Parents and grown up children. Natalia Manukhina

all come from our families”. This phrase retains its vital importance during all our lives. There are periods when we forget about our families, but then the family becomes significant again. The values of our family are those that we get from our parents, keep up for all our lives and use as a guide in all our new relations. These values are the foundation for our prosperity and success.

      Swift processes of globalization drew the people living in different parts of the world closer to one another, but we can see that in today’s overcrowded and transparent world, which seems to offer more freedom, we feel more isolated and helpless. Sometimes we do not notice our nearest and dearest, do not understand them and find their presence burdensome. We are so accustomed to the fact that this world is controllable that we expect everyone we meet in our life to be controllable. However, the more we expect that, the more evidence we receive that in every situation there is something we cannot control, something we cannot stop or change…

      Unfortunately, our modern society still sees the conflicts, controversy and lack of understanding between different generations 1) as a norm; 2) as a source of problems for the younger generation and/or their parents, families, and the whole society. People seem to make the generation gap some kind of a standard.

      I completely disagree with such attitude. Moreover, my opinions and my personal and professional experience prove to me that we can achieve everything! Well, if not everything, we can really amount to much if we have the will. Each of us is strong enough to move mountains. Of course, that needs great efforts and sometimes professional help as well.

      Traditionally families seek consultation regarding their teenage children, but in the last few years (from about 2007) I have had more and more cases in my practice when parents asked me to render psychological help to them and their grownup children (aged over 20). Their request was to regulate relations between the adult members of their families.

      Actually the “parent-child” problem is more serious and profound than it seems at the first sight. In order to meet my clients’ demands I had to learn and understand many things myself. So, in this book I intend to share the experience and knowledge gained regarding the relations between parents and their grownup children, also grandchildren and great grandchildren.

      In the First Part I have included the opinions I was offered by grownup children and their parents who needed my help to get on better.

      In the Second Part I speak about the transformation of roles in families that occur when new generations are born.

      In the Third Part1 I have examined the dynamics of interaction of several generations from the point of view of different theoretical approaches. In this part of my book you will find answers to a number of questions that puzzle us. What is important to a particular generation? What is changed for the next one? Do values stay the same or do they disappear as they are replaced by new values? The modern systemic approaches allow us to make a significant conclusion: the evolution of Human Race occurs through interaction and not opposition of different generations. Thus, the task of making their communication more favorable and productive has become quite urgent today.

      In the Fourth Part of the book I offer the readers several episodes from the lives of those families where grownup children and their parents have already made efforts to compromise.

      In the Fifth Part I also share my own experience in elaborating psychotherapeutic strategies to help such families.

      I think it would be advisable to consider every person, family and society in whole in the light of systemic approach. Each member of a family as a biopsychosocial system undergoes some changes during their life. Consequently, in order to maintain balance in a family system during its development it is necessary to change relations between its members who have changed with time.

      Unfortunately, this seemingly simple and obvious decision is not so easy to apply in practice. Usually parents are recommended to stop controlling their grownup children and give them complete freedom to live as they like and assume the responsibility as well. However, children cannot assume the responsibility until they admit that this is their own life with its difficulties and problems, success and failure, and not something they have inherited from their parents. For that reason they continue urging their parents to let them act freely and make decisions independently, while they make their parents responsible for their actions, in this way keeping them involved in their lives.

      Strangely enough, more and more adults asking me to help them establish good relations with their parents are sure that it is impossible “to reform their parents”. The bitter truth is that we all want to have OUR OWN parents and are very afraid to lose them. Meanwhile, when people “change” they are lost forever for their family and friends since they will never be themselves again. What can we do about this?

      Of course the answer is the same: we have to change our own attitude to our parents, or rather their behavior, demands, reproaches and requests, because people usually tend to love or at least want to love their parents unconditionally. The only problem is our parent’s attitude to things, or, to be more precise, the fact that they don’t share our likes and dislikes.

      Try to recall when exactly you found yourself at variance with your parents. There must have been a period in your life when you obeyed them and did everything they told you, and tried to behave like them. Some of us undergo such period at a very young age, while for most people it continues until quite a mature age.

      Thus, your variance is far younger than your relationship with your parents and it shows that you have become mature enough to have your own point of view and you want to create something new, something your parents did not know and could not do.

      This means that your opinion, which is different from your parents’ opinion, is the product of YOUR OWN life. And the fact that your parents do not approve of your opinion makes it even more obvious that it is YOURS and not THEIRS. What do your parents have to do with your life?

      You should accept their criticism as the proof that you can make your personal choice independently from them. So enjoy your independence.

      You are the person in your family who is responsible for bringing up new generations. Consequently, if you leave everything unchanged and add nothing to what your ancestors did, then your family and, more generally, the Human Race will stop developing. That will be the end of the World since every living thing needs to develop and development occurs through change.

      Let us thank our parents who gave us everything they had and could. Now, as we have grown up, our parent’s reaction shows us where we still follow family traditions and where we replace them with new ones. In the first case we win our parents’ approval, while in the second case the novelties we introduce cause their confusion and even disagreement.

      This is the proof of our personal development.

N. ManukhinaJanuary 2011

      Part 1. Deep reflection

      disagreement, denial, accusations, loss of values, suspicions, isolation, offences, rejection, fear, alienation, running after each other and from each other, freedom and solitude, rights and duties, the choice, the responsibility, contribution to one’s own life, ups and downs… Who is accountable for all this? Am I? Or are they?

      This is the incomplete list of problems mentioned by grownup people while speaking about their relationship with their parents, or parents speaking about their grownup children. However, in spite of despair they all hope and believe that they may still achieve peace, love and harmony.

      Children against their parents

      Why do we try to find the justification for our failures in our parents and their attitude to us? Can’t we see, that by ascribing the blame to them we refuse to acknowledge that these are our difficulties, problems and puzzles and when we give them up we give up our lives?

      It is certainly interesting to find out what we

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The Third, Fourth and Fifth Parts are absent in the present English version of the book. They are included in the text of the original Russian version of the book: Манухина Н.М. Родители и взрослые дети. Парадоксы отношений. – М., КЛАСС, 2011.