Stepfathers and Fathers ..in..Law Share the Negative Perceptions With Their Spouses in Cross-Cultural Comparisons

Recent research has shown that the attitudes toward mother-in-law
stepm’other wen negative, while the feelings toward mother and
grandmother were dose and positive (Denmark. Adler, & Ahmed, 1990).
rand her associ ates (Adler, Davis I Ahrn ed, ]VIrinal, Mukh erj i &
Morgan, 1989) found that the father-in-law shared the negative image of
spouse r ross-cultur’allv. This was surprising, since no jokes were ever
about the father-in-Iii\\’. The •• mother-in-law jokes” were
circulating in Western countries and Arab communities, though in India
rel ationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-·law were serious
business according to Kumar (1989). As It young bride the Hindu girl
moved into her husbands household. Traditionally she had no say about
choice of her spouse nor his family. Under such conditions the young
ughter-in~1aw was more or less subservient to her mother-in-law. It was
therefore surprising that attitudes toward the father-in-law were equally
negative as attitudes toward the mother-in-law. Furthermore, the same
results were found in the data from the United States of America, the
Sudan and Kuwait. (Adler) ct al., 1989.)
The investigators realized tha t actually the mother-in-law ”vas not
only family member with a negative image -- the stepmother was
generally perceived as a disliked family member in myth and fairy tales in
European and American countries and the stories of” One Thousand and
Night” in Mid-Easteru regions (Adler, Denmark, & Ahmed, 1988).
results. of the .studyby Denmark, et al., 1990 confirmed the negative
ceptiouo{tlw. steiHn~ther.·· ...A~wasthecasc prcyiously, the responses
Yieldcdthes::Jlne.schematainKuwait, the Sudan, and the UnitedStatcs of mcl;ka (Adler,IJeI1ll1ark,&Ahined, 1990