My in-laws live an hour away from us so they only come up about once a month. Their home is not child proofed, which is fine because it's their home and we are visitors. The issue I have is that they say "You wouldn't need to childproof if you taught your daughter not to touch things". She is 19 months old and gets into everything. She needs constant supervision which they don't provide. My husband and I cannot leave her alone with them because they will leave her in a room and just walk away and do something else for 20 minutes or more.

My father-in-law is deaf and leaves his hearing aid batteries everywhere in their home. For this reason, my husband and I no longer visit them. It's too much of a risk because these batteries are EVERYWHERE. He says "you just vacuum them up. It's no big deal". They leave their medications out and their loose change is scattered around. Lots of breakables everywhere, cords and strangulation hazards galore... But they insist that it's my and my husband's fault that these are hazards because we didn't teach our 19 month old not to touch things that aren't hers.

We stopped fighting with them about it and said that's fine, you come visit us then. So my father-in-law will do the same thing with his hearing aid batteries when he's visiting us. If one dies and he needs to replace it, he just throws the used ones on the floor to be vacuumed up later. If he or my mother-in-law have loose change in their pockets, they just toss it on any surface. We've tried everything and a couple months ago we said sorry, it's too much of a risk. Let's meet and have brunch or dinner or something but no more visits in our houses.

This is now a huge fight in our family because most people agree that it's a "parenting issue" and not a problem with my in-laws. My husband and I will not budge.

It is developmentally appropriate for children our daughter's age to put things in their mouths. 19 month olds don't know how to listen. They aren't able to listen any more than they are able to cook a three-course dinner. It's up to parents to childproof and keep their children safe.

But my husband and I are the a-holes because we're barring my in-laws from visiting and refuse to visit them...

Edited to add: we showed them videos of what happens when kids swallow batteries etc but they always say "Well that only happened because of bad parenting. If parents taught kids to not touch what isn't theirs, this wouldn't happen!" So it's a losing battle.