LETTING GO OF OUR ADULT CHILDREN
Chapter 3: The Parenting Game
Page 6
BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT
Continuation of Chapter 3 of Letting Go of Our Adult Children, which explores the Parenting Game in which all parents are enrolled.
Everyone who chooses to raise a child is automatically enrolled in The Parenting Game. The goal is to maneuver, with love and minimum error, a small but growing object through a series of increasingly complex mazes that end after eighteen years have passed. The skills required? Simple. You only need patience, strength, wisdom, sacrifice, courage, perseverance, flexibility, nurturance, love, loyalty, and a good dose of humor.
Different rules have been carefully prepared for mothers and fathers by other parents, family members, friends, and, of course, by legions of "experts." If the mother does not play according to the prevailing standards of the rule makers, she is penalized. Fathers, on the other hand, are provided with handicaps that allow them to participate at their own discretion and drop out without severe penalty. However, as the game progresses both parents must constantly be prepared for revised rules that may contradict earlier ones. No one can ever be fully prepared for The Parenting Game.
How does it feel to play that challenging contest? Suzanne Gordon expresses a typical response when she talks of being a parent, "the identity that can never be shed." In a recent commentary in the Los Angeles Times she wrote:
I know from personal experience that the intense work of parenting does not end after a few exhausting months of round- the-clock feeding and diapering . . . I know it involves far more than teaching children to "go potty," feed themselves, read, write, and think, respect other human beings, control hostility and anger, overcome sadness and disappointment, forge close relationships with others, and maybe someday find a mate and have children of their own. . . It involves the extraordinary capacity to cope with one's own frustration — and sometimes even one's own rage — to balance one's own needs with the often unpredictable needs of another, to tolerate terrible anxiety and even dread about their safety and well-being, to give and give and give when there is no "please" and "thank you," and finally, in such a bittersweet finale, to let go.
The Finger of Guilt Points to Mother
At the moment the last maze is completed and The Parenting Game is over, how parents will evaluate their performance will depend primarily upon two things. One, is the parent a mother or a father? Two, is the parent satisfied with the grown child who has reached the end of the playing field?
If the answer to the first question is "mother" and the latter "no," her turmoil will generally be greater than if her husband reviews the game, even if the answer for him is also "no." John Rosemond, a psychologist who writes for the Charlotte Observer, notes that regardless of marital status, many women, if not most, are encouraged to believe that success of the child-rearing process rests "on their shoulders and their shoulders alone."
Part of the idea that mothers are responsible for their offspring arises from our depletion of mothers as "angels," as we can readily read in almost any Mother's Day card. This perspective proclaims mothers to be fonts of endless nurturance, sacrifice, wisdom, and love, possessing a strong but gentle ability to raise children because they are blessed with estrogen and willingly suppress their own needs. From the pulpit and parenting magazines come glowing accolades for the hands that rock the cradle.
There isn't room, apparently, for us mothers to be ordinary people — for opposed to the "angel" view is the "witch" perspective, as negative as the first is flattering. According to this concept, mothers neglect and mistreat their children because they want to live through them and are either overbearing and overprotective or lacking in maternal attention. A hundred ills of society are laid at the feet of these lesser mortals.
Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D., is a spokesperson for a more balanced perspective. Her book Don't Blame Mother illustrates how experts create and perpetuate the belief that mother is responsible for how The Parenting Game turns out. She reports that she and a graduate student read 125 articles in nine major mental health journals from 1970 to 1982. Regardless of the author's sex or occupation as psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health professional, mothers were blamed for 72 different kinds of problems in their offspring. These ranged from bed-wetting to schizophrenia, from inability to deal with color blindness to learning problems and homicidal transsexualism, whatever that is.
Caplan also described the strait jacket we place around some particularly unfortunate, hard-working mothers. These are the wives of alcoholics, drug addicts, compulsive gamblers, and womanizers. The mothers supposedly make life hard for their children by supporting their husband's addictions and compulsions and are given the pathologizing label "co-dependent." They are accused of doing too much and, at the same time, of failing to save their children from their father's addictive behavior. Yet the irony is that, if they leave their husbands, they are blamed for breaking up the family and depriving the children of their father.
Few disappointed mothers fail to absorb at least some of a deluge of theory and opinion about their power to influence their child's life. Because there is a bit of truth in even the most outlandish ideas, we take to heart the "rules" for mother. Our mea culpa demonstrates how easily we assume it is always us, the mothers, who cause our child's problems or who have failed to teach higher values. Even mothers whose children completed The Parenting Game to their satisfaction often question whether they did the job "right."
For example, Mildred, a mother I interviewed, has three grown sons who are psychologically healthy and hold responsible jobs. How- ever, she still reflects upon the day thirty years ago when her son, then four, was particularly annoying, being a pest as only four-year-olds know how to be. At her wits' end, she locked him in the garage, saying, "Until you can be part of the family, you will stay in here." Although he came out later and was reunited with a loving family, Mildred's questioning of her action reflects the common belief that there is a "best way" to respond to every situation. Surely another mother — with greater wisdom or patience — would have thought of something else, something "better."
Fewer Expectations for Father
Where was our husband when we were delegated the more demanding rules for parenting? Did he request equal responsibility? Not likely, if he were a typical father.
While we changed diapers, monitored children's squabbles, cleaned house and chauffeured children to their activities, he was doing work for which he was paid, making it more important work. And the U.S. Department of Labor encouraged him to believe that the mother's job was not only less important than his, but less difficult too. That's because the primarily male civil servants in this bureaucracy (at least at the time most of us were raising our children the management was male) rated occupations according to the degree of complexity needed to handle "data," "people," and "things." It is not surprising that a brain surgeon required almost the highest level of skill. What is amazing, however, is that the job of a homemaker was considered to need only as much skill as that of a parking lot attendant and a horse pusher (that's a person whose job it is to feed, water, and otherwise tend horses traveling by train). Incidentally, a dog pound attendant and even a poultry offal worker supposedly required greater skills than homemakers, nursery school teachers, and foster parents. With pressure from the women's liberation movement and a study by the University of Wisconsin in 1975, the department's Dictionary of Occupational Titles was forced to upgrade homemakers somewhat. However, many families operated for years under the assumption that the work of the parent inside the home was not nearly as difficult or important as the work of the parent outside the home.
However, when we did work outside the home out of economic necessity or because we wanted to make use of our education, it was presumed that we, rather than our husband, would take time off work when our children were sick. And mothers were expected to handle the bulk of household responsibilities (including child care, of course) when they returned at the end of the day from office or factory.
Until recently, there has been a taboo against father blaming, except in cases of extreme abuse. Since father spent less time and emotional energy on the family, the children didn't expect him to be more involved — and didn't criticize him for his lack of involvement. The mother, however, was more available, or expected to be more available. Consequently, she became the target of children's frustrations, of their unmet needs and wants. If she gave her children 80 percent of her energy, they could still feel deprived because it should have been 100 percent.
Society's willingness to let fathers off the hook does not mean, of course, that a father is not distressed when a child doesn't meet his expectations. However, since fathers are not held as accountable for their child's situation, they do not generally feel as responsible.
A more balanced role for mothers and fathers in the future will require adjustment, as illustrated in a Doonesbury comic strip by Gary Trudeau. The story line concerns Rick, the father of four-year-old Jeff. Rick is about to fall asleep when his wife asks, "Rick, I know you love Jeff as much as I do. So why don't you seem as torn up about not being able to spend time with him?" Rick responds, "Well, it may be because I'm spending a whole lot more time on family than my father did, and you're spending far less time than your mother did. Consequently, you feel incredibly guilty, while I naturally feel pretty proud of myself. I think that's all it really amounts to, don't you?" He ends with, "Try to get some sleep, Baby . . ." as she reaches for a lamp to throw at him.
Guilt and the Advice of Experts
A significant cause of guilt concerning how well we play The Parenting Game can be traced to our reliance on the wisdom of experts. Unlike animals who can rely on instinct for raising their young, humans often need advice to get them through the Parenting Game, or simply to understand what the rules are. And at two o'clock in the morning when the new mother can't get her colicky baby to stop crying, she is thankful that she can reach for a baby care manual.
Society as a whole can also be thankful for professionals who devote their lives to helping both parents and children. With the encouragement of family therapists and child care advocates, we are beginning to tackle seriously the profound consequences of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, problems swept under the rug for too many years.
There is no doubt that most of us are better parents because of what we have learned from experts. However, discovering which particular advice we should take is a tricky matter because different experts offer different views. Opinions vary according to the theoretical perspective of the author and where the pendulum is swinging on any given topic at the time we need advice. Consequently, it is not easy to know whether we've played The Parenting Game right or wrong, as illustrated in changing theories on the cause of schizophrenia.
For many years it was assumed that poor parenting created this devastating mental illness. One of the theories that supported this view was expounded by Murray Bowen, a prominent family systems theoretician. In describing the dynamics of family interactions, he suggested that a cause of schizophrenia could be explained in his observation that children have different levels of ability to disengage from what he called their "family ego mass" (which can be described as the way in which family members relate to one another).
Bowen said that those who were unable to separate from their families successfully tended to marry others who are likewise "undifferentiated" and immature. When the pattern of less-mature-marrying-less-mature continued for even as few as three generations, Bowen claimed that the immaturity of the parents could (although not necessarily would) produce a schizophrenic child. His view was added to those of others who also believed schizophrenia was caused by ineffective parenting.
Today, however, researchers have discovered strong evidence of a biological component to the disease, necessitating a rethinking of its cause. As one researcher suggests, the origins may lie in a trauma to the developing brain in the womb. These new theories do not mean that parents play no role in all cases of schizophrenia. But for many years parents believed that they alone were responsible for their child's debilitating illness, and they struggled with overwhelming guilt.
It is now clear that in the attempt to develop a theory about families, Murray Bowen unintentionally did a disservice to parents of schizophrenics. Nevertheless, some of his ideas have helped other parents.
For example, he developed a concept called "the multi-generational transmission process." This term is not familiar to many parents but it accurately describes the way in which we learn to play The Parenting Game. As we were growing up, we observed the family rituals, values, and attitudes that were modeled by our parents. Likewise, our parents decided what seemed right to them by watching their parents and absorbing values from the culture and social mores of that generation. And on and on into the past.
Since all families have their share of craziness and common sense, of rigidity and flexibility, of unresolved issues and effective methods of resolving conflict, part of what we learned from our family made it difficult to steer our children through some mazes in The Parenting Game, and part of what we learned made the game easier to play. Recognizing this fact should give us hope. If our behaviors have been learned, they can be changed. We don't have to keep passing down from generation to generation those behaviors and attitudes that have been unintentionally harmful to those we love.
Psychobabble and Guilt
Every profession has its jargon of words and phrases. Psychologists and other mental health professionals are no different. When used appropriately, these shortcuts to complex ideas provide a language that helps us better understand human behavior and thought. When applied inappropriately, however, they confuse and complicate the very issue they are intended to address — and create a condition called "psychobabble."
A good example of this occurred during an interview I had with a father of several grown children. In talking about one of his daughters, he said that he was "co-dependent" in allowing her to use his apartment for three months while she looked for a place of her own. Furthermore, he said he felt badly about "enabling" her, but didn't know what else to do.
I was surprised that he would use those terms to describe his situation. From my perspective "co-dependency" describes a people pleaser who denies her own needs in order to focus on meeting the needs of others. "Enablers" are those who allow others to continue their self-destructive, addictive behaviors by making excuses for them and by other actions that prevent the addicts from being responsible for themselves. As far as I could see, he was neither co-dependent nor an enabler. He was simply assisting an adult child in need. It would be a far different matter if he couldn't afford to have her stay with him or she took unfair advantage of his hospitality. If we are afraid of offering needed help to our children because we think we might be labeled an "enabler," we fail to listen to the wisdom of our heart.
Other psychobabble terms that have been increasingly misused recently are "toxic parents," "dysfunctional," and "abuse."
Everywhere you look it seems as though almost any psychological conflict or problem is said to have its roots in inadequate parenting, as though the actions and inactions of parents were the only factor that influenced the behavior, emotions, and values of our adult children. Some people, such as John Bradshaw, have claimed that 96 percent of American families are "dysfunctional" and that their children are "the children of trauma." Parents are often considered "toxic" to the health of their children.
Has almost every parent really done that poorly in The Parenting Game? Certainly none of us has had the skill to guide our child accurately through every maze. We are all in some way "impaired" and unable to always "function completely," two of the definitions that define dysfunction. However, the dictionary also defines dysfunction as "abnormal." Wait a minute. Surely 96 percent of families cannot be ab-normal, since "normal" implies something is usual or average. Are we all below average? If so, the meaning of the word is turned upside down. Or are we being judged by such high standards that nearly every parent deserves an "F" on the parent score card?
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© Copyright 1994, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT, Reprinted with permission
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