My friend Susan shares her struggles with parent-child boundaries today in "Grown up children and their parents" on her blog, Exploring Women's Bodies. She includes a quote sent to her by a friend and attributed to Katherine Briggs, co-creator of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The reported recipient of her words was her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, who was about 20 years old at the time.
It is the PRIVILEGE of parents of grown up children to make suggestions; and it is the DUTY of the children to give serious consideration to those suggestions.
It is the PRIVILEGE of grown up children to make their own decisions; and it is the DUTY of the parents to respect and acquiesce in these decisions.
After writing a response, including applause for Susan's thoughtful decision not to burden her son with worries which were likely to impact him more negatively than positively, I felt the need to copy and share the rest of my comment as a separate post. Those thoughts follow:
Briggs' comment to her daughter is, in my opinion, vastly oversimplified. One cannot necessarily say what privileges all parents and children can or should have. There are few, if any, one-size-fits-all platitudes that can be applied to that relationship.
I might argue that having a relationship with one's adult child is a privilege in and of itself. A parent can earn this privilege, in part, by showing themselves to be a respectful person worthy of trust and capable of nonviolent emotional closeness. Much depends on the personalities of parent and child, too. Giving advice might or might not fit well into a particular parent-child dynamic.
An adult child does not, in my opinion, have a duty to listen to or accept advice from his or her parent. All adults in all relationships have the right to say "I don't want to discuss this." While doing so might have negative effects on the relationship, it is the right of any person on the receiving end of advice to set their own boundaries. It is the duty of all people to respect the boundaries of others.
Making decisions about one's own adult life is not a privilege. It is a right. The only times I can think of when that right is removed is when the person has committed a crime punishable by the justice system, or when the adult is mentally incapacitated.
I do agree that parents have a duty to respect and accept their adult child's decisions. However, the word "acquiesce" implies permission or allowing the child to make their own decisions. Permission doesn't play into it. The adult child has a right to make decisions, full stop. No permission needed. In fact, it would be terribly condescending and disrespectful for a parent to either grant or deny permission to their adult child for anything that does not directly affect the parent.
Many times, I've pondered over what I will do when my children are grown. Under what circumstances should I give them advice? So far here's what I've arrived at:
1) I will give them advice when they ask for it, if I think I am qualified to give advice.
2) If I feel the need to offer advice, I will ask if I may advise them, and abide by their reply.
3) The only time I will give "pushy" advice that oversteps those boundaries is when I see clear, present, extreme, certain danger. Not something that I think *might* be dangerous, not a situation that *could* turn out poorly, not something that simply offends my own moral code, but REAL, BIG DANGER. I hope I never have a need to give that kind of advice.
Mostly, I hope to make the kind of decision that Susan has made - to recognize that my worries may do more harm than good to my child, and to find ways of handling my feelings other than to dump them onto my child.
What do you think about duties, rights, and privileges, as they pertain to parent/child advice-giving? I invite you to continue the discussion on Susan's post.
