoption, marriage, civil partnership, or cohabitation, such as grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, siblings-in-law, half-siblings, cousins, adopted children, step-parents/step-children, and cohabiting partners. The term close relatives is used similarly.
John Mordecai Gottman is an American psychologist and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington. His research focuses on divorce prediction and marital stability through relationship analyses. Insights from Gottman's work have significantly impacted the field of relationship counseling, aiming to enhance relationship functioning and mitigate behaviors detrimental to human relationships. Gottman's work has also influenced the development of important concepts on social sequence analysis.
In law and in cultural anthropology, affinity is the kinship relationship created or that exists between two people as a result of someone's marriage. It is the relationship each party in the marriage has to the family of the other party in the marriage. It does not cover the marital relationship itself. Laws, traditions and customs relating to affinity vary considerably, sometimes ceasing with the death of one of the marriage partners through whom affinity is traced, and sometimes with the divorce of the marriage partners. In addition to kinship by marriage, "affinity" can sometimes also include kinship by adoption or a step relationship.
The Chinese kinship system is among the most complicated of all the world's kinship systems. It maintains a specific designation for almost every member's kin based on their generation, lineage, relative age, and gender. The traditional system was agnatic, based on patriarchal power, patrilocal residence, and descent through the male line. Although there has been much change in China over the last century, especially after 1949, there has also been substantial continuity.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to interpersonal relationships.
In law, a prohibited degree of kinship refers to a degree of consanguinity, or sometimes affinity between persons that makes sex or marriage between them illegal.
Family is a group of people related either by consanguinity or affinity. It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictability, structure, and safety as members mature and learn to participate in the community. Historically, most human societies use family as the primary purpose of attachment, nurturance, and socialization.
Siblings play a unique role in one another's lives that simulates the companionship of parents as well as the influence and assistance of friends. Because siblings often grow up in the same household, they have a large amount of exposure to one another, like other members of the immediate family. However, though a sibling relationship can have both hierarchical and reciprocal elements, this relationship tends to be more egalitarian and symmetrical than with family members of other generations. Furthermore, sibling relationships often reflect the overall condition of cohesiveness within a family.
A sibling-in-law is the spouse of one's sibling, the sibling of one's spouse or the person who is married to the sibling of one's spouse.
An uncle is usually defined as a male relative who is a sibling of a parent or married to a sibling of a parent, as well as the parent of the cousins. Uncles who are related by birth are second-degree relatives. The female counterpart of an uncle is an aunt, and the reciprocal relationship is that of a nephew or niece. The word comes from Latin: avunculus, the diminutive of avus (grandfather), and is a family relationship within an extended or immediate family.
The Marriage Act 1949 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom regulating marriages in England and Wales.
Sesotho – the language of the Basotho ethnic group of South Africa and Lesotho – has a complex system of kinship terms which may be classified to fall under the Iroquois kinship pattern. The complex terminology rules are necessitated in part by the traditional promotion of certain forms of cousin marriage among the Bantu peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. Most of the terms used have common reconstructed Proto-Bantu roots.
The dictionary definition of parent-in-law at Wiktionary