“I’m Not His Kin-Keeper” — Woman Tells Husband She Won’t Be Primary Communicator to In-Laws

A woman stated that she refuses to be her husband's "kin-keeper" in a viral TikTok that seems to have divided some users on the topic.

Morgan Elisa Strickell (@morganstrickell) explained in her post that she doesn't want to assume the role of being a familial communicator to her mother-in-law, and that she got in bit of an argument with her husband about this very subject.

From her perspective, Morgan doesn't think she should be the one to be on the hook for sharing important news about her pregnancy, for instance, with her mother-in-law; she'll communicate whatever she wants to communicate about her personal life with her own immediate family, and her husband can do the same with his own side.

She dished out on what she meant in the TikTok:

"So I refuse to be the primary communicator with my husband's side of the family. And I want to talk about this. I got a lot of hate on here about this a couple of Christmases ago, but, it came up again last night, so let's chat about it. So a few weeks ago my mother-in-law was on the phone with us and she expressed that she was like a little bit hurt."

Morgan went on to state why her mother is feeling so hurt: "Because she keeps finding out things about our pregnancy from her sister who sees the posts on social media. Now this was kind of news to me, because I thought my husband had been communicating with his mom and stepdad, I didn't know he hadn't been," she remarked.

"So we were talking about an upcoming ultrasound last night and I said yeah, don't forget to send that to your mom so that her feelings aren't hurt. And he said why don't you just send it to my mom? And I said, no sir, not my responsibility. I communicate with my side of the family, you communicate with your side of the family."

"And we had a little discord about this; essentially he thinks it's not that much more of a responsibility for me to tell his mom about it and have a conversation with her about it, and I say that is not my responsibility, it's your responsibility to communicate that to your people because it's my responsibility to communicate that to my people," she explained.

"So essentially we had a little back-and-forth and these are my points to him: 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 percent on him."

"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. 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 'cause I like to take on projects outside of work," she went on.

"But third and final, not a single person would look to my husband as it was his responsibility if my mom was left out of the loop. If my mom doesn't know what's going on I'm a bad daughter. If his mom doesn't know what's going on I'm a bad daughter-in-law. But that's not how things work in our relationship," she went on to explain about the dynamics of how information is shared between different family members.

"We are a partnership; he has his responsibility, I have my responsibility, that's how it's always worked. He knew I was like this from day one. So anyway, essentially I left it like this with him. Do you want your mom to have this information?"

She detailed his response: "And he said yes and I said then it's your responsibility to make sure she gets it. And since I think people are gonna ask, I don't have a bad relationship with my mother-in-law, we do communicate about things, I just don't want it to be my sole responsibility to make sure she's getting information."

"I married a grown adult who had good communication with his mom before I met him, there's no reason that that should be shifted onto my responsibility plate now that we're together," she remarks at the end of the clip.

Some folks in the comments section of the video had varying opinions on Morgan's philosophy when it came to updating her in-laws about the ins and outs of her pregnancy.

One person thought that she was missing the point when it came to sharing information with her in-laws: "It's more about wanting your child to have a better relationship with their grandparents."

However, there were others who thought that it was way too much of a babying dynamic for her to communicate with her husband's mother, and that it was something that should rest entirely on his shoulders: "He needs to talk to his own mom. End of story."

Another TikToker said that she's already doing a lot by reminding the man that he needs to be talking to his mother in the first place: "You are ALREADY doing more work by reminding him to tell his mother."

One user on the application remarked that their mother was their dad's kin-keeper, and that she ended up taking care of his parents in addition to her own dying mother: "My mom is my dad's kin-keeper of 30 years. This resulted in my mom having to split her time between taking care of his parents (who were having issues but overall well), vs. taking care of her dying mom."

Another person on the app remarked that she needs to be sure to stick to this philosophy when her child is born, because there will be way more opportunities for kin-keeping to rear its head when there's a baby involved: "Stay strong on this, it only gets worse after the kid is born."

What do you think? Is Morgan onto something about not being someone else's "kin-keeper?" Or do you think that once you marry someone, you're pretty much assuming that you're apart of the family now and keeping track on who keeps tabs on what is a bit impersonal and cold?