On the third day of her marriage, the bride, that is, the daughter-in-Iaw requested her mother-in-law to assign to her those of the house responsibilities which she wanted her to assume, as her share, to relieve the mother IL of them. This was done. However, the mother IL stressed that she, and not the daughter IL, who would prepare and take the early tea to her son, "as always" after they all have woken up for "sub'h" prayers. Again, it is the mother who would wait for the son and give him company at dinner, "as always", as he returned late from work. The daughter IL would join her father-in-Iaw and children at their dinner earlier.

The mother continuing to be possessive with regard to her son, or more so after his marriage is seen as a part of a centuries old culture. The mother-in-law herself tasted the brunt of the culture when she also was a daughter-in-Iaw in the husband's family. It is a culture which provides justification for many a failure of matrimony between the loving spouses.

However, the culture can be tampered with some degrees of reasoning so that the matrimonial happiness of the son is not sacrificed at the altar of the culture. The mother must understand that she has no cause for jealousy when she finds the son engrossed in the new experience of a married life with a temporary result of a curtailed attention to his parents. The novelty wears off. In the meantime, moved by jealousy, the mother will have caused some irreversible harm in her budding relation with the daughter-in-Iaw.

This culture, however unfair, is revered or endured because it is given the garb of family ethics and values to be upheld religiously by every daughter-in-Iaw if she has