QUESTION:

What is the parents’ role in marriage? If relationship between one’s parents and wife is not going well, what should his responsibility be?

ANSWER:

Parents deserve due regard in all matters of decision-making and marriage is the one such important matter. Yes, a boy and a girl have to give their free consent, without which there will be no marriage. Yet, what is wrong with taking the parents along?

For the second part of your question, what is needed is to try and persuade with love and reason that wife accepts her parents-in-law.

If that is really not possible then one may think if he could arrange a separate quarter-kitchen in the house, for his parents. If he is well-off financially, he can consider even having a separate house for them. But under no circumstances, they are to be left un-attended.

Remember please, a person is doomed, if he could not keep happy his parents in their old age. That is what the Prophet (pbuh) has informed. If there is really no way left but to leave either the wife or the father and mother, then Islam asks you to have parents. Logically speaking, you can have another wife, but you will have no parents once lost.