LETTING GO OF OUR ADULT CHILDREN
Chapter 3: The Parenting Game
Page 7
BY ARLENE F 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.
Yes, there are parents who have directly damaged their children through sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Alcoholic parents can create life-long problems for their children. Other parents can prevent their off-spring from functioning as healthy adults if they suffocate them with extreme overprotection. And it would be nice if every parent could always recognize his child's needs and respond with appropriate nurturance and provide gentle but firm discipline.
The truth is that the vast majority of parents are ordinary people who bring many different skills, personalities, experiences — and inadequacies — to the role of parenting. Most of us do a poor job in some areas and a decent, even outstanding, job in others. Donald Winicott, a prominent clinician, uses the phrase "good-enough parenting" to describe what most of us do. Although this perspective is preferable to the "good" versus "bad" view of parenting, it seems to me that "good enough" still involves a value judgment that can be somewhat troublesome. I prefer the phrase "uneven parenting" as a description for what happens in most homes. We should reserve the term "dysfunctional," if a label must be used, for families of serious abuse.
Fortunately, critics outside the field of therapy and therapists themselves are beginning to question the overuse of "abuse" and "dysfunctional," or at least the counterproductive effect these labels can have on families. It is interesting to note that a recent lecture by Bradshaw was titled, "Blaming Morn and Dad: Has it gone too far?" Maybe he's getting the message. If so, this is welcome news. Bradshaw has certainly been a leading contributor to the psychobabble lexicon — albeit with the best of intentions.
When are psychological terms appropriate in describing parenting? And when is parenting not "uneven" but truly harmful to a growing child?
Many therapists help their clients heal the pain of genuine abuse by using these terms. They believe that clients who get in touch with memories of parental incest need to see their experience as abusive — which it was! — and abnormal —which it was! By holding on to the word "abusive," these clients often feel stronger if they choose to confront their parents with their pain and anger. Other clients may realize that a parent's frequent statement that "I wish you were never born" played a significant role in their depression and thoughts of suicide. These individuals see their parents as emotionally abusive — which they were! And there are parents whose interactions with their children can certainly be experienced as "toxic" if the children have developed no defenses to counter constant criticism and heavy-handed manipulation.
It is understandable for therapists to fear that labeling such therapeutic terms as "psychobabble" can become a way for parents to avoid admitting really serious mistakes in parenting.
Well, it would be nice if all parents who have really been abusive to their children would stand up and apologize, even though they may not have intended to hurt their child. After all, although apologies can't change the past, they can allow the person who was abused to feel that her pain is understood and that understanding can help her heal more quickly. In my experience, however, parents who have been abusive in the classic sense seldom acknowledge the full impact of their past behavior, if at all. It takes a long time and a great deal of courage for such parents to admit their mistakes. Those of us who already feel guilty for our uneven parenting can, unfortunately, become defensive in the face of our children's accusations if they are accompanied by extreme and negative labels.
The issue for us as parents who are disappointed in a grown child — and who wish to stop the family tug-of-war — is to acknowledge that, while we don't like the labels our child may use, we still need to be honest with ourselves. We must somehow find the courage to look at the various ways we affected our child's current problems or at how we influenced her interpretation of childhood events. For those parents willing to be honest, the second part of this book offers many suggestions for ways they can explore their role as parents — without guilt or labels.
What Satisfied Parents Have to Say
Despite the potential for guilt and a parenting game fraught with pitfalls, why are so many parents satisfied with how things turn out? Are their standards lower than those of parents disappointed in the results? Is there something they know that we don't?
Operating on the proposition that "satisfied parents" might have something to teach "disappointed parents," I interviewed dozens of parents whose relationships with grown children were clearly adult-to-adult. In these families there was mutual admiration and respect expressed by both parents and children. Most of the children held responsible jobs or were likely to move up the ladder of success eventually. A few of them had chosen not to pursue the careers they were capable of achieving, yet their lack of ambition did not particularly bother the parents. Several sons were openly gay.
Often claiming that they didn't know what they did "right," the parents were humble concerning their contributions to the sense of responsibility and psychological health of their children. However, their stories lead to some interesting observations, not the least of which is that there is no correct way to raise children. These "successful" parents shared no single, outstanding trait or parental decision that could be interpreted as the magic ingredient every parent needs when playing, or analyzing, The Parenting Game in order to be satisfied when the game is over and their children are grown up. The rules in these homes were often very similar, if not identical, to the rules in the families of disappointed parents.
Nonetheless, some characteristics of these parents, taken as a whole, are of particular interest:
When most of these parents started their families, they discussed the values they wanted to pass on and how they planned to do it. High on their lists was spending time with children and letting them know they were loved. They did not believe financial "success," either theirs or their children's, to be nearly as important as "integrity."
For many of the parents, extended family and church reinforced their values. Youth activities mitigated against drug use. One family deliberately moved away from a family-of-origin they perceived as problematic so they could develop a healthier support system elsewhere.
Many parents in the survey came from families that were alcoholic, abusive, and neglectful. Although a few of these parents had therapy somewhere along the line, in the majority of cases a primary ingredient in helping them overcome difficult backgrounds seemed to be their determination to raise their children in a healthy environment. As one parent said, "We looked at what mistakes our parents made and simply decided we weren't going to make those same mistakes." Such an attitude certainly puts an interesting twist on the "I can't help being dysfunctional because my parents were dysfunctional" trap into which some adult children have fallen.
Parents did not give unsolicited advice to grown offspring. Typical was one mother who, when asked by a friend why she would agree to pay for her son's major in college (a liberal arts pursuit unlikely to lead to financial rewards), answered, "Could you make a decision for somebody else's life?"
Some of the children of these satisfied parents were involved at one time with drugs and/or alcohol. Their parents' efforts to straighten out these children were not necessarily different from those of parents who were not successful in stopping their child's abuse. The main reason a child became clean and sober appeared to be the decision of the child that he wanted to be clean and sober. This doesn't mean that these children "just said no" to drugs. But being in a recovery program did not appear to be essential, although often it was helpful.
Several expressed the view that God lends children to parents, who must do their best and then let God finish the job "with the cooperation" of the adult child.
The one characteristic that was shared by almost all of the satisfied parents was a father who was involved in family life to a much greater degree than were most fathers of that generation. This was consistently true whether or not the parents were divorced. Somewhat untypical, however, was one father who, denied access to two children by his first wife, said he had "no feelings" about how they turned out. He feels neither guilty nor responsible for the fact that both of them have difficulty with jobs and relationships. On the other hand, he received custody of the two children from his second marriage and has a close and rewarding relationship with them, is aware of his feelings, and is able to communicate those feelings to his children. It is interesting to note that even when these satisfied fathers could not talk freely about their emotions, they communicated with their children about many things important in a child's world.
The Influence Ordinary Parents Have on Their Children
It is said that if you are satisfied with your sex life, your satisfaction with sex occupies 15 percent of your emotional energy. If you are dissatisfied with your sex life, your dissatisfaction occupies 85 percent of your energy.
A similar statement can probably be made about disappointed parents. When things turn out pretty much as expected, parents give little thought as to how much they have influenced the outcome. When things don't turn out as expected, parents often give a great deal of thought to the role they played. Eventually, most disappointed parents turn their attention and energy to other problems. In the mean- time, they may wish they had a formula that could tell them how much they have been responsible for their child's situation. I have often wondered what percentage of Matthew's problems I was responsible for and what percentage he was. Just how guilty should I feel?
Would things be different for Matthew today IF I had insisted on family therapy when Matthew was a teenager; IF I were less uptight and more easygoing; IF I hadn't gone back to work when he was seventeen; IF I had attended more than one of Matthew's polo matches when he was goalie; IF I had been more aware of his need for praise; IF my own self-esteem had been higher; IF we had joined a church or other organization that could have reinforced our values; IF, IF, IF . . .
Although, as noted earlier, the source of much pain and suffering can be traced to parental abuse, evaluating the uneven parenting of average, imperfect parents is tricky. There is no proven, direct correlation between specific parenting decisions and the personalities and choices of children.
If it were possible to develop such a perfect formula, it would need to resemble the intricate, highly complicated designs of Rube Goldberg. The formula would probably begin with the number of times a parent attended back-to-school night, times the number of hugs to the third power, minus the number of times the parent failed to recognize the child's need for special attention, plus the number of times the parents expressed praise for work well done . . .
Acknowledging that my perspective is no more, or less, accurate than the theories of many others who analyze The Parenting Game, I have developed an "equation" concerning the various influences that go into making us the people we are. This observation is based upon my personal experience and that of my clients and upon information I gained in interviews with both satisfied and disappointed parents. Although arbitrary, when I've shared this formula with clients and colleagues they're agreed that it makes a lot of sense.
Except in cases of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, in the great majority of families we can divide the influences on a child's life into three fairly equal categories:
The decisions and personalities of both parents
The child's physical and mental attributes, temperament, and choices
A combination of the environment outside the home and circumstance
The Decisions and Personalities of Both Parents
It takes two to tango. It takes two to make a meaningful marriage. It takes two to parent. Although mothers have been conditioned to accept the lion's share of responsibility for child rearing, fathers and mothers provide different, complementary influences on how their children will function later in life. I believe that the influence most parents — note the plural — have over the way their children turn out is approximately one-third of all the factors that help create values and personalities.
This means that mothers, who are only half of the parents of each child, have contributed only one-sixth of all the influences on a child's life. If you are a mother who has been burdened with overwhelming guilt, notice what this view of parental influence can mean to you. You can take off a few layers of the guilt you've assumed is all yours and start looking at other factors that have helped shape your child, including your husband's one-sixth influence.
It is important to remember that even when a parent is partially, or totally, absent from the family through divorce, death, or desertion, the absence and lack of involvement of that parent is, in itself, an influence! The absent parent's influence on his children is based on the fact that they are deprived of his experience and his point of view — whether or not that view would be beneficial if shared.
Some single mothers will resent sharing "parental" influence for their child's success with a non-contributing father; they understandably want praise when things go well. They definitely deserve a great deal of credit for their efforts. And perhaps much of how well, or poorly, their child does can be traced to how they parented. However, single mothers, and those with inactive husbands, cannot do their job of parenting from a female perspective AND demonstrate what it means to be masculine at the same time. They can only give a woman's view of what they think a man's perspective is, or should be.
My limited survey of satisfied parents cannot be used as a statistically valid study for the relationship of a father's participation in child rearing and how likely the parents are to be satisfied in The Parenting Game outcome. Nevertheless, I am impressed with the fact that, as stated earlier, almost all the satisfied fathers I interviewed communicated more openly with their children than did the fathers in those families in which the parents were disappointed in how things turned out. Conversely, most, if not all, of the disappointed single mothers reported that their child's father was almost, or completely, noncontributing both in finances and time spent with the children.
I am drawn increasingly to the conclusion that fathers are a vitally important influence on "how children turn out." If mothers are to be held to a higher standard of responsibility than fathers, where is the mechanism by which they are supposed to overcome their partner's lack of involvement?
Fortunately for future generations, growing numbers of fathers are beginning to appreciate the importance of participation in the lives of their children. One man writing to Ann Landers said his relationship with his five-year-old son was "the best thing that ever happened to me, except maybe meeting his mother. I feel sorry for men who think working an extra day a week or running off with their buddies is more important than raising their children to be loving, compassionate people. When my little guy says, 'Daddy, you are my very best friend,' it is the highest compliment I will ever receive."
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© Copyright 1994, Arlene Harder MA, MFT, Reprinted with permission
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