When to Fire Your Parents

All parent-child relationships changeas the children grow up.

By PT Staff, published on March 01, 1992 - last reviewed on August 30, 2004

There comes a time in everyone's life when you've got to stop talking to "Mom" and "Dad" and start connecting to your parents as peers. It's not so much a question of how you see them or what you call them, but more a reflection of how you see yourself.

We're not ready to dismantle the hierarchy much before 40, says family researcher David Lawson. Until then, we're busy gathering the necessary prerequisite--an identity we can call completely our own.

During the past decade, family theorists recognized that gaining personal authority within the family system is a critical stage in life--sort of the booster phase of launching. They also saw that for adults to begin an adult relationship with their parents, they have to be fully different from them. Lawson finds that doesn't begin before age 30. And for most people it's 35 to 45.

"That's the time for developing a healthy sense of self and renegotiating the parental relationship," Lawson reported at a meeting of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. Several measures of interpersonal relationship shift by then:

o People display lessened tendency to involve their own kids in their marital disagreements--suggesting there's less of that negative binding pattern in their parental relationships.

o Overinvolvement with parents decreases.

o There's less feelings of intimidation by parents, indicating less fear of disagreeing with them.

There's no magic to age 35, Lawson insists. Our culture extends adolescence into the 20s, especially for the middle class. Then we need time to become economically independent and well-established in an intimate relationship. Becoming a parent is part of the requirement, too; having kids brings to the surface issues in the family of origin that must be resolved.

Ponder this: Postponing childbearing, a hallmark of the baby boomers, is likely to delay the day they end the parental hierarchy. Isn't it just like them to find a new way to delay growing up!