Letters to the Editor
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increasingly?
I was trying to remember where I read or heard this, then I realized it was a story my mother told me. Ha!
She says that a friend who worked in the ER told her that when men die, they may say just about anything. When women die, they call for their mothers.
My mother is my best friend - I wouldn't ask her about sex, but I do call her when I read something interesting and want someone to talk to about it. She's one of the few working writers I know locally. Am I dependent on her? Not financially. Am I more dependent on her than she was on her mother? Hmm. She and her mother had a troubled relationship, based mostly on the fact that my grandmother was a glamorous actress and my mother was never glamorous. They did call each other every day until the day of my grandmother's death, however.
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Culture is an important part of this issue.
It doesn't surprise me that the media is approaching this issue through the lens of gender, regardless of a general lack of data. After all, gender differences in parental attachment have been a longstanding psychological assumption going all the way back to Freud (we're talking Oedipus vs Electra here). One would hope that when the field studies mentioned here actually come in and there is some real, you know, information to report that the same paper would publish a follow-up article. One does not, however, think that is very likely.
This issue could be very productively approached through the lens of culture rather than just gender. I remember working in a residential program for adults with mental illnesses, and getting a 19-year-old Mexican American woman on my caseload. My white supervisor immediately jumped to the conclusion that this woman had an "enmeshed" relationship with her mother because she and her older siblings periodically lived in the mother's house. The mom kept showing up to (horrors!) support her daughter. When my supervisor decided that these visits had to be minimized, both mom and daughter were extremely distressed. It seemed to me like my supervisor was imposing her own cultural framework for the way families should function on a family that was functioning relatively well under very difficult circumstances.
Also, does anyone else find the metaphor of "launching" to be rather creepy? Can't put my finger on why, exactly.
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Who's the dependent one?
My guess is that most of the people emailing this article are mothers sending it to their daughters with a note wondering, "Why aren't WE this close?"
Or maybe that's just my mother.
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It's a generational thing
We interviewed a 20-something not too long ago for an open position at work. Everything was going great, until we were ready to make an offer and the candidate told us that she'd have to check with her parents first! There is nothing wrong with running important life decisions by people you trust, but a simple, "I need to think about it and get back to you" would suffice. Also, the way she said it was as if she had to ask their permission! Like, "Hey, can I sleep over at Elizabeth's house?"
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No it's really very simple
27 is the new 16. Childhood in America now extends to nearly age 30. Ever watch the movie "Garden State"? It's a coming of age story for people who are 27. That's sad. Young women are involving their moms because that's what immature children do.
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I see it
It starts at the top with Paris Hilton. "It's not fair! MOMMM!!"
And it trickles down. I walk to work in an urban environement every day. You cannot imagine the amount of young women walking around cluelessly with a iced coffee in one hand, a ridiculously huge bag hanging off the elbow, wearing sunglasses the size of their face, and gabbing non-stop on their unneeded blackberry at 8 in the morning. Who in the hell are you all talking to. Each other?? Mom? I imagine someone the other line having to remind these girls to put their left foot in front of right and repeat.
They may not be increasingly dependent on mommy, but they are certainly increasingly less dependent on themselves.
Can't help but laugh at:
young overweight women who think they are godesses getting a pedicure talking on a cellphone. That will make me laugh every time.
We are so far away from what our bodies were designed to do.
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Then again...
If so many 20- and 30-something women are so "close" to their mothers, how do we account for another recent "trend" among this group...planning and paying for their weddings "themselves" (ok, maybe with some token input from the groom) rather than using this occasion as the last/best opportunity for mother-daughter bonding, as was the case in previous years (and still is in many subcultures)?
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Where are these mothers and how can I get one?
Sorry to say, I'm past the halfway point of my 20s now and no increased closeness to my mother has arrived... if anything, I'm closer to cutting her off and never speaking to her again than I've ever been.
All I get when I read these stories is that the authors probably have parental relationships like mine. I freely admit that I am *completely* jealous of others who are on better footing than I am... but not everybody is quite so honest.
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Motherhood Reversal: Looking Backward
I wasn't one of those 20/30 something's (I just turned 50) with strong (natural or unnatural) bonds with my mother. Most of the women I know in my age range -- raised in the very public women's empowerment era of the 1970's/80s -- in our young adulthood made every effort to SEPARATE ourselves from our mothers because "we don't want to turn out like you did!" We spoke to our mothers and visited them when we felt we had to, not because of any sense of true friendship and intimacy.
Maybe the younger adult women today are able to forge closer bonds with their mothers (who are probably about my age) because we aren't, as a generation, something to be ashamed of.
Of course, there's a flip side to this, among my age set, since many of us in our 50's now have mothers who are entering the Alzheimer's Age. My mother, age 80, is showing the beginnings of dementia, and oddly enough after years of being partially estranged, we have grown much closer over the past 5 years. I now am the daughter who sleeps on the couch, makes sure dinner is cooked and eaten, the bills are paid, the dog is fed and walked, the house is cleaned, the garden is watered, the clothes are washed. I did this partly because until recently I was job hunting, and was financially needy and she needs the help. In some respects I've become the cliche -- the child who becomes the parent.
However, I am glad that, in a "better late than never" way I was able to mend the fences that seemed irretrievably broken in my young adulthood. And luckily when she found my vibrator she thought it was a paperweight.