Does the maternal Grandmother have more clout?

I'm on the receiving end of a (paternal) nana who has a bee in a bonnet about my role as a (maternal) nana - and I can't help but wonder if all this 'paternal v maternal' business is an just an excuse to displace responsibility on what is simply bad, rude and controlling behaviour. I think we have to remember that we are 20+ years out of date (advice changes), this isn't our 'show' and we're not key players - we have no 'clout' over anything. Although, personally, I don't think I want this thing called 'clout' anyway - I've had all that in my own child-rearing days and huge responsibilities that came with it.

One of my daughters had a wonderful relationship with her MIL, who now has dementia, which is very sad. They lived next door for several years, and I was living in France, so it was good to know the in-laws were there to give support. I had been the only grandparent to all ten grandchildren for many years and I became good friends with the new grandparents. They accepted my daughter's four children from a previous relationship just as if they were their blood relatives.
Sadly, my other daughter is bitterly jealous of her daughter's in-laws and has tried to out-do them in material gifts and encouraged her daughter to think they are showing preference for their own daughter's children. As she herself is too ill to babysit or child-mind, the paternal grandparents have been very helpful. They are also very kind and loving people. I have encouraged my grand-daughter to appreciate all they do and not to be influenced by her mother's need to be the most important person in her grandchildren's lives. (She is divorced and has no friends).
There seems to be as many different relationships as there are grandparents - the only thing we can do is continue to show our children and their partners that we love them and their children and welcome sharing them with the other family.

In Australia it means both and it was perfectly clear what you meant dorsetpennt.

I am a very hands on Grandmother for all of my grandchildren and help at each three houses. It is interesting how my daughters and daughter in law all do things in a similiar way. My DIL does ask my advice sometimes and has said twice she couldn't have managed without me eg. Last year when I stayed for a month while she did her "prac teaching" and I looked after my grandsons, driving the eldest to school, cooking, cleaning, washing etc during the week and last February helping them move house. My son and DIL live nearer to her parents but I don"t feel left out and my DIL often mentions how youngest grandson often talks about me. My grandson"s paternal father is the one who is called on to help out if they need someone to get grandson to school if some appointment comes up and they need an extra adult as I am too far away and the other grandmother works full time.

daughter's mil lives hundreds of miles away so i do the day to day grannying.

i don't know if to wish for influence is a good thing. it might leave you frustrated! i tell the parents what i think, if i have an idea re the grandchild, and they make their own decision about it. daughter brings up grandaughter the way she was brought up - in arms, co-sleeping, breastfeeding on demand, lots of attention, but that isn't the way she'd planned to do it, just the way that works for them as a family.

'clout' round here means influence. in the past (say fifty years ago) it meant to strike someone, as in 'al giv' 'im a clout!'

GadaboutGran think sometimes I can be too easy going at times when there are 'demands' on time..Christmas /birthdays etc ..always end up fitting in with others' arrangements.. but anything for a quiet life eh!

My DiL in Germany has a Kiwi birth mother, French step-mother and her own German ex-childminder all fighting over her & for supremacy. I said I'd be a good friend not another mother. It's bound to be a different relationship compared with my daughter - for a start the latter has no problem telling me what she thinks of me (good & bad). My interests are far closer to my DiL which is nice but childbirth & rearing views are closer to daughter's. I do make an effort to send emails etc just to DiL and she values this - no doubt the self-sufficiency is a bit of a front too.

Just a bit of feeling enters when I realise they've visited lots of the extended French step-family with new grandson & it seems harder to get them to agree to a small family gathering with our relatives - they dominated the wedding party too. But we are the easy going ones who don't pressure them.

All the meanings have the same etymology. See Chambers. There are at least seven meanings of the noun. All are correct.

We always used 'ne'er cast a cloot till May be oot', but the etymology for that must be related to 'cloth'.

Which one, jeni? Or did you use both meanings?

I'm a midlander and we used it too!

The way you used it was perfectly correct, dorset, but it is perhaps more a northern British usage than a southern one. I don't really think there was any confusion.

Being Canadian and living many years in the US I had never heard the word clout used as a 'smack around the ear'ole - thats why I used it. Sorry for the confusion

Wouldn't it be nice if we could choose our DILs - or they chose us when they checked out DSs. My now deceased MIL must have said that at some point. I should have looked more closely, too. My MIL with only sons and my DIL with only sister siblings. The MIL very harsh and the DIL always ready to take insult so I keep my thoughts to myself and you can't win that way either. Also different upbringing. My DD much the same sort as me and my DIL, just like her mother. GC also characteristics of DILs family as they spend more time there.

I have no daughters but have more to do with my grandchildren than my DILs mother had.
My son has been married twice, first wife's mother did not do much for her grandchildren as had family problems of her own.
Present wife's mother does as little as she can.DS and his wife and their two children live with me have done so for nearly 10 years.DIL works part time, I collect children from school and care for them in school holidays.DS and DIL visit her mother with the children about once a fortnight and return after about an hour.DIL's mother and her partner live 10 mins drive away.They volunteered to help with the school run when grandson started school.Only did it once as her mother's partner did not like driving in heavy traffic.
DIL speaks to mother every day by phone.
I am saying no more.

I have always been more involved with my daughters children than their paternal Nana. I have never really seen much of my sons daughter and when she does come is very shy around me. I also feel more comfortable chastising my daughters children than my sons.

I think that clout is not what I have or want/seek. Hopefully my DDs were so well raised they know what they are doing!!

Seriously I think it is not a grandparents role to tell new parents how to parent unless
a} asked for advice or
b} a child is really unhappy or in danger.

I try to be available to help when needed.. to enable DDs to work to pay their bills as my mum did for me. I know I am lucky to live so close to both and that as sisters my DDs are friends and support each other too. Other GPs are near for DD1 and help when asked,,but normal for DD to be closer to me than to MiL and FiL!

'Clout' in the sense of influence is presumably a metaphorical extension of its meaning as 'impact' (a clout on the ear, etc).

Reading this thread again, I have to say that my dd's way of parenting is nothing like mine, and I learnt ten years ago to bite my lip and step back.
My son however seems to think I am the "fount of all wisdom" since he had a dd of his own! This can be very tricky sometimes when I don't know the answer when he comes for advice!

'Ne'er cast a clout till May be out...'

In this case meaning a piece of clothing!

I never thought to look in the dictionary. I thought 'clout' was dialect, I certainly heard it a lot in Yorkshire as a child.

We have to wait a long time to hear from our offspring that we were good parents. Since the GCs arrived I feel much closer to my daughters. They know now what they mean to me, they feel the same about their own children.

The tricky time is after the birth and the first few months. New mothers want to be perfect and even when they are carrying babies around in their arms when I would have got them sleeping in their cot, I still didn't say anything.

One of the nice things I love about having a DD is seeing how she instinctively does things the way I did them and I did them because my Mum did and she did because her Mum did etc etc. One small example is Christmas traditions and it is so lovely to think of these treasured things being passed down the generations - my DGD will be the next to carry them on!

I do so agree with all the tongue biters posting on this thread though! It's best to wait until asked - and then only respond positively and tactfully I find!

Come to think of it, I don't remember ever taking my mother's advice - unless I thought she was right, in which case it was, of course, my own idea. I certainly didn't listen to my MiL! She never stopped talking, so everyone just shut off.

No, dorsetpennt you have never sounded like a bossy granny!

Thanks ladies. I was worried that after PressReturns remarks I had given ccompletely the wrong impression of being a bossy Granny - I hope I'm a helpful Granny and I, like all of us, bite my tongue if I don't always agree with either my son or my DIL. Especially as they seem to be doing such an excellent job of parenthood.

It is natural that a daughter is more at home with her own mother's parenting style than with her mother-in-law's, but most children have two parents. Every couple bring two experiences of parenting to bear on their own efforts. The result is an amalgam, which probably has elements that don't suit each grandparent in turn.

As most of the day-to-day handling of children is down to the mother, the maternal grandmother's approach is bound to be more dominant. I suspect mothers-in-law are more likely to feel that they would not have done something that way. That does not mean that they want to interfere, just that they feel that ......... well, yes, that maternal grandmothers have had more influence.