How To Manage Family Expectations
You can't make everyone happy at the same time.
John and Kathy met in law school in New York City, far away from both of their families.
At the time, the distance felt like freedom. Neither of them could have predicted what was to come.
John grew up in a close-knit family with three siblings. All three married people they’d known since high school. All three still live in their hometown, minutes from his parents.
Kathy’s story looks nothing like John’s. She’s an only child of a single mother who lives thousands of miles away on the West Coast. Her mom is lonely, and she leans on Kathy for emotional support and companionship. This has been their dynamic since Kathy was a young child. She calls constantly. And though she’s never once said the words “move home,” Kathy feels her mother’s desperation when they talk.
Then, John and Kathy got married. And the assumptions that had been quietly humming in the background seemed to get louder and much more noticeable.
Nobody ever sat John down and said, “This is what we expect of you.” They didn’t have to. It was just what his family had always done: you grow up, you marry someone local, you stay, you show up for every holiday. His siblings did it. Why wouldn’t he?
And Kathy’s mother never told her she needed to move home, but she started calling more often, became tearful, and complained of feeling lonely.
Now Kathy is pregnant with their first child, and the two of them are suffocating. That quiet humming has turned into a loud, undeniable roar.
John’s parents are insisting that he come “home.” Kathy’s mother is growing more anxious by the week. Everyone wants something, and John and Kathy feel like they’re about to snap. It’s starting to feel like no matter what they decide, someone is going to “lose.”
John is responding the way many people do when they feel pressured: he’s going quiet and pulling away. The more his family pushes, the more distance he puts between himself and everyone else, including his wife.
Kathy is doing the opposite. She’s overcorrecting. She’s checking in constantly, buying gifts, including her mother and her mother-in-law at every step of the pregnancy, even the moments she desperately wants to keep private. She thinks that if she can just keep everyone happy, maybe the tension will finally break.
They are both, in their own way, trying to protect their marriage and their families. And they are both exhausted.
Slowly, they are realizing that they cannot make everyone happy at the same time. They want to prioritize each other. They also feel the burden of not wanting to disappoint the people who raised them.
How do they stay connected to their families and to each other at the same time? Can they tolerate disappointing themselves? Can they tolerate disappointing their parents? And what happens when the people they love simply won’t accept “no” as an answer?
At first it seems like it’s about geography, but it’s actually about loyalty, guilt, grief, and the impossible math of managing everyone’s expectations and the family they’re trying to build.
A lot of things need to happen here for this family to function. Everyone needs to accept that the version of their family they pictured at this stage may not actually come to fruition. They are allowed to grieve that and to be upset. John’s parents can mourn the fact that one of their children won’t be able to pop in for dinner on a Tuesday. Kathy’s mom may have to accept that her daughter is a new wife and mother and that she won’t be able to support her in the same ways during this stage of life. That’s going to force her to make friends, possibly find a therapist, and to seek out support in ways that are scary, new, and uncomfortable. But doing so might be what allows her daughter to remain close.
John and Kathy need to get comfortable with disappointing their parents, and to know that they can love their families of origin without doing everything they want. They can validate their parents’ fears and grief. They can allow them to be upset without making that upset the center of their world.
These families will also have to find new ways to connect and communicate that aren’t centered around physical proximity. This is new for them, and it’s going to be a little clunky and awkward at first.
If John and Kathy’s parents can give them the space and support to form their own new family right now, I think they can all remain close.
If John and Kathy can understand their parents’ grief without taking it on, I think they can all make it out of this period of transition.
If everyone can realize that different can actually be good — and that someone in a family making a different choice isn’t rejecting the family — they can get through this.
This can feel like a lot, and people are going to mess up along the way. But with patience, humility, and a little bit of not taking everything personally, it is possible.
Introducing the Calling Home In-Law Support Group
This September, we’re launching an In-Law Support Group: a therapist-led group that meets twice a month to work through this exact knot — boundaries with parents and in-laws, the guilt that comes with them, and how to protect your relationship.
If you’ve ever felt caught between your partner and your parents — or your partner and their parents — this group is for you.