The mother, as Roberta Seelinger Trites notes, “stands in our culture as the representative of female adulthood for children”.

The mother of a son frequently considers no girl good enough for her ‘gem’- Amanda Garzia

Yet the roles of stepmother and mother-in-law are undoubtedly the most reviled and stereotyped of kinship relations.

In English language and literature, the terms ‘stepmother’ and ‘mother-in-law’ have repeatedly crossed paths and the connotation of each term has been anything but flattering.

Until the mid-19th century, in fact, ‘mother-in-law’ meant stepmother.

In Little Dorrit – a story of perverted family dynamics – Charles Dickens uses the term ‘mother-in-lawed’ to refer to the idea that Mrs General is exercising her authority over Fanny as a stepmother: “‘I will not,’ said Fanny…’submit to be mother-in-lawed by Mrs General; and I will not submit to be, in any respect whatever, either patronised or tormented by Mrs Merdle.’”

According to Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, step- “denotes a relationship resulting from a remarriage”.

This is why, as Marina Warner notes in From the Beast to the Blonde, “Mother-in-law is of course the mot juste for a stepmother: the new wife becomes the mother of the former wife’s children by law, not by nature”.

Incidentally, before the 17th century, when fairytales were narrated for an adult audience, the character of the mother-in-law held a central role in many a story.

Warner observes that in medieval and early modern society, it was common for mother-in-law and daughter-in-law to live under the same roof as a direct result of family arrangements.

Many adolescent or pre-pubertal girls – once promised in matrimony to a suitable partner – were relocated to their future husband’s family home. These girls came under the direct authority of the future mother-in-law – the matriarch of the household – and were obliged to earn their keep and her respect.

Scholars of fairytales, in fact, believe that the figure of the wicked stepmother made her first literary appearance as a mother-in-law in Cupid and Psyche.

The story is one of many narrated by secondary characters in The Metamorphoses, an autobiographical novel by Lucius Apuleius. Cupid and Psyche, for instance, is narrated by an old woman. This tale about the marriage of Cupid and Psyche is underpinned by the character of the goddess Venus, Psyche’s prospective mother-in-law.

As the most beautiful girl in the world, Psyche is such a threat to Venus that the goddess wants her rival in beauty to be destroyed.

When Venus orders her son Cupid to do the job, she does not foresee that he will, instead, fall in love with Psyche. Venus forces Psyche into one ordeal after another only to find that she manages to rise above each and every cruel task.

How did the figure of the evil mother-in-law eventually become the figure of the wicked stepmother in so many subsequent tales? As the targeted audience of fairytales became younger and matrimonial practices evolved, narrators presented a character with whom children found it easier to identify.

Nowadays, the female-female relationship between daughter and stepmother or daughter-in-law and mother-in-law remains dauntingly problematic.

Yet is the image of the overbearing mother-in-law justified? While mother-in-law jokes continue to perpetuate misogyny, psychologists have attempted to understand these particular kinship relations in a more level-headed manner.

In The Challenge of Marriage, originally published over 50 years ago, psychologist Rudolf Dreikurs stated that in-laws could seriously upset marital harmony.

He alluded, however, to the specific threat posed by the husband’s mother and family: “The mother of a son frequently considers no girl good enough for her ‘gem’. There are, of course, many exceptions to this rule, but experience shows a slight advantage in the favour of the wife’s mother”. How does this square up with the situation today?

If the cover image of Terri Apter’s manual – What Do You Want from Me? Learning to Get Along with In-Laws – is anything to go by, the news is not good for mother-in-laws.

The photo portrays a bemused couple on the left and a self-confident woman on the right. However, as a parent now facing the transition to mother-in-law herself, Dr Apter sifts through the convenient stereotypes commonly used to pigeon-hole women to reach some sort of truth. She does so by basing her findings on 20 years of research.

Dr Apter has confirmed that the wife and mother-in-law share a desire to be the “primary woman” for the man concerned. Going by her findings from interviews with 150 volunteers, Apter discovered that only 20 per cent of women profess to genuinely getting along with their mother-in-law.

The key to this impasse is an important realisation: if wife and mother-in-law realise that they each have a different role in the man’s life, the opportunity for friction is greatly reduced.

While the husband is often perceived by his mother-in-law as a welcome addition to the family, the wife often has to shoulder the weight of making the best of a difficult situation with her love’s family.

In Lucius Apuleius’ tale, however, all ends on a pleasant note as the goddess Venus symbolically gives her consent. In the concluding lines of the story, in fact, she is gracious enough to dance at the happy couple’s wedding.

In loving memory of my mother-in-law, Lana Micallef, who passed away on April 30, 2010.