My wife recently had a conversation with her mother about our lifestyle. Her mother has expressed her disapproval of our lifestyle before, but she took it a step further this time and went off about it while our oldest daughter was visiting with her nearly 4 hours from us. She's expressed in the past that she feels our decision to live a traditional lifestyle, one that allows my wife to stay home and raise our children while I go to work. My wife's mother was saying directly in front of our daughter thag she feels I am abusive towards my wife. Her reasons include that my wife doesn't have a job that pays a salary, that my wife isn't on the paperwork for the house, or the cars. Yet my wife continues to tell me she's happy with our life. We live in a nice small town, we drive nice reliable cars, we have food on the table. My wife often goes out to lunch with her friends that are much more approving of our lifestyle, and the one has specifically expressed she'd love to settle down with the right man and live a similar lifestyle to us.

My wife and I have discussed before possible reasons for her mothers resentment towards me. We have debating if it comes from her own absent father, my wife's absent father, ect. We are debating if it is a level of jealousy coming from my wife's mother. My wife is having her own internal debate about letting her mother alone around our children in the future, especially as they get older and begin to retain things that are being said around them. I am leaving this decision up to her as it is her mother, but she has been asking me my feelings and thoughts on it. Due to her mother's most recent outburst making our oldest uncomfortable we drove a nearly 8 hour round trip to go and pick her up. I wonder if the kids themselves will make up their own mind about their grandmother. I know my wife and I have been having these conversations in private away from them as to not try and influence them about this. I feel like I'm venting, and I apologize. I'm open to any feedback, thank you