The achievement of autonomy is one of life's great triumphs, but it is not easily won. While there are always differences between individual children when it comes to how rapidly they become autonomous, what I have noticed after carefully observing thousands of families is that the family climate has much more to do with how quickly autonomy is achieved than a child's temperament.
Parents are often surprised to learn the many ways in which they are actually supplying the very chains that ultimately tether their child to the family's orbit, creating an environment in which it is inordinately difficult, if not impossible, for a young adult to launch herself into a new and distinct trajectory.
One way to understand this is to imagine that every family is balanced on the fulcrum of centripetal (pointing inward) and centrifugal (pointing outward) forces:
Centripetal forces imbue the new generation with a sense of connectedness, loyalty and tradition-they function as the glue that holds the family together and accounts for its on-going continuity.
Centrifugal forces imbue the new generation with a sense of freedom, initiative and innovation-they function as the lubrication that enables the family to remain a family while allowing its members to leave, and to enter, and productively adapt to, a changing world.
Though both centripetal and centrifugal forces are necessary for healthy functioning and growth, often a family will teeter back and forth between too much centripetality and too much centrifugality, or some sort of conflicted combination of the two. As long as the imbalance is temporary and alterable, significant and lasting difficulties tend not to arise. However, when an imbalance between centripetal and centrifugal forces takes root and begins to establish residency within a family, healthy functioning and growth are invariably compromised.
With this framework in mind, when young adults display hesitancy in striking out on their own, it can be understood not as a flaw or defect in them, nor in their parents, but as a symptom of an imbalance or conflict between these centripetal and centrifugal forces.
In my experience, families in which young adult development seems to be hobbled or hindered belong to one or more of the following three categories:
When centripetal forces dominate, young adults feel overwhelmed by their loyalty to their family-they are not able to successfully leave home because leaving home is tantamount to a betrayal of their parents, and they see any significant life that is lived outside of the family's structure as a violation of love and trust. The guilt that these young adults feel as they consider growing beyond or turning away from their family is so powerful that they regularly, and sometimes inventively, find ways to sabotage their own development.
When centrifugal forces dominate, young adults feel as if they have been, or are being, prematurely ejected from the family orbit-they are not able to successfully leave home because they don't believe that they have absorbed enough of the psychological nutrients of love, nurturance, and support necessary to make the daunting journey towards self-reliance.
When centripetal and centrifugal forces are misaligned, young adults find themselves in conflict-they are not able to successfully leave home because they are being asked to fulfill divergent missions for their parents And not being able to effectively navigate between these inconguous assignments stops them in their tracks. I call these Mission Impossible families.
One of the realities of child development that I find most fascinating, and most relevant during the launching phase, is that children are innate problem-solvers, and that what we define as a child's "problem" is actually and invariably a child's attempt to "solve" a problem. As adults, we often think of children in problem-based modes, but children are generally thinking in solution-based modes.
So when we look at a young adult whose reluctance to leave the nest is, from a parental perspective, a problem, it is, from her perspective, a solution. In these cases, reluctance becomes a maladaptive solution to the imbalance of centripetal and centrifugal forces, though often working at the expense of her future growth and happiness.
In subsequent posts, I will provide more specific descriptions and examples of Centripetal , Centrifugal and Mission Impossible families so that you can better identify, and if necessary modify, the forces that characterize your family.
