When Does Postparenthood Start?
Post-Parenthood starts when your kids are old enough to vote and lasts as long as you do. It’s the final evolution of your role as a parent, and it requires what may be the most difficult task of all: acknowledging that they are adults, with the right to lead their own lives, make their own choices, and pursue their own dreams, regardless of whether or not you approve.
That sounds easy, but it isn’t.
You raised them to be strong, independent, and think for themselves, so why are you worried while they’re doing it? You want to have an authentic, intimate, and loving relationship with them, but why are they always too busy, distant, or disinterested?
Does it seem like they’re taking so much longer to grow up than you did that you wonder if they ever will?
Are you trying to cope with fallout from their troubled past? Reeling from current difficulties in their lives, like addiction, depression, dependence, mental or physical illness, legal or financial problems? Are you still trying to solve those problems for them or taking responsibility for their actions? Concern over grown kids who are failing to thrive is a major cause stress in midlife parents!
Or maybe they’re doing just fine - it’s you that’s having the problem. Letting go of the role that defined you for over two decades is difficult if it also feels like letting go of them, especially when you’re not only unsure of what you can do for them but also confused about what you should do for them. Conflicts about how, when and why to help grown kids is a major cause of stress in midlife marriages!
But…when you and they make a successful transition to a relationship that’s based on mutuality, friendship and respect for each other as adults instead of the imbalance of power that reigned when they were small and you were big, when you had all the control (or thought you did) and they had none, wonderful things begin to happen!
You can concentrate on your happiness, not theirs. You can let go of the burden of their problems and free them of responsibility for your expectations. And even when time and distance tug at the ties that bind, you’ll become what you always wanted to be – people your kids would choose as friends even if they weren’t related to you!
4 Responses to “When Does Postparenthood Start?”
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Welcome,
A skilled coach and life boundaries consultant whose expertise, advice and assistance can improve your relationships with your grown children, parents and other family members, friends and colleagues and help you balance your needs with those of others and your personal and professional obligations and commitments… Jane Adams has spent over two decades researching and reporting on how Americans live, work, and love, and especially how they respond to social change. A frequent media commentator, she has appeared on every major radio and television program. The author of eight nonfiction books and three novels, she is a talented communicator, and an expert in managing personal, professional and family boundaries, dealing with grown children, coping with change, and balancing life and work. A graduate of Smith College, Jane Adams holds a Ph.D. in social psychology and has studied at Seattle Institute of Psychoanalysis and the Washington, D.C. Psychoanalytic Foundation. She has been an award-winning journalist, a founding editor of the Seattle Weekly, and an adjunct professor at the University of Washington. She is the recipient of the Family Advocate of the Year award from “Changes,” an organization devoted to improving relationships between parents and adolescent children. |
My husband and i are taking turns and sometimes together to help our son who had an 8 month manic episode at forty. He is now seriously depressed. He is under the cae of a pschologist and a psychiatrist. We also got a second opinion (which irritated his Dr here) at the Mayo Clinic in MN. They seem to think the manic was medicine induced because of the gastric bypass absorption issue.
He never had one before and none in our families. It is takiing a long time to find the right combo of drugs to help him out of the depression. He was in the hospital 10 days, and then did out-patient talk therapy for two weeks. Which they admitted did not work for him on the last day.
My question , my three other children think we are enabling him by staying with him basically all of the times for two months. We live in FL over half of the year and in six weeks we hope to leave. Now we are frightened to go. This is tearing all of us apart, something I never thought would happen. Several of our older children think he is taking advantage of us by baiing him out of
his finanical problems when manic. They think he is not being brave enough to confront the problems at work etc. he made while manic. He has been working 6-8 hour days hard physical labor in his garage or helping us but of course only when we stand their and push him like a child. How far can parents go and when do we dare start to let go??
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