Jane Isay - Walking on Eggshells: Navigating the Delicate Relationship Between Adult Children and Parents

CONTENTS

PART I
Happy Families Dont All Look Alike

PART II
Big Children, Big Problems

PART III
The Family Connection

To my grown children:
May you be as lucky with your kids as I am with mine.

INTRODUCTION

This book began with a surprise and a discovery. The surprise came almost a decade ago at Thanksgiving. One of my grown sons pulled a small, and he thought loving, prank, which upset me. I called him on it. Im old enough to be your mother. You shouldnt tease me that way, I said. Weeks later, I was telling a close friend about the episode, and she confessed that her grown childrendaughterswere pushing her around in a way that she did not appreciate. She could not figure out how to deal with them. I didnt realize how much grown children can hurt your feelings, she said.

That was the surprise. We compared notes about how vulnerable we felt with our grown children, and how hard it was to communicate with these new adults. My friend said, Im so glad we had this talk. I thought I was the only one.

That was the discovery. I was not alone, and neither was my friend. I realized that this stage of parenting is upsetting and confusing to a lot of parents. I hadnt read anything about it, and nobody brought it up in conversation. People dont talk about a problem if they think they are the only ones who have it. And theres a reason why so many of us are experiencing this: In a way, were parenting pioneers. Were the first generation to have raised our children so permissively; and when they became adults, we could not call on our own experience as grown children, because our parents had raised us so differently.

Most members of the baby-boom generation grew up in families where, as in the TV show, father (and mother) knew best. Our parents generation lived through the Great Depression and two world wars. They had a clear sense of the dangers that surrounded themand us. They had to control our every action and decision, and many of us resented this. We did not like it at all when they told us what to wear (pink top and orange pants? never), where to go to school, what they expected of us (in no uncertain terms), whom to marry, and the career choice we should make (girls were expected to teach for a couple of years and then marry a good provider). As their children, we were lucky to have grown up in a much safer and more stable time of peace and prosperity. We raised our children differently from the way our parents raised usunder the permissive gaze of Dr. Spock. We fed them when they were hungry, put up with their outlandish garb, tried not to push them around, and wondered if they would ever shape up. The very spirit of the times encouraged a freer interaction between parent and child, which we happily adopted, despite our concerns.

Through all of this, we were ambivalent about authority and conflicted about limit setting. If we yelled at our children more than we would have liked, we felt bad. If we struggled with the idea that whatever they wanted to express was fine, we told ourselves we were raising creative children. Discipline was not our strength. We might have wished to be more authoritarian, but we didnt want to repeat what we felt were our parents mistakes. When we saw perfect children, we wondered what was wrong with our own parenting skills, or we secretly suspected child abuse. Nevertheless, despite our ambivalence about authority, we made it clear to the children that we were in charge.

Twenty years later, theyre still our children, but suddenly they are adults, with their own lives, their own friends and lovers, their own careers and lifestyles, and their own values. Often their decisions are not what we would have chosenfor ourselves or for them. Were at a loss to communicate our reservations, worries, and concerns, not because we cant put these feelings into words, but because the response we get often isnt pretty.

It is as if we awakened on a new planet and everything was turned on its head. The independence we worked so hard to instill in our children now feels to us like disinterest, and strong-minded youngsters sometimes grow into thoughtless adults.

We wonder: How can we get them to be more mindful?

We worry: Do we take the risk of speaking freely to them? We are perplexed.

We benefit tremendously from the more informal relationship we have with our grown kids; its what they used to call discipline that troubles us. We all have to figure out new ways to express what we think and what we wantwithout pushing them away. Since theres nobody we can turn to with our questions about how to deal with the men and women who call us Mom and Dad, we need to create our own emotional guidance system.

I have traveled all over this country and interviewed dozens of parents and dozens of grown children, nearly seventy-five people in all. I interviewed grown children between twenty-five and fifty-five and parents in their late forties to their middle seventies. I wanted to get a fix on those decades between the time the kids leave home and the time when we really need their help. People love to tell their stories, and listening carefully is an art. I spent four decades as a book editor, working with experts in psychology, and was persuaded that stories are the best teachers. As a parent of two grown sons, and as someone who listens carefully, I have found some important truths for both generations.

Listening to grown children talk about their parents, I learned how deeply they love us and how desperately they want us to grow and change as they do. They want to be close, but they are exquisitely sensitive to any perceived or real assault on their autonomy and boundaries. Only when they trust that we respect them as adults can they feel free to return to the family. I was surprised to find that many people in their twenties and thirties were eager to tell me how much they worry about their relationship with their parents and how much time they spend puzzling over how to stay close and still be independent.

Most grown children are full of love for and gratitude to their parents, even if they dont show it. They want to establish a new relationship, one of greater equality, in which the parents anxiety is not so overwhelming, and in which their parents judgment is eased. They will return to parents who once were abusive, if that behavior has changed; and they will do what they can to meet their parents needs, even when they are overwhelmed. On the other hand, they are hypersensitive about boundaries and will keep secrets from us if we step over the line. Many young people told me how much they resent being given advice by their parents, and how the narrowing of eyes in judgment makes them run for cover. As adults, they have the power to distance themselves from their parents, and they use that power when they need to. They can no longer be forced to accede to parental authority, and they have the right, and in some sense the responsibility, to make their own decisions, even if they make mistakes in the process.

Some of the parents I spoke with taught me how hard we have to work to welcome our children home as full-grown adults, not as former kids. Many parents have made the effort to adopt a new tone of acceptance and respect. By listening more carefully, and silencing their inevitable judgments, parents start to see and hear their grown sons and daughters more clearly, and the very act of listening and responding breaks down some of the self-protective barriers their children have erected. It takes effort to build a new lifelong relationship, one that works for both generations, and this effort pays off.