Humans have this remarkable gift for inserting themselves into situations that don’t concern them. For reasons no one can quite explain, the sight of another person quietly existing—parenting, eating lunch, drinking water—triggers an overwhelming need to pipe up with advice that was never requested. Somewhere along the evolutionary timeline, the survival instinct to share useful skills like fire-building got twisted into a compulsion to micromanage everyone from across the room. And while advice could, in theory, be helpful, the kind most people insist on sharing is less about helping and more about a thinly disguised power trip.  

Nothing brings out this deeply ingrained instinct quite like new parents. There’s just something about a baby that makes the world treat you like a walking suggestion box. Everyone from your neighbor to the random person in line at the grocery store suddenly has feedback on your every move—feedback that’s usually condescending, contradictory, and just annoying enough to make you question all your life choices up to this point. 

And then there are mother-in-laws.