Parenting Grown Children: What Dr. Spock Forgot to Tell Us

We're the Aging Parents Now: How do our grown kids see us?

Another weekend in June, another grandchild is graduating from high school. We are winging our way thither for a pre-ceremony celebration. While we sit on the airplane waiting to land, we wonder: What will we look like to our son and his family? We haven't seen them in person in a long time (thank you, Covid). Will they see how we've aged? We're slower walkers now. Sometimes we forget to stand up straight. Will we look like old people to them?

A vanity, yes. But still. We want to be seen as energetic, as parents who have come to visit, are helpful around the house and are able to play ball with the kids. That's how we see ourselves, even as we know there are limits on how physical we can be. (Kick the soccerball with a granddaughter? Maybe a few touches.)

What we learned on this trip is that everything's relative. Yes, we've aged. Yes, we're slower than we were. Long walks with our son and various family members are no longer three to four miles; more likely to be one or two. On this trip, we arrived on the heels of our daughter-in-law's parents. They had been there for a week and left three hours before we arrived. They too had slowed down a step or two. Fiercely independent and hardy folks, they live a nine- or ten-hour drive away from their only child--and, unlike us, with no easy airline flight back and forth. They had always maintained --not in these words but in words to the effect--that "over my dead body" would they move from their beloved Maine to live near their child. And yet, health issues were threatening their well-being; they, too, are getting older. On this visit when their daughter brought up the subject of their moving to her city, they were receptive to the idea.

My daughter-in-law was part relieved--if they moved she could be on hand when they needed help. But also part alarmed: There was the recognition that her parents were aging and struggling to maintain their independence. It made her sad to realize that change was coming and soon. It made me sad, too. When my mother became frail and ill, I remember feeling that there was a turnaround in our relationship. In effect, I had to become her parent. That's the direction we parents of older grown children are heading--if we're lucky or healthy enough to get there.

photo: Sunset by Maia Lemov

 

Observation: A dad realizes his daughter is all grown up. So does his mom.

"And then suddenly you turn around and they are all grown up..."

This is the lament I found on Facebook by a dad who posted a photo of his daughter dressed up for her high school's Senior Ball, looking sophisticated and ready to take on the world. The posting seemed to capture the moment the dad realized what lay ahead: His daughter had become an independent young woman who, come September, would no longer be living at home with her parents.

But here's the thing about that plaintive sentiment: It was posted by my son, about my 18-year-old granddaughter, and I couldn't believe how far both of them had come. Suddenly you turn around and....

 

 

Our Daughters' Naming Rights: Free at last to choose what name to use when they marry.

There is something primal about my generation's desire to see a family name carried forward through marriage. In its simplest, most traditional form this means our sons marry, have children, and bingo! the name moves down the line. The wife's family? Well, they lose the name game. The link to their family history is broken.

But we no longer live in hide-bound traditional times. Today, daughters marry and may choose to keep their original name or they and their spouse may devise a combination--a hyphenation of last names or a new name made up from bits of each family name.  Sons, along with their spouses, may change their names to the newly devised combination.

Life is so interesting; name changes and the reasoning behind them so fascinating--although not so easy for the traditionalist generation to accept. As one of the cards in a deck of Lojong (Tibetian Buddhist sayings) my daughter made for me, puts it, "Don't Misinterpret. We don't get wise by staying in a room with all the doors and windows closed."

On a recent visit to my daughter and her family--for my granddaughter's high school graduation--we found ourselves caught up in a discussion about the decision women today make about their names when they marry. I remembered when I married--at the ripening age of 25 (relative "old" for my generation). I was starting my career as a journalist but had published only one or two stories. I was not yet an established or recognized byline. I was going to take my husband's name. My boss a Time Inc.--a woman ahead of her times--urged me not to do it. I was deaf to her suggestion. This was the 60s and I was of the generation that, as teenagers, we scribbled our fantasy married names on sheets of notebook paper whenever we had a crush on a boy.  Besides, I was excited to take on a new name with fewer syllables than the one I had been born to.

My daughter married in her 30s with her career more firmly established than mine had been. She had authored a book and had a recognizable name in academia. She kept our family name, which her father confessed he found thrilling. Her daughter has her father's name, which my daughter says occasionally causes confusion when she calls her daughter's schools or doctors.

There's also a young woman who is like a goddaughter to me. She's the daughter of my best friends who are now deceased.  When my "goddaughter" married (in her 30s), she and her husband took the same name--a  combination of both their names. This kept a link to their own family names and careers but now they and their daughters have the same last name.

WHat's the history here of women adopting their husband's name? TUrns out it dates back to the 9th century and something called the doctrine of coverture in English common law. Under this doctrine, women lacked an independent legal identity apart from their spouses.

Psychology Today follows up on that historical note:

At birth, women received their father’s surname; when they were “given away” at marriage, they automatically took their husband’s surname. The phrase “giving away the bride” was intended literally—under the doctrine of coverture, women were property, transferred from husband to father, and largely prohibited from owning their own property.

Mirel Zaman, a blogger on Refinery29, was lamenting her decision to take her husband's name (she made her maiden name her middle name and dropped her middle name). She writes that she felt she lost a piece of herself. Beyond that, though, she researched more recent history. What she found was that well into the 20th century, women had to fight state governments if we didn't want to change our names when we married. States could make us take our husband's name in order to vote, open a bank account or secure our own passport.

It wasn't until 1975 that the last of the state laws requiring a woman to take her husband’s last name after marriage had been eliminated.  Zaman writes,

"This was thanks to the women’s rights movement, in which marital names became a core issue insofar as they pertained to a woman’s personal liberty. It was such a prominent issue that the number of women keeping their birth-given surnames hit an all-time high in the 1970s, according to a small 2015 Google Consumer Survey analyzed by The New York Times’  The Upshot. That figure dipped in the more conservative 1980s, before rising again each subsequent decade.

How do the psychologists at Psychology Today see the fallout in the 21st century if women make name choices that run counter to tradition?

Women face censure for nontraditional name choices. Women who retain their birth surname are seen as selfish and uncommitted to their marriage and family .... Observers may hold women with nontraditional surnames to higher standards of “performance” as wives. Needless to say, this censure is not applied to men who retain their birth name—as long as the possibility of men changing their name remains largely unconsidered and invisible, men’s retention of their name appears natural and inevitable.

The writers also make this point:

As long as women are subjected to unequal societal pressure to change their surname, the practical and professional costs to name change are disproportionately born by women, as are the psychological costs of losing an individual identity.

Hard to believe that a little more than fifty years ago states could put our choice of name under a husband's thumb. And yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same.* That said, our Betty Friedan moments back in the day have helped our daughters to move the "married name" ball down the field--even if their daughters will have to move it further along.

*In 1849, French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

 

Graduation Day: Traditions in the time of Covid

Middle- and High School graduations are in high season. Some schools are providing zoom-only events--grandparents can watch from the comfort of their home screens. But with the weather warmed up and the outdoors deemed safe by the CDC, the in-person event is also happening. And we're allowed to attend.

School rules vary but last weekend our granddaughter graduated from a school that was able to hold an in-person outdoor ceremony. Not that it fit all the traditional markers. Each graduate could have six people sit in their pod--six chairs huddled together and set at least six feet from other pods.

The pods were well spaced not only from each other but from the "podium" and from where the graduating seniors were seated in chairs six feet apart. Everything was spread out for health-spacing purposes, which meant that our pods were far from the action. (The equivalent of the nose-bleed section.) Still, we were there. When the graduates walked in (traditional Pomp and Circumstances on speaker system) it was hard to tell one student from the other--the gowns, the caps, the distance. 

A pre-ceremony email set out the rules of attendance:  Masks on the way in; masks on the way out. No socializing with other families before or after: Deliver your child, listen to speeches, watch your child receive their diploma and then take them home.

The sun was shining. It was a hot and beautiful day where the breeze was just enough to ensure covid-safety, especially with everyone masked and most guests and graduates vaccinated. Socializing happened. How could it not? Of course, we were from out of town so we knew no one to socialize with. We could watch as our daughter and her family met her child's friends and their families. How pleasant it was for them. How joyful. A major stepping stone in their child's (and our grandchild's)  life: Achieved.

To be honest, there were moments when we the grandparents felt like hangers-on--a bit left out. Was it the recognition that we are no longer center stage. Our children and their children have the starring roles now. As they should. But it wasn't that. A year of no in-person visiting had left us in an information vacuum.  We hadn't been around to pick up the small details about friendships made and the small triumphs and disappointments of our grandchild's year. The things too minor to mention in a zoom call but in the air when you visit in person. That's why at a celebratory dinner with our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter we had trouble following the conversation about our grandchild's various friends and what they would be doing this summer, about the funny challenges of the senior year, about the underlying meaning of the valedictory's speech.

Was it worth the trip? You bet. We are so fortunate to be around and healthy enough to make the trip. It's what we do. We wouldn't have missed it. Especially when, as we were walking back from a morning-after shot of coffee, my daughter said, "It meant so much to all of us that you were here."

We're the audience that takes notice. We're a necessary part of the on-going play.

photo: graduation day, June 5, 2021

Anger Provocateurs: When relatives play favorites with our adult children.

Hell hath no fury like a parent whose child has been treated unfairly by others. Or whose close relative favors one of their children over another. A wave of inchoate anger rises even when the children are adults and making their way in the world.

A Social Qs column churned up this barrel of hurt. A reader wrote Philip Galanes that her sister, who had been relatively estranged from the reader's family, "made a large cash gift to my eldest daughter, who is a doctor, and gave nothing to my younger children, who earn less." The reader, who noted that she and her sister had been raised in a home filled with "unhealthy competition," asked Galanes if she could speak to her sister about this painful show of favoritism or should she let it go.

Galanes advised the reader not to raise the issue with her sister "unless you're prepared to rehash the dynamics of your childhood."

Check in with your kids instead. Ask them how they feel about this. You may be surprised to learn that the care you took in treating them equally will pay off now when others don't.

I have my own deeply buried experience with a situation similar to that of the reader's. My brother played a negligible role in my children's lives--he never called or sent a card on a birthday or attended any events that marked passages of their childhood. . Then suddenly he decided to show up for my daughter's graduation from an Ivy League school. He showered her with a large cash gift and took her and her roommates out to dinner. The next year, when my son graduated from a lower-profile college, my brother was a no-show and a non-acknowledger (no congratulatory phone call or note to say nothing of a gift) of the important passage in his nephew's life.

I like to think it was all about my brother's ego: He was dazzled by the Ivy League; it wasn't a personal statement about my son. Nonetheless, it stung.

So, lo these many years later, I took Galanes advice and asked my children about my brother and his track record with their college graduations. (I couldn't talk to my brother about it; he died several years ago.)  My daughter, well past her graduation days, remembered the discomfort of an uncle with whom she was not close paying so much attention to her and her friends and treating them so lavishly. She reminded me that neither she nor her brother "had a relationship with him and that's kind of sad. But I remember how mad you were."

My son brushed it off. He barely remembers any role my brother did or didn't have in his graduation.

So I guess the pain is all on me--and that's as it should be. Galanes is right on this count: Like the reader, much of my anger was not just at the way my brother treated my children but related back to the dynamics of my childhood.

Hell's fury might be when those dynamics are visited on your children, but the upside is that my children don't have the emotional overlay to be scarred by it.  

painting: Paul Klee, View from Red