All Grown Up: Nurturing Relationships with Adult Children

For Paul, Adam and Alice

Contents

Introduction

1. The Lifelong Connection

2. Emerging Adulthood

3. Parents Need Independence Too

4. Meeting and Communicating

5. Living with Adult Children

6. Crises in Adult Children’s Lives

7. Parents’ Crises

8. Conflict, Tension and Disagreement

9. Adult Siblings and New Family Dynamics

10. When Your Child Finds a Long-term Partner

11. When Children Become Parents

12. Adult Children Who Need More Support

Conclusion

Resources

Further Reading and Viewing

Acknowledgements

Index

Introduction

The relationship between parents and their adult children is one of the most important in their lives and lasts far longer than the 20-odd years that it took them to grow up. It has a huge impact on well-being and how parents feel about themselves yet it gets remarkably little attention. The impression is that once children are grown up, the parents’ job is done and the relationship becomes less significant. We know that this is nonsense, but parents are still left feeling horribly uncertain about the future when their children first leave home. From then on there’s an assumption that the relationship will carry on – or not – of its own accord, without requiring much attention or effort from either side, and that advice or discussion is no longer needed.

Yet if popular drama is anything to go by, we’re obsessed by relationships with adult children, whether it’s EastEnders or The Archers or King Lear – not forgetting real people like the Kardashians and the Royal Family. It’s an indication that people are looking for clues and reference points when negotiating relationships with their own adult children. That’s borne out by the parents who share their experiences in this book. One mother whose son is in his forties summed it up perfectly: ‘It wasn’t the empty nest that was a problem for me, it was what came next in my relationship with my son that continues to be the challenge. Like any relationship, it changes all the time and it goes through definite stages. The empty nest itself goes through stages, it’s fluctuating and progressive. But then marriage or partnership is a very different stage and when your child has children that is another very different stage. For me they were bigger transitions than the empty nest.’

There are times when parents feel at sea. Many parents I spoke to found the relationship puzzling and demanding. Parents’ great love for their adult children is mixed with irritation, anxiety and all kinds of other emotions. One mother said, ‘My son visited last night, nothing I can put my finger on, but I feel I have been run over today.’ That rang a lot of bells with people I spoke to. An encounter with an adult child can be uplifting and life-enhancing, but it can also leave parents feeling undermined or even bruised, without quite knowing why. A child’s raised eyebrow at a comment you’ve made, or a dismissive remark – theirs or yours – can leave you brooding for days.

These are complicated, delicate relationships, yet there’s little acknowledgement that they require empathy, effort and skill, just as they did when children were growing up. Much more has been written about being an adult child than being the parent of one. Guidance on parenting adult children is largely restricted to major problems and dysfunction. If your adult child is estranged or stealing cash from your wallet, you can probably find a book to help, but there’s little discussion of the everyday dilemmas and difficulties all parents face with their adult kids. That’s why I wanted to write a book about the continuing connection as it ebbs and flows throughout our parallel lives and to focus attention not only on the crises and calamities (see Chapters 6 and 7), but also on the ordinary problems and anxieties that keep us awake at night.

Because no matter how old your child is, you will always be their mum or dad. And the old saying ‘You’re only as happy as your least happy child’ remains true, whatever your child’s age. With the increase in life expectancy, parents and children are now likely to share more time on the planet than ever before in human history: five or six decades has become run-of-the-mill. This is a big demographic change: it’s estimated that one in four children born in 1900 had lost at least one parent by the age of 15, compared to one in 200 in the 1970s. These days, people like my 94-year-old mother-in-law, whose children are 67, 65 and 59, are not uncommon. Many parents of adult children now are also adult children themselves, yet it feels odd to refer to a retired 67-year-old – or indeed a 27-year-old – as a child or even an ‘adult child’. It’s a contradiction in terms and harks back to a phase of life when dependence was strictly one way.

Parents now often say they feel closer to their adult children than they did to their own parents. Marc Szydlik, Professor of Sociology at Zurich University, points to demographic changes, like increased life expectancy, that have both strengthened individual relationships between parents and adult children and added new layers of complexity. He believes that the trend towards smaller or single-child families has heightened the importance of parent-adult child relationships. Currently about 50 per cent of families in the UK have one child, and although official statistics don’t take account of families who plan to have more children (or where older children have left home), the figures do indicate a trend towards smaller and single-child families. With fewer siblings and cousins, parents’ attention and resources are more concentrated.

Meanwhile, economic pressures and instability in the job market force many young adults to stay connected to their parents. That’s not necessarily the bad thing it’s often made out to be. The boomerang generation not only fly the nest later, they may well spend most of their twenties moving in and out of home. They take longer to settle into a career and their own version of family life, with or without children, as the trend towards delaying marriage and having babies continues. These trends don’t just have a big impact on the relationship during the emerging adult phase, but in the years to come too. Parents now are involved with their adult children in many different ways throughout their lives. Yet at the same time they’re fit, healthy and keen to pursue their own separate interests.

So, it’s not surprising that many parents feel ambivalent. After all, the relationship hinges on this central conundrum: how do you treat someone who was once utterly dependent on you like an independent adult? Many parents discover that they don’t lose their primeval protectiveness, even with middle-aged offspring, yet at the same time they have to let go and allow children to make their own mistakes. Their role is to hover in the background, ready to provide a safety net, because adult children, whatever their age, still need support from time to time. Many parents have mixed feelings: they agonise about whether it’s the right thing to do and feel torn about compromises to their own independence. Ambivalence also stems from the heady mix of conflict and love that characterises relationships with adult children. It is horribly uncomfortable when children make choices and express opinions that go against what parents hold dear, but there’s not much you can do about it. The cards are stacked in the younger generation’s favour: they don’t have to do what you say, or have anything to do with you if they don’t want to.

The phrase ‘second-phase parenting’ has been coined by academics to get away from the notion that a parent’s job is done when children reach adulthood and acknowledges the important place that the bond occupies throughout people’s lives. It allows us to see the relationship in a new light, as a lifelong connection that doesn’t gutter like a candle when kids leave home, but continues to grow, change and develop. It also calls into question the assumption that independence and adulthood are synonymous. To some extent this reassessment has been prompted by the difficult economic circumstances that now shape young people’s lives. Different cultural norms also influence our thinking, thanks partly to the rise in intercultural and interfaith marriage. In some cultures it’s the norm for young adults to receive continuing support from their parents, just as adult children expect to look after their parents in old age. As a result, definitions of adulthood are slowly changing: teenagers are no longer expected to grow up overnight. Instead, the journey to adulthood is seen as a slower, developmental process that can take years, and hiccups along the way are to be expected. We increasingly buy into research that suggests that adult children can spread their wings more confidently, and be more independent, with the right kind of support – both emotional and practical – from their parents. It’s less likely to be seen as failure if young adults live with their parents.

But this book is not only about emerging adults or the boomerang generation who live at home, although there are chapters devoted to both. It’s also about the need for parents to take a long view of a relationship that will hopefully stay strong and keep evolving for many years and that makes big demands but also brings untold rewards. Adult children enrich their parents’ lives in so many ways. They open windows into areas of life we would otherwise be unlikely to encounter; they introduce us to new worlds and fresh perspectives.

That’s as long as parents stay flexible, open to change and willing to keep learning. Because nothing stays the same: events in the child’s life make ripples and waves in their parents’ lives, and vice versa. Again, it was the parents who shared their experiences in this book who brought this home to me. When I sent their quotes for approval some 18 months after we first spoke, many of them said how dramatically things had changed. Adult children who had seemed lost turned a corner, others fell in love, got sick, had babies, found a place of their own, went into therapy. The changes in parents’ lives have an influence too: they downsize, divorce, find a new partner, retire. ‘What’s fascinating is that there’s just no certainty,’ says Renate, whose three children are in their twenties and thirties. ‘When children are little it’s an act of faith being a parent, you’ve no idea how it’s going to turn out. I always thought that one day we would all arrive at a place and think, Oh, that’s how it works out, but in fact we’re still working it out.’

1

The Lifelong Connection

Being a parent of adult children feels so different from parenting younger kids that I’m not sure it should even be called ‘parenting’. To me, it sounds too hands-on, too one-sided for a relationship that is more or less equal. ‘Second-phase parenting’, coined by academics, is something of a mouthful, but it hits the nail on the head. With parents now sharing as many as 70 years of the lifespan with their children, they need to take the long view. The relationship has to be recalibrated as it keeps evolving and moves in and out of different phases. Dr Myrna Gower, a family therapist and Honorary Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, says, ‘There are several stages in parenting adult children: parenting emerging adult children; parenting middle-aged children and parenting older children. Parenting emerging adults is very different from parenting middle-aged children. My children are now in their forties and I can’t relate to them in the way I did when they were in their twenties. It’s a completely different phase of parenting. And it is determined by the age of the children, not by the parent’s age.’

Dr Gower’s view is that the idea of the empty nest can be misleading and often fails to represent the extent of the important contact between parents and adult children that continues throughout most of our lives. Perhaps it’s not surprising that I disagree, having written a whole book on the empty nest! The parents who have told me about the huge impact it has had on their lives would also disagree. But Dr Gower makes an important point when she says that the empty nest is unhelpful because it carries a misplaced sense of a break in the relationship. The transition is framed as an ending, when in fact it’s a change of gear, albeit a very dramatic one. She says, ‘If there is no ongoing expectation that connectedness between adult children and their parents is a valued element of successful adults, how do we ever evolve together?’

Everyone agrees that things get more complicated when kids are adults. Helen, who has two daughters in their early twenties, told me, ‘When you’re facing the empty nest that is obviously the focus of your mind but little do you realise what the path ahead is going to require of you in terms of flexibility and adapting.’ Kids can be distant one day, demanding the next. They say and do hurtful things. There’s more at stake, because they can vote with their feet by choosing not to see you. The balance of power has shifted. From her research Dr Gower adds, ‘Parents clearly reported that this relationship is principally based on the terms laid down by adult children. As parents we recognise this phenomenon (albeit with ongoing discomfort), as we renegotiate our expectations of children as they mature, carefully mindful of how much we value this attachment. We get a great deal out of this relationship. It feeds us in so many respects. It’s rich, they’re amazing, they keep us engaged, they keep us in touch with the world.’

That’s one of the nicest surprises for parents who had expected the connection to weaken or even fizzle out when their child first left home. Most of the time being a parent of an adult child is really great. It’s difficult and demanding, you still worry – sometimes you worry a lot – but when you stop being responsible for another person’s daily care and safety, you can relax into a more equal relationship. In many ways having adult children is even better than what’s gone before. OK, it might not be better than building sandcastles with a toddler, but it’s certainly nicer than agonising about a teenager. Lucy, whose son and daughter are in their late twenties and both live at home, says, ‘I think it’s infinitely preferable to have adult kids than adolescents. In our case they’re independent, they manage for themselves. And they care about us. They’re very generous to us, very curious about us, very supportive. It’s so much nicer because you don’t get so tangled up with them. There’s no emotional drag going on, or so much worry, or irritation – well, obviously there is occasional irritation and I’m sure that’s mutual!’ What’s so special is that the toddler and the teenager are still present in your adult child and the way you were together back in the day continually shapes your relationship now. Celeste Ng’s description of a mother looking at her nearly adult child in her bestselling novel Little Fires Everywhere is so apt: ‘layered in her face was the baby she’d been and the child she’d become and the adult she would grow up to be, and you saw them all simultaneously, like a 3-D image.’

THE NEW CLOSENESS BETWEEN PARENTS AND CHILDREN

There’s also a new closeness between the generations. A cynic might say it’s just because young adults need their parents’ financial backing in a way they didn’t in the past. Clearly that has had an impact. But most of the adult children I spoke to value the continuing connection with their parents highly. They’re proactive about seeing them because they enjoy their company, not out of duty or because they want something. Meanwhile, the balance of support is constantly shifting. Adult children give their parents good advice and support as well as vice versa and it’s possible to have grown-up conversations about all kinds of things. You can’t be friends with a teenager, but you can be friends with an adult child – although there will always be an extra dimension. Theresa, a single mother of four children in their twenties and thirties, says, ‘I used to only be a parent. Now I can be friends with the children much more than before. You can’t be friends until you’ve done the parent bit for a long time. It’s lovely to have got to that stage.’

Marc Szydlik, Professor of Sociology at Zurich University, points to the demographic changes that lie behind this new closeness and the growing importance of intergenerational relationships within individual families. Increased longevity is part of it, while the trend towards smaller families, with fewer siblings and cousins, has heightened the significance of parent-child relationships. Professor Szydlik’s research, published in 2016, found evidence of increased family solidarity all over Europe. And contrary to all the hype about intergenerational spats between ‘snowflakes’ – over-sensitive millennials – and baby boomers – the supposedly well-off, selfish, post-war generation of parents – only 5 per cent of the families he studied spoke of frequent conflict. It seems that these dismissive stereotypes don’t hold much water within individual families.

Steve, who has a married daughter in her early thirties, two grandchildren and a son in his late twenties, says, ‘I really like the relationship I’ve got with both my kids now; it’s great watching them grow as adults. I like the fact that we’re having much more adult conversations. It’s less of a parent-child relationship and more equal; the fierce protectiveness I felt for them when they were young has diminished. I learn a lot from them both. Last week Sean and I were sitting in the garden talking about life and work and marriage, and I thought, you’ve got a wisdom way beyond your years. He’s very laid-back in a way that I sometimes haven’t been. It makes me think I could take a leaf out of his book, and just relax a bit more into stuff. I didn’t have that kind of relationship with my dad; we weren’t open with each other, and he certainly never hugged me. But I think that’s just the way society was in the 1950s.’

This openness to keep changing and learning – not least from our kids – is important. It’s a mistake to get stuck in the past, with ideas about what children used to be like and how the relationship used to be. The classic is when a mother says, ‘I’ve made your favourite – gazpacho,’ and her son says, ‘What are you talking about? I hate gazpacho!’ Parents need to keep up with the changes in their children’s lives, interests and tastes, and alert to the subtle shifts in the dynamics between them. The family therapist Judith Lask says, ‘The best relationships have a developmental trend to them. They adapt as the needs of the relationship and the needs of the family or circumstances change. If you get stuck in a particular relationship it can be difficult. My grandmother had ten children, eight of them boys. Right up until she was in her eighties and they were in their fifties and sixties she treated them as if they were children, and they acted as if they were children. In consequence they did not all give her the help and support she needed in her older age.’ Equally, children need to be open to the way their parents keep changing. It’s part of growing up to accept parents, warts and all, and make allowances for difficult circumstances. Rather than jumping to the kind of unforgiving judgements teenagers often make, children’s views in adulthood tend to be softer and more nuanced.

PARENTS’ INFLUENCE DIMINISHES

Key to the evolving relationship is accepting that your influence as a parent is waning. It’s a process that started in childhood and gained momentum in adolescence, but it still takes some getting used to. Friends, partners and the prevailing zeitgeist all jostle with parents for influence on an individual’s values, ambitions, career, political views, where they live, what they eat, how they spend their spare time. Upbringing is only one part of the jigsaw, although hopefully it provides the same kind of reliable growth medium as humus-rich compost, its nourishment ingrained at the roots.

Parents are often taken aback when their adult children behave in ways that don’t chime with values they hold dear. They can make parents feel past it and irrelevant. You can’t tell adult children what to do any more, although most parents find subtler ways to express their disapproval. An adult child’s stance has more solidity than transient teenage rebellion. One father described how, when his son was 19 or 20 and they argued about conspiracy theories or capitalism, they both still came away feeling that ultimately, Dad knew best. That is no longer the case now that the son is in his thirties.

It’s particularly disconcerting when this first happens. The best parents can do is respect their children’s ideas and preferences, otherwise the danger is that communication shuts down. However, they don’t have to agree. Helen says, ‘My daughter is becoming a different person. She’s very passionate about the different causes she espouses – currently veganism. So something new has become very important to the child that as a parent you’ve had no input into. Whereas in a way, when they’re younger, you facilitate their interests.’

It’s equally upsetting when they disapprove of you, whether it’s how much you drink or your views on trans rights or your love life. Again, this isn’t the same as teen outrage. It’s a weightier assertion of a different viewpoint from someone who is very much their own person. You might notice it more when they’re in their twenties, but it’s just as likely when kids are middle-aged. Children have an unerring sense of knowing how to push their parents’ buttons: even a jokey or throwaway remark cuts to the quick. Of course, it works both ways. Throughout your lives you continue to have a huge emotional impact on each other. What you do, say and think of each other matters more than you expect. Dr Myrna Gower explains, ‘We don’t want to disagree with our adult children; we want them to think like we do. Yet we don’t always like what they do and what they say: who they partner with, how they spend their money, the colour they paint their houses, how they parent… it just goes on! And when they disapprove of us, it’s so painful, it’s agony – even the littlest thing is painful. There is this ambivalence between us and our kids that makes the relationship very difficult for us as parents. That’s why it’s so important to normalise this ambivalence.’

It was a real lightbulb moment when first Dr Gower and then one of the mothers I interviewed brought up this notion of ambivalence: the complicated mixture of feelings parents often have about their adult children, and the sense of feeling torn in different directions. It makes so much sense to me. You want to help if they ask, but at the same time you want to get on with your own life; you want to let go but the connection exerts a powerful pull. You want to treat your son like an adult, but on some level he will always be the baby whose nappy you used to change. Renate, who has a son and two daughters in their twenties and thirties, says, ‘I feel more ambivalent as my children become more independent and in charge of their own lives. If they have the same expectations of me that they had when they were more dependent I feel a very strong resistance. One example is if they phone and don’t check that it’s a good time for me to talk. But the ambivalence is not just around them, it’s about what I want too.’

Research suggests that the closer the relationship, the greater the feelings of ambivalence. And since mothers tend to be closer to their children, they often feel more ambivalent than fathers. Similarly, daughters often feel more ambivalent than sons, who are more likely to simply keep their distance if they have negative feelings. Ambivalent feelings often come to the fore during transitions that affect both parent and child, such as marriage and leaving home. And it seems that mothers feel more ambivalent towards adult children who haven’t yet established independent lives.

STAGES AND MILESTONES OF ADULTHOOD

1. The transition to adulthood

The transition to adulthood is a joint enterprise between parents and their children that gains momentum in the years before they leave home, when they are teenagers or even younger. Parents facilitate self-sufficiency in all kinds of everyday ways, by encouraging their children to cook, or ride a bike to school, or learn to drive, or open a bank account. They can nurture emotional resilience by helping their children to understand that it’s normal to feel out of sync and a bit sad during transitions, such as changing jobs or moving house or leaving home, and encouraging them to talk about how they feel. Growing up in a family where people are honest when they’ve had a bad day, rather than either pretending everything’s lovely or being a drama queen, is a good grounding. Dr Ruth Caleb, an expert in young people’s mental health and well-being, has this advice: ‘By being authentic about their own feelings parents encourage children to be authentic about theirs. They need to know that it’s a strength, not a weakness, to ask for help. It’s also critical that they are able to enjoy their own company, by finding a hobby or pastime they enjoy doing alone; so many young people find their own company challenging and seek the constant company of friends, often online, rather than enjoying their personal interests.’

All the time parents are there, hovering on the sidelines in case their teenager needs help. As children gradually need less support and become more self-sufficient in different areas of life, so parents’ confidence in their abilities grows. More subtly, parents are also adjusting to their own changing role in relation to their child and learning to step back. Dr Myrna Gower explains, ‘In the teenage years the relationship with the child begins to transition into something different and requires adjustments to our parenting. Similarly our parenting in relationship with emerging adult children does not happen one day after the other. This stage of parenting happens over a long period of time. The rather old-fashioned empty nest idea is that you parent your children like children over whom you’ve got all this influence, then they leave home and it’s gone. The absurdity of this idea is in our lived evidence that it rarely happens that way. There is huge preparation as we move from the