A mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law walk into a baby shower...

Will this end well?

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The advice column we’re critiquing today is by Slate’s Care and Feeding, May 12 2025. Scroll down to the letter from Not Her News To Share.

Mother-in-law/daughter-in-law is a notoriously fraught relationship. The letter we’re dissecting today is one crazy example.

Here's what happened.

The letter-writer, her mother-in-law, and another relative organized a baby shower for a sister-in-law. The baby would be the first birth in the family since the LW’s two young kids.

Three weeks before the shower, the LW and her husband were thrilled to learn they were pregnant. They decided not to tell anyone. Three days before the shower, the LW miscarried. They decided not to share that, either. But right away, the LW told her cohosts and sister-in-law she was sick and would be unable to come to the shower. She said her husband would do her remaining tasks for her.

Maybe it was a tactical error for the LW to give her mother-in-law three days to stew about this.

The mother-in-law wanted to know what she was sick with, and immediately began nagging, and badgering her to come anyway. The day of the shower, the mother-in-law “called and texted repeatedly.” When the LW's husband went to the shower site to fill in for her, his mother “hounded” him.

Finally, the mother-in-law told her son the LW might be “jealous” about having another baby in the family, and unwilling to “[share] the attention.” Enraged, he pulled her aside, told her about the miscarriage, and demanded she stop. He told her they hadn't wanted to tell, but “’she apparently wasn’t going to leave us alone without an answer, so there it was.’”

I'm sure you already know what happened next.

The mother-in-law announced at the shower that the LW “would be ‘quite understandably missing the shower due to a very recent pregnancy loss.’” The LW, sitting innocently at home, was immediately bombarded by texts from well-wishers. She also got a weepy call from the sister-in-law, “asking how we could possibly think her shower was the right place to share the information about our miscarriage.”

The LW and her husband told his mother they “wouldn’t be speaking to her until we were ready to, after her egregious breach of our privacy.” Now she's harassing them with messages about how she doesn't understand what she did wrong; she was “just letting our loved ones know we could use their support.” How the LW asks, can they make her understand?

This is a bad one, right?

Luckily, I just love how Care and Feeding answered. After expressing sympathy, it wrote: “I’m not confident that you’ll be able to convince her that she did anything wrong.”

That's absolutely right. And when you consider how many advice columnists pander to their readers, it's beautiful.

It's a hard truth, fellow advice-obsessives, but there are people who cannot be reached about the things they've done wrong.

They can't be reached by a direct rebuke; they can’t be reached by argument or explanation; they can’t be reached by their victims; nor can they be reached by anyone else, or in any other way.

I’ll elaborate.

Most people, when you accuse them of something bad, will react. They might react with shame, or remorse, or maybe with anger. You may be in for a conversation about what you said. But they did hear you. They took it in.

Other people (fewer, fortunately) shrug off your accusations. They don't dispute them; they heard and understood what you said. They just don't care.

But with people like the letter-writer’s mother-in-law, accusations never penetrate at all. Their ears may hear, but that's where the information stops.

It's as if the idea they did something wrong is intolerable to them. Their system rejects it like a transplanted organ. They can’t assimilate it, and they don’t.

I've known such people. You probably have, too, and they don’t change. Trying to make them understand is spitting in the wind. The only practical advice for dealing with them is to quit.

The greater question is whether they can't understand, or won't. But I've stopped asking this, interesting though it is, because the bottom line remains the same. These people will not satisfy my craving to be heard. I'll need to walk away.

But what are the letter-writer and her husband supposed to do? The impenetrable person is his mother.

Care and Feeding seems to think they need something to work with. It offers this language: “’I understand you thought you were being helpful by explaining my absence and trying to garner family support, but that was exactly what we didn’t want. Next time, can you please check with us before you share personal information?’”

Then they should “come up with a strategy for future information [they] want to keep private.”

Here’s their best strategy: They should tell his mother nothing.

I should mention that Care and Feeding also recommends the couple reach out to the sister-in-law who placed the weeping phone call about her shower. I myself am skeptical about this sister-in-law, because I so dislike the notion that you’re insulting brides and new mothers if you take a second to pay attention to anyone else. But for family peace: sure. If the LW thinks she can put out this specific fire, she may as well try.