sally,
i also agree with nora.
for me (and also for mixedup, i assume) the situation is slightly more complicated lah, cause my hubby is chinese, so the issue of race and religion comes into play also.
my MIL is generally a nice & caring person. at least she is not racist or has a problem with our religion. she is english-educated and has quite a few close malay friends.
but it's still hard for us to get along at times, cause she is VERY naggy, and is VERY dramatic at times. and now that we've got a dd the one thing that i sometimes can't tahan is how she seems to always have an opinion abt how i take care of my dd, and this coming from a woman who has NEVER taken care of her own kids! she was a working mum all her life, even went to work overseas for many yrs, and left the care of her 2 kids to others.
even my hubby commented many times abt how his mum REALLY has NO clue WHATSOEVER about taking care of babies and kids! can you believe, during my dd's 1mth celebration, my hubby ACTUALLY had to DEMONSTRATE to my MIL how to burp my dd after her milk feed?! that's how clueless she is...
luckily for me, my hubby not that close to his parents, so i don't have much issues w/ ILs (ie hubby having to choose b/w me and his mum, etc). my hubby has even said that me and our dd will always come first for him, not his parents and sis.
and i also never had to deal with the situation of having to live under one roof with them, cause after we got married and while waiting to buy our flat, it was just natural for us to live with my family instead. of course i think my MIL was abit tersinggung lah when this happened, but my hubby ya-ya one. he can actually say if they not happy too bad.
actually, my hubby also commented many times before that even he can't live under the same roof as his family, cause very stressful and his mum very naggy! haha! another thing he doesn't like about living with them is when his mum and sis fight or argue, macam perang dunia lah!