How We Separate From Our Parents

With little communal support, this is uncharted territory

I’ll be online with paid subscribers next Sunday (January 28th) for our first monthly session to explore various themes in psychology and in our lives. The focus this month will be on the work to Separate—also the topic of today’s post. These will be intergenerational community gatherings with space for questions and sharing. We’ll start at 10 am PST / 6 pm GMT and meet for an hour. I’d love to see you there! (Paid subscribers will receive a Zoom link in advance.)

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At some point in my early 20s, my mother initiated a conversation with me about the importance of transforming our mother-daughter relationship into one more fitting for two adults. I held the green flip phone that I had for years after college up to my ear. It was winter. I was kicking snow around with my boots as I tried to make sense of what she was saying. This conversation had not developed out of a problem between us. We had a very close relationship. If anything, the issue was just how close we were. My mom didn’t want to inadvertently hold me back, she explained. She didn’t want me to miss out on living my own life because of any identification I had with her life. She worried that our connection might inadvertently prevent me from finding my own path.

I’ve thought a lot about this conversation over the years. Sometimes, I think about her leadership when I hear clients desperately struggling with their parents. I’m grateful to my mother for having had the foresight to start that conversation with me, maybe even more so because she didn’t have all the answers. She didn’t know entirely how to explain what she was thinking nor did she know the right path forward, but she knew it was important and she highlighted a developmental issue that I would chew on for years—and would, in part, write a book about.

We have very thin cultural modeling when trying to mature the relationships between parents and children when those children become adults. What might have once involved supporting an adult child as they got married and established a new home is now: school, school, more school, and then years of ambiguity. The transformation of gender roles and heteronormative expectations has been liberating for all of us, but it has also meant far muddier guidelines for growing up and for changes in family dynamics.

Parents, grandparents, and Quarterlife children all feel this gap of guidance and there’s essentially nothing in the dominant culture to help. We’re all in a quagmire, aware of it, reading headlines about adult children living back with their parents and Quarterlifers struggling over the holidays when visiting home, but we have little sense of what to do about it.

The first pillar of adult development is this work to Separate from the relationships that defined one’s early years. It doesn’t always mean physical separation, though that can certainly kick-start changes. It never ends with physical distance, though. Many people can live thousands of miles away from their parents and feel that almost nothing has changed. Difficult enmeshment doesn’t shift because of distance, it just goes on pause. The same is true for an over-identification with or pedestaling of one’s parents: it might be invisible for a long time, but any attempts at genuine intimacy with others will force a more well-rounded and discerning perspective of one’s family of origin into focus. The work to mature our relationships with parents can be remarkably subtle but also critical to creating healthy futures.

I should add, because families come in countless different forms, that I think this is as true for absent and deceased parents as it is for present and living ones. The work of discernment, self-awareness, and communication will just take a very different form.

In societies worldwide, alloparenting—caretaking shared by adults other than one’s parents—was once far more common than it is now. More people had strong communities from which young people could wander off and find themselves, and then return if they wanted. We had a larger network of adults from whom we could differentiate and ask for advice. There were also traditions and rituals around coming-of-age that extended beyond mere celebration. The work of maturing parent-child relationships was a community affair.

Today, good, open communication can make a world of difference, as can clear boundaries when communication proves impossible or overwhelming. Therapy, of course, and the healing of past trauma for all parties can support the development of clarity, empathy, and mutual understanding. Honest discussions about financial support can also be game-changing.

When parents are in a position to help their Quarterlife children with money, clear communication is needed to determine genuine need versus how support might actually hinder the development of self-reliance. There aren’t hard and fast rules for any of this. Quarterlifers who have access to money are often terrified to live on their own or to turndown whatever financial support their parents offer, but they tend to also feel trapped in old dynamics and expectations as they try to Build a new life. (Mixed feelings are a hallmark of the Quarterlife years.) Quarterlifers without access to money, meanwhile, fantasize about having a parent who could help, and they know exactly what they’d ask for and how much they’d need.

Whatever the topic of the conversation, any attempts to forge a new dynamic are valuable.

Ultimately, the goal of this kind of communication is to build trust and to transform a relationship originally based in service and dependence to one of mutuality between adults. Relationships between parents and their adult children have to be founded on respect and the attempt, at least, to see the other fully. To make these changes happen, everyone needs to engage and be willing to enter uncharted territory, together.

What has been most helpful for you in shifting dynamics with your parents and/or children? What do you wish could happen?

Fukusa (gift cover), 1900/12, late Meiji period; Art Institute Chicago