Dear Miss Manners: Should a daughter spend Father’s Day with her husband or her father?
I haven’t seen my daughter on Father’s Day since she got married 18 years ago. Her husband demands to spend Father’s Day at their beach house 300 miles away, and later, they will want to host me there for a visit.
I think this is extremely selfish of him and a slap in the face to me. She has no backbone when it comes to him and his family; she “married up,” or so she thinks. I am not going to condone this any longer, and I know it will put a big rift between us.
I am tired of enabling this behavior. I deserve more respect. Her husband is not her father, I am! Let him go to the beach house and take the kids with him. His ego creates this divide!
Gentle Reader: You are tempting Miss Manners to guess why you don’t get along with your daughter’s family. But as she prides herself on answering people’s questions when they are within her field of expertise, rather than shuffling everyone off to therapy, she will attempt to defuse this situation.
First, you refer to the couple’s children. It is reasonable for them to want to celebrate Father’s Day as a family, including with Mama. Or did the husband leave your daughter alone on Mother’s Day in favor of his own mother?
Second, the likelihood of your daughter being held hostage by her husband, unable to break away to see her own father, is not great.
Third, they are not ostracizing you. They have invited you to their beach house for a visit.
So the etiquette problem is not their behavior, but your taking insult.
You already know what your options are: to accept the situation, or to continue to rail against your daughter and son-in-law for their perfectly reasonable behavior and thus cause a family rift. Your choice.
Dear Miss Manners: What is the proper dining etiquette with regard to the hand that is not holding a utensil?
When we traveled to Europe, the locals did not like that my unused arm was in my lap, as they said that was improper.
My children are constantly bucking my request of using good table manners.
Gentle Reader: The expensive way to solve this would be to offer to take the children to Europe once they master the difference between American and European customs.
In America, it is proper to keep the unused hand in one’s lap; in Europe, it is rested on the table. In neither part of the world is it polite to characterize others’ manners as rude.
And Miss Manners notes that throughout the world, it is proper for children to listen to their parents.
Dear Miss Manners: Why does it always happen when you are in a public place like a bus, you speak to someone and at least one stranger looks and hangs on to your private conversation?
What can one do to stop that?
Gentle Reader: That’s what bus stops are for.
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