What are the responsibilities of the partners within the family?

This website is wonderful. Thanks for your efforts. My questions is, "What are the responsibilities of the partners within the family?" What should spouses do so that they can have a happy family?

Dear Brother / Sister,

The wife should treat her husband’s family nicely.
For a Muslim wife, treating her husband’s family nicely, respecting and appreciating them is another way of treating the very husband nicely. By helping her mother-in-law, the wife is actually honoring her husband and doing favor for him. In respect to that the husband appreciating what his wife is doing he will also treat his wife’s family accordingly. In fact by doing so the woman is doing a favor for herself. For that Allah (C.C.) said “Is there any reward for good other than good?”  (Surat Ar-Rahman, 60)

Our prophet Mohammed sallallahu aleyhi ve sellem  says “The most favorable among the humans are the most favorable ones for humans.”

The mercy which our prophet Mohammed sallallahu aleyhi ve sellem taught us embraces not only our relatives but also the whole humanity. In some of the hadiths its been stated that: 
Allah (C.C.) would not be merciful to those who would not be merciful to the humans. (Muslim)

To those who are merciful Allah will be also merciful. You, have mercy to the ones on earth so the ones up above the sky will have mercy on you. (Tirmizi)

Having mercy is not an act of having pity as some people thinks, on the contrary it is an extensive emotion that develops with love and grows sacrifice. If there is no mercy in a person’s heart, that heart is sick.

Nowadays some people are causing great harm to the family lives which people are living in by saying: “wife does not have to do her husband’s laundry, the wife does not have to breast feed her baby.” Even though casually it is not a must to do any of those chores, there is also religious, humanitarian and merciful aspect to it. When an officer wife abiding and serving  to those people which she knows or not for eight hours in return of the money she will get, why would she not abide and serve to her husband, to her kid and or to husbands family. These strange and wrong ideas causing discomfort within the family and causing the families to dissolve. Families need conversation more than anything else.

For prosperity both in this life and after life, the families need first to abide Allah and his messenger then to abide each other on equal basis. You should not abide anyone when it comes to committing sins.
When everyone fulfills their responsibilities within the family, happiness and prosperity will prevail, otherwise the life within that family will become intolerable. Another aspect to that is also life is not only limited with this world we living in, the real one is the afterlife that we should consider. We should create such a nice family atmosphere away from haram, under the shade of Qur’an and Sunnah, with right minded people who are living a heavenly life. For that Allah (C.C.) loves those who behave with such nice manners.

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