Young Mother: A Thankless Job

Q.Our son and his wife have hurt our feelings, and I don't know how to tell them.

My husband and I invite our children, their spouses and their children for brunch and baskets every Easter -- as we will do again this year -- and we always receive a verbal thank-you from our children and grandchildren.

My son and his wife have never sent us even an Easter card, and they seldom invite us to their home for an evening's meal, even though we entertain them, as well as our other children, throughout the year. And yet I'm sure that they enjoy our company because they seem to have a wonderful time when they're with us. My daughter-in-law is also the first one to say yes to our invitations; and our son regularly seeks us out to ask our advice on both business and family matters and to tell us about his personal successes.

What can we do to clue them in -- to tell them how we really feel -- without alienating them?

A.It's time to focus a little more on your daughter-in-law and a little less on yourself. She may not send you an Easter card every year -- or any year -- because it was never the custom in her family, or because parenthood is quite hard for her, and she doesn't think about others as much as she should.

Do you remember what it was like? Your own small children brought you much laughter and joy, and they made you feel more fulfilled than you ever had before, but they could also make you feel like a hamster in a cage, going round and round and getting nowhere. No matter how hard you tried, you never had a day when you made all the phone calls you should have made, answered all the letters you should have answered or did all the chores you should have done. You simply never had enough time, enough sleep or enough energy -- and sometimes you didn't have enough patience, either.

You were not only impatient with your kids, but with your life -- with the relentlessness of it all -- and with yourself, for taking a half-hour to do what you once did in a few minutes. If efficiency were a gene, somebody would find out that it went into hiding when the first child was born and didn't reappear until the last child turned 6. If then.

At this point, however, your daughter-in-law only knows that the hamper is still full, even after she has washed five loads of clothes, and that she or her husband still have to cook a meal for their children every night, even if they're sick.

The responsibilities of parenthood may be overwhelming your daughter-in-law -- and you may be overwhelming her, too. Although you now entertain with ease, she's still learning how to cook a meal that's more complicated than chicken nuggets and how to set a table that looks half as good as yours. It may be years before she learns that silver-plated candlesticks and serving dishes from a thrift shop will gleam as much as sterling, and that cheap glasses, bought by the case, will match much longer than those pricey ones that come in sets of four because they'll never be found a few years later.

Until your son and his wife know how to entertain, and how to shop, you'll have to do more for them than they'll do for you, but try to give your help in a slightly different way.

Perhaps you could invite the children to spend the weekend with you so their parents can get away, go to the movies or paint their bedroom without having to chase the children away from the paint bucket.

If you still want to have a meal at their house, however, bring the dinner to them -- all cooked and ready to serve -- and do the washing-up afterward so your son and his wife will only have to set the table, light the candles and have a good time. And if that evening goes well, you can start taking dinner to your other children occasionally and giving them some good times, too.

But if you want to please your adult children even more, let them keep coming to you. Each time they walk into your house, their cares and responsibilities melt away for a while and all seems right with their world. This is the finest sort of gift, and you and their dad are the only ones who can give it.

Questions? Send them to advice@margueritekelly.com or to Box 15310, Washington, D.C. 20003.