They Leave and Cleave

Is my Mother Button Flashing? (Mothering Adult Children) Introduction Knowing when to retire from one’s life’s work is easier for some people than for others. For me, the appropriate age and stage have arrived, but I am having a problem. I am stuck fast in the job I have had for most of my life partly because I don’t want to quit and partly because I don’t know how. My life’s work has been wife and mother to three children and an assortment of foster children, and my office was my home. With my youngest child now aged thirty-five, my retirement is overdue. But the break is hard to make when I am still living at the office. The old chair in the den has been re-upholstered, but it’s the same old chair that held presents too large to go into the Christmas stockings many years ago.

My ‘co-workers’ call periodically but no one has mentioned to me that my department has been phased out. My mother-heart shows up for work regularly. My maternal instincts, which my children fondly call ‘her mother button,’ are still in place; I’m just not sure what is appropriate anymore.

The Bible study I attend on Tuesday morning has helped to open my eyes. Several of the young women have small children and they frequently share their struggles to be godly wives and mothers.

Like the retired doctor who happens upon an accident and remembers instinctively what to do, my latent mother-button begins flashing with wisdom as I listen to the latest crises of these young mothers. I am taken back to the years when I faced many of the same struggles myself. As my young friends explore ways to deal with their problems, I catch glimpses into the lives of my own grown children, seeing reflections of myself and my interactions with them, their spouses, and their children. I begin to see their lives from their perspective. I see myself from their perspective!

Little children and the problems of adjusting to marriage were stressful for me just as they are for my young Bible study friends. Pressures come at them from many directions. Yet the women who ought to be their strongest supporters, their mothers and mothers-in-law, are stressing their marriages instead. These young women share many positive things about the mothers in their lives, of course, but a lot of what I hear scares me. Sometimes the words and actions of their mothers and mothers-in-law seem so grievous I wonder that their adult children sustain any relationship with them at all.

The women who so long protected and provided for their daughters don’t seem to grasp that the hierarchy is no longer in place. Mother is no longer to be checked in with or pleased; her daughter is now her equal.

Calling on old memories, I have sympathized with their stories and have even tried to explain a mother’s reasons or reactions to her daughter, but I have found myself wondering, “How do my own daughter and daughters-in law feel about me?” Every strained situation I’ve ever had with them has come to mind; I’ve never been in the running for ‘Mother of the Year,’ but I felt I was blending pretty happily into their lives.

A wise woman builds her house A foolish one tears it down with her hands. Proverbs 3:1

I want to be a wise mother who builds her house; one who nurtures healthy relationships with her adult children. But how? “There are no perfect parents, and certainly, no perfect parents-in-law,” I console myself. “I must be in the top half of the mother-spectrum. Surely!”

That takes some of the pressure off. I may not be doing it perfectly, but then who is? My own mother wasn’t a 10 in the ‘Mother Department.’ And while my mother-in-law was a 10 in my eyes, she rated only a 4 or 5 in the eyes of some of her other children. Same precious woman, differing perceptions. And perception is everything. Who am I in my children’s eyes? How could I know their true feelings about me? It matters little how I see myself!

Realizing how much frustration, anger, and alienation are caused by the way we mothers deal with our adult children, I began looking for the book that would tell me how to do the mother-thing well, or at least set out some minimum standards. Having worked for more than 20 years on the frustrating job of parenting little ones, I didn’t want to blow it now that they were grown…now that I had a chance to enjoy them as delightful adults.

A hundred strategies for raising little children float around our culture. Most parents have read at least one book or magazine article on what to do with a toddler and when to do it. But who has read a book on what to do when your child has children of his own? Who has written the book that spells out the privileges and duties of a mother when there’s an in-law child involved in the mix? I needed the book! Sweet relationships with my married children, both flesh and blood and the in-law variety, seemed entirely too important to leave to the off-chance that I would get it right. I wanted a clear view of myself in the mother-mirror.

In the year 1900, only twenty percent of all forty year olds had two living parents. By 2000 fifty–nine percent of forty year olds had both parents alive. So the issue of mothering adults is increasingly important. (New York Life bulletin)

The men and women who are being stressed and blessed by their parents, in particular their mothers and mothers-in-law, have valuable insights, so I asked couples of all ages to share the ways in which their mothers and mothers-in-law have done well or poorly. I have learned from them, and hopefully you will, too.