Got a nightmare mother-in-law?
You’re not alone. Social media star Shawna Lander’s video series about an overbearing, emotionally manipulative mother-in-law are going viral on TikTok because they just seem so real to so many people.
“I have a lot of fun doing it,” Lander, a mother of two in North Carolina, tells TODAY.com. “My favorite is when I get messages from people who say, ‘Oh my gosh, I now understand my mother better.’”
Lander, aka “Shawna the Mom,” writes funny skits about a family in which she plays all the characters — including “Shawna,” a fictionalized version of herself and her self-centered mother-in-law “Barb” — with costumes and wigs. The online series has sparked fan conspiracy theories and a merch line featuring Lander’s characters.
Lander adds, “It’s really hard to become a mom. It’s a tough transition, made that much tougher if you have a difficult family dynamic.”
Fans “feel seen,” she says, when they realize through her skits that they “can put a boundary down.”
In the “Shawnaverse,” as Lander’s fans call it, “Barb” is the mother of all evil.
Barb walks all over her husband Frank, she pressures Shawna to have more kids (“Grammy’s ready for another baby!”), she ruins her future son-in-law’s Christmas proposal and she competes with Shawna’s mother for attention. In Lander’s latest viral episodes — in which no one showed up to Shawna’s son’s 5th birthday party — Barb scolded Shawna and preemptively cut the cake.
“Is that what you’re wearing?” Barb asked Shawna in one video, adding, “It’s super cute. I just — I don’t know if I would feel comfortable with my tummy poking out like that. Well, of course I lost my baby weight (snap) that quick with all the breastfeeding. But you do formula, so.”
Lander’s fans have strong reactions to the Barb archetype. Comments include:
- “It’s just a sketch, it’s just a sketch.”
- “So, do you have a camera actually inside my mother-in-law’s house or …?”
- “The way these videos with Barb are triggering but also validating.”
- “I used to wear a shirt with ‘Read the room’ printed on it when my mother-in-law was around. She never got the hint.”
- “Why are these skits so accurate to my life?!!?!?!”
Many of us know a Barb — if not personally, then tangentially: Effortlessly offended, manipulative and always the victim, even when she is overstepping boundaries.
Lander tells TODAY.com that Barb was born accidentally, through one of her older skits about a new mom who complained about parenting hardships to an older female relative.
“That character said to her, like, “Well, I don’t know why you feel like that — I always loved my babies,’ the implication being, ‘You’re doing this wrong and it shouldn’t be that hard,’” says Lander. “Many people identified with that, and I thought, ‘OK, there is something here.’ People needed to see more about this older character who completely invalidates your experience.”
Although Lander impersonates a classically “heinous” mother-in-law, she has no personal experience with the subject.
“My mother-in-law passed away before we had children,” she explains. “I do have a stepmother-in-law who is not a mother figure but … more like a friend or a big sister.”
Lander ventures why moms and their mothers-in-law disagree.
“I don’t have grandchildren so I don’t know what it feels like, but I would imagine that … you are not there witnessing it,” she says. “You are once removed and and though you have many of the same really deep-seated feelings and love for the child … you’re not ‘important.’ You’re just ‘the grandmother.’”
She adds, “It’s probably hard to dedicate your whole life to being a mom and have your babies grow up and leave and … now what? There is probably some element of that for Barb and for the Barbs of the world.”
Lander says people with a mother-in-law like Barb should “hold the line.”
“Boundaries — absolute boundaries,” Lander tells TODAY.com. “You cannot change someone or reason with them to treat you better or differently. You can have hard conversations and be frank about what you need and what it is that they’re doing.”
She adds, “When you have someone who is overstepping, you have to tell them plainly, ‘I do not like this behavior and I’m not going to tolerate it.’”
Lander says spouses can’t sit back, either.
“In many ways, it’s your husband’s relationship to handle, because it’s his mom — not your mom … the only reason you even know that woman is because it’s his mother,” she says.