Mr Schmidbauer, you say that demonising parents has become a mass sport.
Google «false self». You will find a flood of information about how parents have damaged their children's self-esteem and what needs to be done to repair the damage. Adult children declare their parents to be narcissistic and accuse them of being responsible for their false self. By this they mean the façade they present to the outside world, which does not correspond to their true personality but is the result of conforming to their parents' expectations.
The stronger people feel connected to each other, the harder it is to deal with mutual hurt feelings.
What do you think?
We easily fall prey to popular psychological models. Sons and daughters compare their mothers and fathers with images they have of really good or really bad parents. They derive these images from self-help literature, from popular texts about an inner child that lives on within them, from case studies about trauma and from arbitrary interpretations of such concepts.
In approximately every second health insurance application for funding for analytical therapy, there is direct or veiled reference to a mother who has not mirrored her child sufficiently or supported their autonomy adequately. This development has a lot to do with the romanticisation of the parent-child relationship.
What do you mean by that?
There is much greater closeness than was the case in previous generations. This has many positive aspects, but also downsides: the stronger people feel connected to each other, the harder it is to deal with mutual hurt feelings. This closeness is also reflected in the fact that parental care today extends far beyond childhood.
Autonomy is not a gift. You have to fight for it.
It is normal for children in their twenties to be supported by their parents. Against this backdrop, a complaint I often hear from adult children is paradoxical: they lament that their parents did not encourage their autonomy enough. But autonomy is not something you can receive as a gift.
But?
You have to fight for it. Against children of the same age and older children, for example, who were the most important socialisation and educational authorities in our history. Today, everything rests with the nuclear family, with parents who are keen to cooperate and give little cause for resistance. If the child nevertheless seeks distance, they are distressed. Adolescents could fight against authoritarian parents, but they are overwhelmed by offended ones. In addition, many overestimate their parents.
In what way?
A client of mine, who was a psychologist, had a long-standing conflict with her mother, who had retired after many years as a parcel sorting assistant. Once, the daughter came to the session in tears and reported that she had travelled four hundred kilometres to visit her mother, who once again had nothing better to do than slip her a banknote and ask her when she was finally going to get pregnant. The daughter said she felt her mother did not see her.
What did she mean by that?
That she doesn't want money from her mother, but rather that her mother finally understands what she has achieved: the effort she has put in to fight her way through university from an educationally disadvantaged family, all the challenges that entailed. According to the daughter, her mother is not interested in this, she only asks about her grandchildren. This time, she gave the money back, which hurt her mother's feelings. But she is tired of denying herself just so that her mother thinks everything is fine.
It is an important step in maturing to neither overestimate nor devalue one's parents.
What's going wrong?
The daughter assumes that her mother possesses the same level of sophistication and reflection that she has acquired through education – but her mother is overwhelmed and does not understand what her daughter is talking about.
They say that adult children have better opportunities to understand their parents than vice versa.
Young people are fitter, more mentally agile and often better educated than their mothers and fathers. It is an important step in maturing to realise one's physical and mental superiority over one's parents and thus acquire the ability to neither overestimate nor devalue them. Those who cannot take this step will blame their parents for their problems – which is a typical middle-class phenomenon and is related to the family utopia that is widespread there.
Namely?
Children should become more educated, more successful and happier than their parents. The more effort this requires, the more gratitude begins to play an ominous role. Parents develop fantasies that their child should thank them for their efforts by developing in the right direction. Conversely, children also develop fantasies that their parents should be grateful that they have struggled so long to overcome all kinds of hurdles: the child practised the cello for their parents' sake, the parents financed music lessons for their child's sake.
If the hoped-for success does not materialise, the parents' expectations often backfire: children defend themselves against experiences of failure by claiming that they would have achieved more with better parents. Unhappy adults will search particularly intensively for childhood traumas if they feel ashamed or guilty about not having achieved ambitious goals.
Parent-child conflicts often stem from the desire to be right. What helps is mutual basic recognition – and humour.
Some actually had parents who manipulated, humiliated or abused them.
Certainly. But the majority had sufficiently good parents. They made mistakes, but allowed the child to develop normally. A childhood marked by traumatic experiences is one thing, justifying separation issues with explanations of trauma is another .
What helps when positions are entrenched?
Parent-child conflicts often stem from the desire to be right. Both sides long for a relaxed relationship but cannot find it. Parents bring photos to therapy to convince their child to be as happy as they once were. The adult child feels manipulated and provides counter-evidence.
The willingness to work together on conflicts deserves mutual recognition. My advice: humour! By that I mean understanding that we are different from what we had imagined, we don't quite fit together, but we try to enjoy what is possible. The pragmatic mother may not be the most empathetic listener – but she may be the right one to laugh heartily with.
