Caught Between Devil & Deep Sea: Why Women Fight Women & Men Suffer in Silence
By: Javid Amin | 18 October 2026
The Kitchen That Became a Battlefield
It is a Sunday afternoon. In the kitchen, a mother-in-law is clearing the plates with a little more noise than usual. In the bedroom, a daughter-in-law is staring at her phone, hurt by a remark made at lunch. In the living room, a man is pretending to watch television.
He heard everything. He will say nothing.
Because whatever he says will be wrong to someone.
No headline will ever record this scene. Yet it is repeated, in some form, in countless Indian households every single day. The woman is called “Janani” — the one who gives life, the one who holds a family together. So why do so many homes turn into quiet battlegrounds between the very women who are meant to hold them up?
And why is it always the man—the son, the husband, the brother—who gets ground to dust between two people he loves?
This is not a story about villains. It is a story about fear, memory, power, and the terrible things women do to each other when they forget they were once the new bride too.
“She Forgot She Was a Woman Too”
The oldest complaint in this story is also the most painfully human one: She is a woman. How can she not understand another woman?
The mother-in-law who criticises her son’s wife was once a new bride herself—nervous in a strange house, eager to be accepted, terrified of making a mistake. The daughter-in-law who resents her husband’s mother will one day be somebody’s mother-in-law.
And almost every woman in the middle of such a quarrel has a daughter or a sister whom she would never want treated the way she treats another woman’s daughter.
So why does it happen?
Researchers who study Indian families say this pattern is not an accident of personality. A widely cited study of in-law relationships argues that the cultural preference for sons gives mothers of sons a relatively elevated position in the family. This encourages a close mother–son bond that creates tension between mothers- and daughters-in-law after the son marries. In that setting, a mother-in-law who has finally gained a position of power may have a stake in keeping control over her daughter-in-law.
Scholars call this a “patriarchal bargain,” a concept developed by sociologist Deniz Kandiyoti. Put simply: a woman who spent years at the bottom of the household ladder may, once she reaches the top, guard her place by controlling the new woman at the bottom .
The same woman can be both a person under control and a person who controls. She is pulled between loyalty to her gender and loyalty to her place in the family’s hierarchy.
This is the devil in the detail. The system that oppressed her now gives her a tiny throne. And she will defend it—sometimes cruelly—because it is all she has.
It Is Not Simply “Women Are Each Other’s Enemies”
A fair account must add this: the rivalry is not written into anyone’s nature.
A study of low-income families in Chennai found that relations between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law are shaped by shifting dependencies rather than being culturally fixed. Where older women feared losing support, some mothers-in-law actually chose strategies of appeasement toward their daughters-in-law .
That finding is profoundly hopeful. It means the rivalry often grows from fear:
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Fear of being sidelined
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Fear of losing a son
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Fear of being a stranger in a new house
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Fear of not having a say
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Fear of being forgotten in old age
Where fear fades and respect grows, the rivalry can fade too. But someone has to make the first move. And that someone is rarely the man in the middle.
Where It Begins: Two Women, One Man, Two Kinds of Fear
Most of these conflicts start small. Both sides start with a real emotional need.
The mother has spent twenty-five or thirty years at the centre of her son’s life. When he marries, she can feel that centre shifting. She may fear being ignored in her own home. She may doubt whether she will be cared for in old age. She may look at her son’s wife and see a stranger who is slowly replacing her.
The wife has left her own home, her habits, her people. She may feel she is being watched, judged, and compared. She wants to be treated as family, not as a guest on trial. She wants her husband to stand by her—but when he defends his mother, she feels abandoned.
Neither woman may say any of this aloud.
Instead, the fear comes out sideways:
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A remark about cooking
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A sigh about a visit
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A message sent to a relative
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A forgotten festival read as an insult
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A gift that was “not expensive enough”
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A comment about how the son “has changed”
A sister-in-law, an aunt, or a neighbour adds another opinion. Soon there are two camps. And the man belongs to both.
He is caught between the devil and the deep sea. And both of them claim to love him.
The Man in the Middle: The Invisible Casualty
For the son, husband, or brother caught between them, the pressure is constant and mostly invisible.
The son hears his mother’s hurt at night and his wife’s anger in the morning. Siding with one feels like betraying the other. The husband finds that a decision as simple as where to spend a holiday can set off a week of silence. The brother finds himself between sisters, aunts, and in-laws, each with her own sense of what he owes her.
What makes this harder is silence. From childhood, many boys learn that being a man means holding things in. “Don’t cry.” “Be strong.” “Don’t get involved in women’s matters.” So these men carry messages, smooth things over, say “it’s nothing,” and keep the peace at the cost of their own sanity.
They become referees in a match they never wanted to play. And when the match goes on for years, the referee starts to break.
The courts have noticed the strain. In September 2025, the Chhattisgarh High Court upheld a family court’s decision to dissolve a marriage in which the husband said his wife had pressured him repeatedly to leave his parents and had insulted him for listening to them. The bench held that repeated insults, coercion to abandon parents, and prolonged separation amounted to mental cruelty and desertion .
This is not an isolated case. It is a symptom.
The Numbers That Should Terrify Us
India’s official data cannot measure a family’s private tension. But it does show how heavily family stress weighs on people—especially men.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau’s Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2024, the country recorded 1,70,746 deaths by suicide. “Family problems” was the leading recorded cause, at 33.5%—or 55,175 cases .
Men accounted for the overwhelming majority of suicide victims: 1,25,449 male deaths compared to 45,245 female deaths .
The highest number of suicides occurred among people aged 18 to 30 years, followed by the 30–45 age group .
These figures need careful reading. “Family problems” is a broad police category that the NCRB does not clearly define. It covers money disputes, parental pressure, marital strain, and more. It does not say who in the family was in conflict. It cannot prove that women’s quarrels drive men to despair.
But here is what the data does show:
Family distress is the most common recorded trigger in a nation where men form nearly three-quarters of suicide victims.
And working men aged 18 to 45—the exact demographic caught in the mother-wife crossfire—made up more than half of all suicide deaths.
This is not a coincidence. This is a crisis hiding in plain sight.
The Other Side: Women Suffer First, and Most Visibly
An honest account must say this clearly: in a conflict-ridden home, the man is not the only one who suffers, and he is often not the first.
In 2023, India recorded 4,48,211 crimes against women. Cruelty by husband or relatives was the largest category, with 1,33,676 cases .
According to the National Family Health Survey-5, 29.3% of Indian women aged 18 to 49 had experienced some form of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse in the family. Husbands were the perpetrators in roughly 80% of such cases. And most never speak up: 77% of women who faced violence never sought help from anyone .
In 2024, 22,113 housewives died by suicide—nearly half of all female victims .
This is where the rivalry between women becomes most painful. Researchers note that in India, cases of violence by mothers-in-law are often tried under domestic-violence laws, yet legal understandings frame such violence as a conflict between women or as dowry-related, rather than as gender-based violence.
The same family can produce a wounded daughter-in-law, a stressed mother-in-law, and a silent husband—all at once. Everyone is bleeding. No one is talking.
The Paradox of the Pet and the Parent
And now, a new layer has been added to this already complex tragedy.
Walk through any upper-middle-class neighbourhood in urban India. You will see dogs in strollers, cats with Instagram accounts, pets dressed in designer clothes. “Fur babies” are the new status symbols. Couples spend thousands on pet grooming, pet birthdays, pet therapy.
Meanwhile, in the same homes, a mother or father sits alone in a room, waiting for a phone call that never comes.
The old-age home—once unthinkable in Indian society—has become a booming industry. Sons and daughters argue over who will “take” the parents, as if they are an inconvenient parcel to be delivered. The same people who will spend fifty thousand rupees on a pet’s surgery will hesitate to spend five thousand on a parent’s medicine.
This is the moral inversion of our time: We have learned to love animals unconditionally while forgetting how to love our own flesh and blood.
The pet cannot criticize. The pet cannot demand. The pet cannot remind you of your duties. The pet is safe.
The parent is not.
And when children watch their parents treat grandparents as burdens, they are learning a lesson they will one day apply to them.
What goes around, comes around. The old-age home you choose for your mother may be the one your son chooses for you.
When the Fight Moves to Court: Everyone Loses
Sometimes private conflict spills into the legal system. Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code was meant to curb cruelty to a woman by her husband and his family. The offence is now covered by Section 85 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
At the same time, the Supreme Court has repeatedly cautioned against stretching the law. In Dara Lakshmi Narayana v. State of Telangana (December 2024), the court quashed a case and addressed misuse of the provision in matrimonial disputes. The bench noted that there is often a tendency to implicate all members of the husband’s family when matrimonial discord arises, and courts must avoid harassing innocent relatives .
None of this weakens the law’s purpose. Genuine cruelty must still be punished. The data shows how common it is.
The point is simpler and sadder: a family dispute turned into a criminal case rarely leaves anyone unhurt.
Breaking the Cycle: What Each Person Can Do
Family counsellors often return to a few practical habits. None is a magic fix. Each works because it is simple and human.
For Mothers and Mothers-in-Law
Ask yourself: How would I want my daughter to be treated in her husband’s home? Then offer that same treatment.
Remember your own first year as a bride. What helped you? What hurt? You have the power to be the welcome you once needed.
Your son’s love for his wife does not take away from his love for you. Love is not a pie. It does not shrink when shared.
For Wives and Daughters-in-Law
Give yourself time. Trust in a new home takes years, not weeks.
Raise concerns with the person concerned, not by pulling your husband into the middle as a messenger.
Respect your husband’s bond with his parents, just as you would want your own parents respected.
Remember: one day, you may be the mother-in-law. Your daughter-in-law will remember how you treated the woman before her.
For Sisters and Relatives
Don’t carry tales. A comment repeated to the wrong person can start a month of conflict.
Be a bridge, not a messenger.
For Men
Do not act as a go-between for messages. Ask each side to speak directly.
Spend time with each person separately and listen without defending.
Say something like: “I love you both, and I will not be asked to choose.”
Silence is not peace. It is not neutrality. It is slow self-destruction. Your mental health matters.
If the stress is building, talk to a friend, a counsellor, or a doctor. Asking for help is not weakness. It is survival.
For the Family as a Whole
Share decisions openly—from money to household duties.
Give everyone some personal space and dignity.
Bring in a trusted elder or counsellor early, before bitterness hardens into hatred.
And please: do not forget your parents. The pet will not sit by your bedside when you are old. The parent you abandoned might have.
If the Weight Feels Too Heavy
Carrying family stress alone can wear down anyone, whatever their gender. If you or someone you know is struggling, please talk to someone.
The government’s tele-mental health service, Tele-MANAS, offers free, confidential support round the clock on 14416 . You do not have to suffer in silence. You do not have to be the strong one who never breaks.
India’s National Suicide Prevention Strategy aims for a 10% reduction in suicide mortality by 2030. That target will be met only if families learn to speak up before pain turns into crisis.
The Choice That Shapes Generations
A woman can build or break, as any person can.
What decides which one she does is often not strength or position, but memory.
A mother-in-law who remembers her first lonely year can become the welcome she once needed.
A wife who remembers that she, too, will grow old can see her husband’s mother more kindly.
A sister who remembers that she is a daughter can make the next woman’s path easier.
The strongest woman in a family is not the one who wins the argument or outlasts a rival. She is the one who remembers she is a woman herself—and uses that memory to protect, not to punish.
When she makes that choice, the man in the middle doesn’t have to choose between the people he loves. He can finally breathe. He can finally be a son and a husband, without becoming a casualty of a war he never declared.
And her greatest legacy will not be a home she controlled.
It will be a home where everyone could breathe.
Where the kitchen is just a kitchen again.
Where the Sunday afternoon is quiet—not with tension, but with peace.
Where the man in the living room isn’t pretending to watch television.
He is actually watching. And he is smiling.
Because he is no longer caught between the devil and the deep sea.
He is home.
A Final Word to the Women Who Hold the Power:
You were the new bride once. You were scared, hopeful, and desperate to be loved.
The woman sitting across from you—the one you criticize, the one you compete with, the one you fear—is you, twenty years ago.
Put down the sword.
Pick up the memory.
And build a home where no one has to choose between the people they love.
That is the only victory worth having.
If you or someone you know is struggling with family stress or suicidal thoughts, please call Tele-MANAS at 14416. Free. Confidential. 24/7.
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