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Ida is the mother of Lois and Susan. She is an immigrant from an unnamed country she refers to as 'the old country' but it is highly implied that she and her husband Victor are from Croatia, due to the Croatian flag and a picture of the Zagreb cathedral in the background of the episode "Ida's Dance"

She is the most sadistic and cruel person in the series. Ida gave her daughters an incredibly strict upbringing, however, this is not nearly as hard as Ida's own upbringing during World War II.

Like Victor, Ida prefers Reese to all of the other boys. To her, he's the strongest and is like Susan. She dislikes Francis the most, stemming from his childhood in Christmas where he called her Poopy and hung up on her, along with the various problems while he was still living with her in season 6's Ida Loses a Leg as a child. While drunk, Ida admits that she doesn't like him for being a disrespectful, reckless delinquent. However, she respects Francis because his will to prove himself and be independent reminds her of Victor in his youth when he had to prove everyone wrong. Ida hates Malcolm the most for being weak-willed despite his superior intelligence and even one called him: gay, dumb and hopeless. This may have something to do with how she contemptuously views Lois all her life. Ida believes Malcolm will amount to nothing because he inherited all of Lois's weak traits. Ida often ignores Dewey and later Jamie.

One of the greatest examples Ida's personality was when she drugged a wealthy Chinese man, Mr. Li, with opiate mood aggressor drugs fed to him in tea. She manages to convince him that he wants to marry her while he is under the haze of the medications. When Malcolm discovers her plan and tells Lois about it, she drugs them too via a free buffet. However, before going under the drugs, she manages to outwit Ida and switch the tea cups for the pastor to drink. This left her with nothing to give Mr. Li because she used up most of to get the Wilkersons drugged. Lois watches on in pleasure as the pastor(under the influence of the mood aggressor drugs) falls in love with Ida much to her irritation. Mr. Li came out of his haze just in time and finds out how horrible she is. He dumps Ida much to her dismay and the family's joy. As Mr. Li leaves the wedding chapel, she cries "I'm pregnant" in a last ditch effort to hold onto her fiancé and is ignored.

She is also a bigot, showing a fear of black people and open contempt for Francis' wife Piama, an Inuit. However, because she isn't black, Ida sees her as a minor nuisance.

In "Victor's Other Family", Lois' family history comes to light. Ida only finds out about Victor marriage to Sylvia and the girls he had with her. She made her first attempt to sue them for his pension. However, the judge tossed out the case mainly due to his disgust for Ida and the fact she had no legal document proving she was married to Victor. During the trip to Mr. Dietrich's office, the pension is revealed to be $43 in Canadian and because of the dispute with the other family, he isn't confident in breaking even. The only way Ida could win is if she proves that she is Victor's common-law wife with mailing addresses in their names, DNA test results for both Lois and Susan, and a marriage license. She pleads with Ida to drop the case, but she refuses. When confronted why, she tells her that she doesn't care if she loses money on it, she is Victor's common-law wife and is entitled to his pension. The only time she has shown love for Lois was while she was attempting to help her with a potential lawsuit for the pension against Sylvia's family. She encouraged Ida to work on her behavior so that way people can see her as more than a miserable, chain-smoking and greedy person. This evaporates when Lois finds out through a DNA test result that she's not related to Victor at all. When she pressed Ida for the truth, it's revealed that she and Victor were never married. He had an affair with Sylvia and whom he legally married. Out of spite, Ida had an affair with a man named Radu Gogorsky whom is Lois's birth father. She only ended their affair when Victor came back in her life. When she asks about if Victor is Susan's father, Ida attempts to lie claiming doesn't know who Susan's father is. However, Lois doesn't believe her and is further enraged. She shows Ida the DNA test results which reveals that Susan matches Victor's DNA and blood type. Finally, she confesses that Susan is her only daughter with him. It was Victor's suspicions on Ida's own affair is the real reason why he never accepted Lois as his child. She attempts to change Lois's blood type to a B so she would be able to match his. Disillusioned, Lois willingly told Ida off that she will never forgive her for lying to her and abandons her case. It's with this she ultimately understand that how much she looks Ida's core, she will Always be a Monster. Lois takes Malcolm, Reese and Jamie back home to California at once.

Ida saved Dewey from getting run over by a truck at the cost of her leg in "Ida Loses a Leg." She is last seen in the episode "Graduation," during which she intended to help Reese with his plot to stay janitor at his school.

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