WIBTA for calling out my MIL

Just to give a little background: My wife(35f) and I(30m) have been together for about 5 years. We have always lived 3-4 hours away from her family, so see them in a limited capacity(1 week vacation/year, major holidays, birthdays, probably 4-8 visits/year in total). We both work in healthcare where we have to work many weekends/holidays, so it is difficult to see them more often. I have always gotten along well with both of them for the most part, but feel that my MIL is very controlling and manipulative towards my wife. She still wants to dictate all of her major life decisions and oversee everything she does. I believe this is in part due to the fact that she does not work and is not involved in any community groups, volunteering, hobbies, etc and has too much free time. To my knowledge, her free time is spent cleaning the house, watching Fox news, and calling her 2 children. Just a few examples to paint a picture: 1) she still monitors her bank account and tries to dictate her spending. 2) frequently tries to push her political views on both of us even though we’ve told her many times we would prefer not to talk about it. 3) constantly suggesting baby names now that my wife is pregnant and getting upset when we don’t like the names she suggests. 4) Always trying to shame my wife for not visiting her enough and not moving back to where they live, even though she has only visited us once in our five years of being together. We are currently in the process of buying our first home and my wife is pregnant for the first time. My MIL has been particularly demanding and condescending recently. She calls my wife every day telling her everything we’re doing wrong in regards to the home buying process and regurgitating the same information that we told her we already know about. She also continuously sends houses above our budget and pressures us to buy outside of our financial means(they live in a very expensive house and have a vacation home). After almost every phone call, my wife ends up crying because we have both been very stressed with this process and her mom is adding way more stress to the equation. She speaks in a very demanding and condescending manner during these conversations. My wife agrees that she is overbearing and has always been able to shrug it off, but it is getting to the point of being physically unhealthy for both her and the baby. She softly speaks up for herself, but I think she is afraid to really stick up for herself and set some boundaries after all this time of control. WIBTA for calling out my MIL and telling her she needs to stop stressing out my wife and our unborn baby? I am open to her helping in a collaborative manner, but she is doing too much right now IMO.

Edit: I have brought this up with my wife and would only do this if she would be ok with it.

Posted Jun 1, 2023, 2:32 AM UTC · edited

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