Through long observation and reflection, I have come to believe that harmonious and peaceful extended family relationships are best achieved when we as adult children forgive our parents and lose our sense of entitlement in our relationship with our parents. It seems to me that this is a mark of having achieved psychological and emotional adulthood. We need to forgive our parents for their imperfections.
It is typical for younger children to see perfection in their parents. As we approach or enter adolescence, we begin to recognize that they have some imperfections. Sometimes this is quite disillusioning. In some cases, children then dismiss parents as irrelevant. In a sense this kind of thinking is a continuation of childish “black and white” thinking patterns. A sign of the achievement of psychological adulthood is when a young (or old) person comes to a realization and conviction that his or her parents did the best they could in their raising of that person and it was good enough.
A few years ago Eric Berne published a book of popular psychology entitled “Games People Play" that included a simple but useful way of thinking about happy and effective relations of grown children to their parents. He proposed three personas existing within each of our personalities–our inner child, our inner parent and our inner adult--any one of which can be active. This suggests three harmonious sets of two-person relationships, parent-to-child, child-to-parent, and adult-to-adult. While it is not inappropriate for us to let our inner child have expression at times, and some situations naturally require us to assume a parental role, adult relations are generally most satisfying when the “inner adults” for both parties are active and dominant in the interaction. This is the adult-to-adult relationship. Generally this latter type of relationship implies that the parties are equals, that there is open communication and mutual respect, that decision are consensual, each is able to take an adult’s responsibility, etc. Child and parent relationships have one party more dependent, the other superior or having authority, responsibility, or resources the other needs or wants. There may exist agendas in the latter party that are not or cannot be fully shared. Strategies for each one influencing the other party may be less open.
The child-parent kinds of relationships are appropriate when circumstances dictate, e.g., when children are children and when adults are their parents, or perhaps when an adult becomes sick or incapacitated. Adult functioning requires us to allow another to function as an adult as much as possible but also to step into a parental role when necessitated by another’s situation.
Sometimes we see dysfuntional child and parent relationships. There are parents who will not let their adult child grow up. Worse, there are grown children who still want to be a child when relating to a natural parent. As a part of growing up, we ought to aspire to an adult-to-adult relationship with our parents and hope it will last many years before, perhaps, we need to become the parent. We should rejoice when we achieve an adult friendship with our parents and take this as a badge of our adulthood.
Considering further the situation of a chronological adult continuing to play a child role in relation to their parent, some people carry into their adult years a harmful sense of continuing to be entitled to particular favors, treatment, attention, privileges, resources, etc., from their parents. In relationships, an entitlement can be defined as a sort of emotional (or other kind of) debt that one feels is owed to them by another person by some sort of natural right. Often such entitlements are assumed, and not spoken, and may not even be fully or consciously understood. People would generally agree that parents owe certain things to their children, such as love, protection, opportunities to grow, temporal provision, etc. However, maintaining these kinds of (typically unspoken) expectations in an adult relationship setting can be a cause of much grief. For example, in dysfunctional marriages there sometimes is an expectation by one partner that “If he/she loved me he/she would know that I need [a particular response or action]. I shouldn’t have to tell him/her.” Or, a grown child may feel entitled, from their parents, to a certain kind of gift, particular actions toward their children, specific financial benefits or inheritances, etc. Hard feelings, anger, alienation, etc., often result when such expectations go unmet. It is better in adult relationships to focus on what you can do for the other person and to not have large expectations about what one can or should receive. Then a person can be genuinely appreciative when a gift is received. It would be well for me to conclude, when arriving at adulthood, that my parents have given me what I needed to reach this point in life and I do not really need them to give me more.
Therefore, to help loving and satisfying relations to exist in families across generations, grown up children need to find forgiveness in their hearts for any imperfections that their parents may have possessed. It is inappropriate and self-defeating to hold others to a higher standard than you hold yourself. Also, grown children should drop their entitlements, their unspoken, uncommunicated sense that their parents still owe them something. Such feelings are destructive to family relationships. As a better alternative, as grown children we should work toward and relish a mutually satisfying adult-to-adult relationship with our parents to the extent and for the longest duration possible.
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