Power Equation between 'mothers and Daughters in Law' in Kitchen

The survey conducted across twelve cities and eight states by Help Age India , a leading nongovernmental organisation in 2015 revealed that every one in two senior citizens is facing some form of elderly abuse in India and daughters-in-law are the most common offenders. In Social Gerontology ‘Feminization of Ageing’ is an empirically established phenomenon which implies increase in the number of elderly women as against men. This paper is based on a conjugation of these two established facts. By extrapolation one arrives at the proposition that women who have not joined the group of elderly but would certainly be doing so at some point of time in their lives generally have a tendency to abuse their mothers in law. One wonders if the latter had ever played the role of the former with their respective older generation?
This paper attempts to review the perpetuity and circularity of the conventional power dynamics between mothers and daughters in law. The domain of cooking room is the most probable area where the two of these roles particularly clash. The exclusion and marginalization that elderly mothers in law face at the hands of their daughters in law are reviewed in this paper. Due to the qualitative paradigm an interpretative approach is utilized to arrive at conclusions. A Narrative Interview Analysis technique is used on twenty respondents, all are residents of sub urban Mumbai and are living in a joint family composition for at least five years. . All are above the age of sixty and are superannuated.
The study focuses on the agonizing feelings, alienating experiences, fractured ego, broken norms and coping mechanisms of the elderly women. It comments on the probable solutions and the role played by the intermediate factors, kins, peers in mitigating crisis.