Woman Decides She Will No Longer Be Her Husband's 'Kin Keeper' When It Comes To Talking To Her In-Laws
“I married a grown adult who had good communication with his mom before I met him."
Dikushin Dmitry / Shutterstock A woman has declared that she is done being her husband’s “kin keeper” to avoid any more hurt feelings from extended family members.
She argued that as a grown adult himself, her husband is more than capable of passing important information along to family members and keeping relationships intact.
The woman says that she will no longer be updating her husband’s family on their lives since he is more than capable of doing it himself.
In a TikTok video that has been viewed over 1 million times, Morgan Elisa Strickell proclaimed that she is officially done with being her husband’s “kin keeper.”
A kin keeper is someone who is responsible for maintaining and strengthening familial ties, done out of a sense of obligation and emotional attachment. In most families, contact with extended family falls on the woman’s shoulders, with men doing very little to keep the lines of communication open within their families.
However, Strickell said that she is passing the duty on to her husband. “I refuse to be the primary communicator with my husband’s side of the family.”
Strickell recently learned that she and her husband, who are 12 weeks pregnant with their first child, had unintentionally hurt her mother-in-law’s feelings by not updating her on how the pregnancy was going.
According to Strickell’s mother-in-law, she was not receiving updates directly from her son and daughter-in-law but learning information from her daughter, who would see the couple’s posts on social media.
Strickell was surprised to learn about her mother-in-law’s feelings. “I thought my husband had been communicating with his mom and stepdad. I didn’t know he hadn’t been,” she shared.
After their latest ultrasound, Strickell reminded her husband to send a photo of their sonogram to his mother so she wouldn’t feel left out again.
Instead, he replied, “Why don’t you just send it to my mom?”
Pichayot Pakaranodom / Canva Pro
Strickell was dumbfounded that she even had to explain to her husband why he had to be the one to update his mother, given their latest conversation with her.
“I said, ‘No, sir, not my responsibility. I communicate with my side of the family. You communicate with your side of the family.’”
Strickell’s declaration sparked an argument between her and her husband, where she offered him significant points to keep in mind.
“Number one, I’m not his kin keeper. If he wants to maintain a relationship with the people in his life and have them know information about our lives, that is 100% on him,” she said.
“Number two, I think this tends to fall on women’s shoulders because it’s either assumed that they have a larger social battery or that they have more time,” she noted. “Neither of those things are true in our relationship. My husband has a much larger social battery than I do, and he also tends to have more free time just because I like to take on projects outside of work.”
She pointed out that if her husband failed to keep her mother in the loop about important information regarding their family, no one would bat an eye.
“I married a grown adult who had good communication with his mom before I met him,” Strickell said. “There’s no reason that should be shifted onto my responsibility plate now that we’re together.”
She added that she does not have a poor relationship with her mother-in-law and that she enjoys speaking with her. However, she insisted that communication should not entirely fall onto her shoulders and that her husband should also make an effort to speak with his mother.
Most people agreed with Strickell’s argument, sharing that they often have the same battle with their own husbands.
“If he thinks it’s not much work for you… it shouldn’t be much work for him,” one TikTok user pointed out.
“You are ALREADY doing more work by telling him to remind his mother,” another user commented.
“Last year my husband told me I was wrong for not including his mom in my Mother’s Day shopping and I kindly reminded him that we in fact do not share the same mom,” another user shared.
Strickell explained how a failure to communicate properly could cause a strain in the relationship with the in-laws and eventually lead to even bigger issues within the family.
It starts with husbands relying on their wives to send their moms gifts for Mother’s Day or needing reminders for events and holidays like birthdays.
Then it turns into husbands not knowing what size diaper their children wear or where they go to school, placing all of the responsibility onto their wives.
“Women tend to carry the mental load in the relationship and that allows their husbands to completely check out of the life,” Strickell said in a follow-up video.
“It allows their husbands to not know important information that needs to be shared with family members.”
For those who believe that Strickell simply does not want to talk to her mother-in-law, she argued that this is far from the truth, claiming that the two have a “great relationship” and communicate fairly often.
“But I do want my husband to remain an active participant in our lives and make sure that the mental load… doesn’t fall solely on me,” she shared.
Being a fully grown adult about to have children of his own, Strickell’s husband is more than capable of passing along important information to his family members and checking up on them without his wife having to constantly remind him.
When women enter marriages, they expect to have an equal partnership, not another child to mother, and they certainly do not sign up to be a full-time kin keepers.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.