Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
I am estranged from my narcissistic mother. We haven’t spoken in five years, and I’m in therapy unraveling all the damage she did. I am still in contact with my very loving grandmother, and we have an understanding that anything I tell her about me, my son, or our life is for her only and not to be shared with my mother. Well, I sent Grandma some pictures of my little family recently, and she told me on a call last night that she had given copies to my mother, because, “She’s still your mother no matter what,” and, “She has a right to see her grandchild.” I feel betrayed, which I told her. She brushed it off, and I had to end the call because I was having a panic attack. How do I reconcile this? I feel like I can’t trust her anymore! Do I cut my losses and cut Grandma off too? Is there a way forward here?
—Disrespected Boundaries
Dear Boundaries,
I feel for you. It’s not easy to make—and even harder to enforce—the decision to cut off all contact with a close family member. When someone feels they must do this to save themself, as you clearly do, the very idea that another member of the family would make a gesture to undo that must be very painful. But you love your grandmother, and she loves you—and having her in your life may be even more important to you than you’re aware, if she’s the closest thing to a ”parent” that you’ve got. I am pretty sure that cutting her out would not improve your life. I suspect you would miss her, and your life would feel smaller.
So I think the way forward is to take a small step back: Put yourself in your grandmother’s shoes. For all your mother’s faults, she is still your grandma’s daughter. Grandma is walking a tightrope between her relationship with you (and her love for you and for her great-grandchild) and her relationship with her daughter, whom she also loves. I would imagine that your mother talks to her about you (she may make it all about herself and paint herself as the victim, but self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing people feel pain too) and that your grandmother, who wishes the two of you were not estranged, feels stuck in the middle between—I’m just guessing—two of the people she loves most in the world.
I get that what Grandma has done feels unforgivable to you, and that her refusal to apologize for doing it enrages you. But I urge you to talk this through with her. Spell out for her exactly why her sharing this photo hurt you so much. Don’t stop at, “Because I told you not to.” Lay out for her how the thought of your mother viewing a photo of your family makes you feel. Of course, telling her this will require you to fully understand it yourself (that’s a thought experiment worth making). Tell her you understand the difficult position she’s in. Ask her to talk to you about how she feels about finding herself in the middle of this.
I don’t know what the whole “script” of this conversation looks like (I know you haven’t asked for one, but people so often do, I can’t help imagining that if I tell you to talk things over with her, you’re hoping I’ll provide one), because there are so many things I don’t know—about you, your childhood, your mother, her childhood, her mother, and your grandmother’s and mother’s relationship. Nor do I know what the end result of this conversation should or will be. Do you make it clear enough to Grandma why you don’t want her to so much as speak your name to your mother that she never does so again, and tells her daughter, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk about her anymore”? Will your grandmother beg your forgiveness and ask for another chance, having come to understand your feelings of betrayal? Do you come to see that she feels so pulled apart that she cannot move forward without an escape hatch—something (or things) you will allow her to share, as long as you don’t have to deal directly with your mother? Will you insist that she choose between the two of you? (I hope not.) What I do know is that insight, honest communication, and compassion will be what moves you forward, in this situation as in so many others in life.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
My 40-ish daughter (with two children and a long-term boyfriend) has told me to stop asking for pictures of and video chats with her and her children. The relationship has been strained for years, and I’m guessing it’s time I just stepped away. She knows I love her and her kids; she knows where to find me if she needs me. But I’m not sure how to do this. If I simply step away from my relationship with her, this petulant grown child may misinterpret it as me not caring. Am I supposed to email her and tell her I’m out, but that I’ll be glad to be back in contact when she matures into a civil human being?
—Given All I Can
Dear Given,
Have you ever asked her why “the relationship has been strained for years”? Or do you know why? If you “simply step away,” do you know why she’ll read that as your “not caring”? And finally: What exactly does her maturing into “a civil human being” mean to you?
In my experience, as well as in the family relationship research studies I’ve read (a lot, thanks to my job as a family advice columnist over the last five years), things don’t fall apart between parents and children for no reason. In Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How To Mend Them, Cornell sociologist and physician Karl Pillemer writes that the adult children he interviewed often would cite “harsh parenting and parental favoritism” as well as divorce and other crises of their childhoods, while their parents’ memories of their kids’ childhoods included none of these as possible causes of strained relationships; in fact, the parents often blamed their children for rewriting the past “to play the victim.” In the family estrangements he looked at, Pillemer notes that “poor and increasingly hostile communication” between parent and adult child eventually culminated in a “volcanic event” in which one member of the family declares, “I’m done.”
This is what you are now contemplating. Before you pull that trigger (I’m not generally a fan of invoking violent imagery in this way, but I believe this scenario calls for it), please consider what your role in this deteriorating relationship may have been. Over and over, in Pillemer’s interviews with parents and children, people told him they had no idea what had happened—“and then they’d list a lifelong history of conflict, unmet expectations, and criticism of the other person.”
The bottom line, it seems to me, is beautifully articulated by the clinical psychologist Joshua Coleman, who concludes an essay in The Atlantic by reminding us that “we are all flawed [emphasis my own]. We should have that at the forefront of our minds when deciding who to keep in or out of our lives—and how to respond to those who no longer want us in theirs.”
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Dear Care and Feeding,
As the eldest daughter in a big family, I was expected to uncomplainingly blur the line between parent and constantly available babysitter. My older brother wasn’t. When I was 16, I did exactly as he had done and got a part-time (actual paying) job. My parents made me quit (needless to say, they had done no such thing to him). I spent the next two years continuing to resentfully and angrily care for my siblings—and doing everything I could to make sure I could get out of that house and go to college. I think my parents are angrier and more bitter about me leaving home at 18, refusing to be an unpaid nanny anymore, than they are about me leaving our church (which, believe me, they are very angry about). I went to college, went to therapy, and have a great life that is entirely separate from theirs. My wonderful husband is a fully equal partner and a fantastic co-parent.
Our daughter is 9 and our son is 6, so we have some time before I have to deal with the question I’m about to ask. But my husband and I disagree about how to handle future babysitting. I want to treat the kids equitably. I really want to make sure my daughter doesn’t feel the way I did, which to me means hiring a babysitter even when my daughter is old enough to sit for her brother herself, and/or waiting to leave the two of them at home alone until they’re both old enough to be responsible for themselves. My husband says that’s extreme. He has lots of happy memories of being babysat by his older brother, and later of watching his younger brother. Is my family baggage distorting this? Agreement tends to be easy for us in parenting, so conflict on this is new and worrying to me. How do we plan for this down the road?
—Babysitting Blues
Dear Blues,
You and your husband had very different childhoods, and very different relationships with your siblings and parents. I wouldn’t say that your family baggage is distorting your view of sibling-on-sibling babysitting; I would say that your determination to raise your children differently from the way your parents raised you—which is entirely understandable—and your husband’s feeling that his parents serve as a good example (which may well be true) are bumping up against each other. I suspect that even though this is the first time this has happened, it will not be the last.
Both of you need to keep in mind that your neither of your children are either of you. Your daughter, when she is old enough to babysit, may want to; she may not. (Full disclosure: As a teenager, I was often asked to sit for my almost-4-years-younger brother when my parents were gone overnight, or longer, and I resented it. I’m sure I did it badly, too—and I am sure my brother would gladly cite chapter and verse on this subject. In any case, my parents eventually gave up and left my brother with our grandparents when they traveled; I stayed home alone.) My only advice to you about this particular situation, when it arises, is to pay close attention to the actual children in front of you. Do your best, both of you, to clear your vision (which is clouded by your past—both of you). And ask your daughter, when she’d old enough, how she feels about sitting for her brother. Tell her she’s allowed to say she doesn’t want to, and that whatever she decides, she’s allowed to change her mind later. (I myself was OK with watching my brother when I was 13, but at 15, I objected strenuously.) You might discuss with your husband the possibility of paying her when she babysits—after all, it’s not, or shouldn’t be, part of the job description of a child simply because of where they land in birth order. But even if you do agree on a reasonable rate for this chore that goes beyond the ordinary everyday ones that all children should be expected to do around the house, ask your daughter if she wants to be paid. She may not—she may regard this responsibility as an honor. Remember (once more with feeling) she isn’t you.
And keep your eye out for other differences of opinion (really, differences of feelings) that are bound to arise over time. You and your husband need to keep an open line of communication about this.
Speaking of open lines of communication: I am not suggesting that you forgive or even reach out noncommittally to your parents, or that your life that’s “entirely separate from theirs” is not a fully wonderful one. But since it would seem that today is Family Estrangement Day in my column, I just want to put this resource out there, for anyone who’s reading and thinking about this painful subject.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband and I have a wonderful 3-year-old (biological) daughter. We are in the process of adopting our second child. A few months ago, my sister-in-law visited, and after learning about our adoption plans, including that our next child will most likely come to us when they are around a year old, my SIL (not a parent yet) launched into a lecture about how children who are not breastfed “will always be delayed,” how they will never be emotionally secure, and even how not breastfeeding is child abuse. I breastfed our first child, but obviously, I can’t do that for our second. I’m used to my SIL being cruel, but I was deeply stung by those particular comments: on behalf of a close friend who was recently (so, so) devastated that she couldn’t breastfeed; on behalf of my second soon-to-be child; and, finally, on my own behalf, as my mother breastfed my brothers, but not me, the only girl. All I could manage to say—to blurt out, really—at that moment, however, was that I wasn’t breastfed, to which she replied, “Well, that explains everything about you.” And then the conversation just moved on to some other subject.
I thought I was immune to her, but I cannot seem to let this one go. I find myself deeply angry about it. I keep replaying it in my head. My husband, who admits he can’t stand his sister, says I should forget about it: In their family, they never bring up hurt feelings, quarrels, or anything else negative. Once said/done, it’s over. But I don’t ever want her in my house again. What do you do when the family rule is Never Mention Past Unpleasantness? I feel like this will affect my marriage, plus I actually want to smack her, and that is not like me.
—Fuming in Albuquerque
Dear Fuming,
Your husband’s family rule doesn’t have to be yours. Indeed, it should not be yours. You don’t want to raise your children to Never Mention Unpleasantness (poor communication, as noted above, is one of the causes of eventual family estrangement—not to mention that keeping things bottled up is just a terrible way to live). Your husband is dead wrong here.
But: Do not smack your thoughtless, ill-informed, cruel sister-in-law. Meet her for coffee if you don’t want to invite her into your house right now. Or, if she lives at a distance from you and her visits are few and far between, call her up. Tell her how she made you feel. Don’t let her hijack the conversation or even avoid it: Say, “I’m going to talk now and I need you to listen.” Then tell her that she hurt you, and that thinking about what she said continues to pain you. Feel free to offer facts that contradict the nonsense she spouted (and I say this as an ardent supporter of breastfeeding!). Don’t spend too much time trying to convince her that she’s wrong, though. It doesn’t sound like she has the capacity to take things in or recognize when she doesn’t have her “facts” straight. Do tell her that you will not countenance her speaking to you this way ever again. If she stalks off—or hangs up—in a huff (or cuts you off so that you never get to say your piece), I don’t think it’s unreasonable to tell her she’s not welcome to visit anymore. Your husband will be uncomfortable with that, I know—he doesn’t want to rock the boat—but his sister has already rocked it.
I want to add that I am not advocating for your cutting his sister out of your and your children’s lives. You may decide you need to do this—in which case we’ve circled back to today’s apparent theme—but please don’t do it lightly: Any family estrangement can have far-ranging repercussions that last through generations.
More Advice From Slate
My nearly 2-year-old has been cared for full-time by his grandmother since I went back to work a few months after he was born. For me, the benefits are solely financial, as my mother-in-law is unusually sensitive and can be volatile. She is also very clingy.
