Woman Says Her In-Laws Want To Take Over the Baby and Push Her Into Moving In

A 30-year-old new mom said she is struggling with guilt after her in-laws pushed for her and her husband to quit their jobs and move into their home so they can be closer to the baby.

The woman shared the situation on Reddit, explaining that she and her 31-year-old husband have been married for almost three years and have an 8-month-old son. Their marriage was arranged, but she said she genuinely feels lucky because her husband is kind, supportive, and understanding.

Her husband is the oldest of three sons, and his younger brothers live abroad. Since her in-laws do not have a daughter, she said they treated her very well from the beginning. They were kind to her during pregnancy, supportive in many ways, and, overall, she still described them as good people.

That is part of what made the situation so hard.

The problems started after her baby was born.

During the first few months postpartum, the poster stayed first with her own parents and then with her in-laws. At first, she tried to ignore little things that bothered her. She told herself they were probably just excited grandparents. But as time went on, the behavior became harder to brush off.

According to the poster, her in-laws would refer to themselves as “father” and “mother” when talking to the baby in their native language. When the baby cried or needed sleep, her father-in-law would ask her mother-in-law to comfort him instead of letting the baby’s actual mother do it. Sometimes, they would not give the baby back when he cried. Other times, they would take him from her arms and say they would try to calm him.

The poster said she felt invisible.

Still, she stayed quiet at first because she wondered if she was being too sensitive or if postpartum hormones were making everything feel worse.

After she and her husband moved to the city where he works, the situation continued in a different form. They video call the in-laws every day, and the poster said her father-in-law often comments when the baby cries. He says the baby is sad because he misses them or that the baby is “all alone” where he is, even though he is with both of his parents. He has also joked that the baby must be bored seeing only the faces of his mother and father.

To the poster, those comments make it feel like her in-laws see the baby as their child and the parents as caretakers.

The in-laws also insist the baby looks only like their side of the family and dismiss any resemblance to the mother. Her husband noticed that too and admitted it bothered him. When her father-in-law called himself “dad,” the poster eventually started correcting him every time, and he finally stopped.

But the larger issue remained.

The in-laws visited them twice after they moved, and the poster said both visits were stressful because of constant boundary crossing and comments about their parenting. Then came the biggest request: the in-laws wanted the couple to quit their jobs and move permanently into the in-laws’ home so they could be close to the baby.

The poster works from home, but only from her current location, not from their hometown. Her husband has only four days off a month, which makes traveling back and forth difficult. Her in-laws suggested they could help set up a business for him in his field, and the poster could either join him or look for another job there.

But the poster did not feel comfortable with that plan at all.

She said her father-in-law frequently comments that they do not feed the baby on time, that the baby is unhappy, that he is lonely, and that he has to play alone. Based on the current behavior, she does not believe moving in with them would allow her and her husband to raise their son the way they choose.

She brought the situation to Reddit in a post titled “AITA for not wanting my in-laws to take over my baby and for refusing to move in with them?”: https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/comments/1q1upvz/aita_for_not_wanting_my_inlaws_to_take_over_my/

The poster said her husband agrees with her concerns and plans to have a serious conversation with his father. He wants to make clear that this is their child and that boundaries need to be respected.

But he is also worried about his parents. Since his younger brothers live abroad, his parents would be alone if he and his wife did not move closer. The poster understood that. In her culture, caring for aging parents is important, and she had once wanted to do that for both sides of the family someday.

Now, she is not so sure.

The emotional conflict came from the way obligation, culture, kindness, and control were all tangled together. The in-laws had been good to her in many ways, which made it harder for her to label their behavior as a real problem. She did not want to damage the relationship or hurt them. At the same time, she could feel her role as mother being pushed aside.

Moving in would not be a small compromise. It would mean giving up job security, independence, privacy, and the distance that currently helps protect their little family. It could also make it much harder to enforce boundaries. In their own home, the parents can decide when calls happen, when visits happen, and how the baby is cared for. In the in-laws’ home, every disagreement could become a household conflict.

That was the risk the poster seemed to see clearly. If they moved, the baby might spend more time with grandparents who already acted like they had a parental role. The grandparents might feel even more ownership. And the poster might feel even more like an outsider in her own child’s life.

The poster later edited the post to thank people for their advice. She said she and her husband read the comments together, and they helped them realize their priority had to be the well-being of their own little family.

Commenters overwhelmingly told the poster she was not wrong for refusing to move in with her in-laws.

Many said the in-laws had already had their chance to raise children, and now it was the poster and her husband’s turn to raise theirs. Several said the grandparents’ expectations belonged to them and were not the poster’s responsibility to fulfill.

Others focused on the practical danger of becoming financially dependent on people who already seemed to overstep. Commenters warned that quitting jobs, accepting help to start a business, and moving into the in-laws’ home could leave the couple trapped. If the grandparents funded the new arrangement, they might also feel entitled to have more say over parenting.

Several people said the daily video calls were too much and likely feeding the problem. They suggested reducing contact so the couple could focus on their own household instead of constantly managing the grandparents’ emotions.

Many commenters were especially bothered by the in-laws calling themselves mother and father to the baby and refusing to return him when he cried. To them, those were not small grandparent habits. They were signs that the in-laws were blurring roles in a way that needed to stop.

Some commenters acknowledged the cultural pressure to care for aging parents, but they said caring for parents does not mean surrendering the new family’s independence or letting grandparents take over a child. Respect should go both ways.

The strongest advice was for the husband to lead the boundary-setting because they are his parents. Commenters said he needed to make it clear that the baby is his and his wife’s child, visits are a privilege, and parenting decisions belong to the parents.

By the end of the discussion, the answer was clear: the poster could care about her in-laws and still refuse a move that would cost her peace, independence, and authority as a mother.