Walking on Eggshells: Navigating the Delicate Relationship Between Adult Children and Parents - Softcover

Isay, Jane

 
9780767920858: Walking on Eggshells: Navigating the Delicate Relationship Between Adult Children and Parents
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0767920856 ISBN 13: 9780767920858
Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

The perfect gift for both parents and their adult children—”a wonderfully wise and constructive intergenerational guide” that will keep you connected to the people you love most. “Read it and learn.”—New York Times bestselling author Judith Viorst

We raise our children to be independent and lead fulfilling lives, but when they finally do, staying close becomes more complicated than ever. And for every bewildered mother who wonders why her children don’t call, there is a frustrated son or daughter who just wants to be treated like a grownup. Now, renowned author and editor Jane Isay delivers real-life wisdom and advice on how to stay together without falling apart.

Using extensive interviews with people from ages twenty-five to seventy, Isay shows that we’re far from alone in our struggles to make this new, adult relationship work. She offers up groundbreaking insights and deeply moving stories that will inspire those in even the toughest situations. Isay’s warmth and wit shine through on every page as she charts an invaluable course through the confusing, and often painful, interactions parents and children can face. Walking on Eggshells is the much-needed road map that will keep you connected to the people you love most.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JANE ISAY has been an editor for over forty years. She discovered Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia, commissioned Patricia O’Connor’s bestselling Woe Is I and Rachel Simmons’ s Odd Girl Out, and edited such nonfiction classics as Praying for Sheetrock and Friday Night Lights. She’s written several books of her own, including Secrets and Lies, Mom Still Likes You Best, and Walking on Eggshells. She lives in New York City, not too far from her children and grandchildren.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

Where Have All Our Children Gone?


It was 1965, and I was pregnant with my first child—very pregnant. We lived in a university town, and I was the only working wife among the group of psychiatry residents. The other women were homebound with small children, living on their husbands’ minute salaries. We were participating in the Mommy Wars long before these had a name. The other wives were jealous of my job, my freedom, our relative wealth, and the orderliness of our lives. I made them tense. At the time, I didn’t have much sympathy for them. Competitive cooks, they didn't appreciate the Chinese takeout I served them when I entertained. They had messy kitchens, and their children were not much cleaner. Perpetually frazzled and resentful, they talked exclusively about babies, or so it seemed to me. I came to realize how difficult their job was, but at the time, I didn’t get it. I suspected that some of the wives were secretly enjoying the fact that I was now pregnant. The size of my belly meant that big changes were approaching—especially for me!

***

We were leaving a birthday dinner party Harriet had thrown for her husband. She stood at the head of the steep stairs of their graduate–student housing, two flights up in an old house. The baby was on her hip, the toddler asleep on the couch. Harriet was exhausted. Her unruly red hair had curled tightly from the effort of putting on this party. Her face was shiny with sweat. She had cooked to beat the band. Harriet had removed much of the furniture in their apartment to set up tables for forty people. She’d made bouillabaisse for us all, except for my husband, who disliked fish; it was filet mignon for him—all this on a resident’s salary.

I carefully navigated the staircase as we headed home. Harriet stood at the landing. “Just you wait,” she called. “You’ll see. You won’t have a chance to pee, much less take a bath. Your blue couch will be ruined in six months. Say good–bye to your clean house and your wonderful life.” I wept in the car on the way home. My feelings were hurt and I understood that it wasn’t a prediction; it was a curse.

***

Life as parents did, of course, wholly change our style of living, but not exactly as Harriet had predicted. Parenting small children is a nightmare and a delight. Eventually, you do get to pee and wash your hair, the furniture is recovered or replaced, and you get used to sleeplessness. You learn to change and adjust as your children grow, which is the only way to survive those early parenting years.

Then, if you’re lucky, time passes and you begin to enjoy a quiet winter hour before dawn. And in a split second, the kids are coming home long after you’ve gone to sleep, and they don’t wake up until the middle of your day. When they graduate from college, when they start out in their careers, when they fall seriously in love, you think that the job is done and the challenges have been met. That just isn’t so, as we have all lived long enough to know. When their children become adults, many parents encounter a whole new world of anxiety, miscommunication, disappointment, and distance.

The empty nest is the harbinger of this new stage, when the youngest child goes away to school and peace and quiet descend. Many people feel relief, but lingering feelings of loss and separation can wash over them. It gets too quiet. The house is too neat. People may nod when we say we're feeling blue, but we all feel the need to shrug these feelings off. This first passage is well documented. The local paper usually runs a piece around Thanksgiving weekend, describing how when a college freshman comes home for the first time, it's a new experience for parents to have a child who suddenly knows so much more than they do about the world, and every imaginable subject. Still, the returning hero savors the taste of home cooking and sometimes even sits around and relaxes, just like old times.

One friend, whose eldest child is starting college in the fall, sighed and said, “She’ll never live at home again.” Little does she know that for many years to come, vacations, holidays, and summers will be filled with the sound of her daughter’s voice, with her clothing and her moods. Her school memorabilia will clutter her room—which had better stay her room—and her term papers will be stored in the house forever. Little does she know how lucky she is that her daughter is just going away to college.

***

It’s the second passage out that we and our children don’t know how to navigate. We lack the language, we have no rules, and, most important, we don’t have the perspective that would help us enjoy this time. Having our kids leave home and go out on their own is for many parents the culmination of decades spent raising them. “We raised them to leave us,” we say, consoling ourselves when we are feeling lonely. Some people worry that staying close to their children will make them overly dependent, and others don’t want to repeat the demanding attitude of their own parents. If they place a second call on the same day, they feel guilty; if they don’t, they feel sad. It’s as if we are being told to keep a stiff upper lip, kiss the children on both cheeks, in the French style, shake them by the hand, and bid them farewell. Nobody can do that, nobody wants to, and nobody should.

Enter an imaginary Harriet, back at the top of the stairs:

“You think you’re done? You think that they’re always going to return your calls? When they don’t need you anymore, do you think they will stop by to chat? What about their wives and husbands? You might not get along with them. Life as you know it is going to take a turn for the worse.”

Welcome to the stage when many parents feel that they are walking on eggshells.

***

Of course we want our children to be independent, autonomous adults. Because parents of our generation raised our children with more freedom, we hesitate to tell them what to do. So we tell them that we are confident they will make good choices, and then we worry a lot. Some of us pray. We hope that our children will bring us their problems, their dilemmas, and their concerns, because we think we still have good advice they will want to hear. Understanding intellectually that we are no longer at the center of our children’s lives is one thing, but in our hearts our children are still primary.

So when things are not the way we dreamed, we blame ourselves, just as we always did. Women who once were certain that they were terrible mothers if breast–feeding was not working now feel that they have failed when a grown son loses a job or a daughter gets divorced. Fathers who religiously coached Little League for years blame themselves when a son cannot make up his mind about his choice of career. It makes us feel like fools when we wake up in the middle of the night worrying about a son or daughter, mainly because we think we are the only ones in this predicament.

Here’s what I have found. If you are worried that your son, who is in his late thirties, still isn’t married or that your daughter refuses to face the fact that her career is at a dead end, you are not alone. If your son is in his late twenties and still hasn’t finished college, this is more common than you know. If your child has rejected your values, know that this is happening all around you. If after you have welcomed your son or daughter’s choice of partner into the family, you still can’t meet his or her high standards of comportment, join the crowd. Some parents cannot fathom where their children come off expecting major financial...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0767920856
ISBN 13 
9780767920858
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
256
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels

9780767920841: Walking on Eggshells: Navigating the Delicate Relationship Between Adult Children and Their Parents

Vorgestellte Ausgabe

ISBN 10:  0767920848 ISBN 13:  9780767920841
Verlag: Doubleday, 2007
Hardcover