With less than two decades difference between us, my mom has always felt more like a friend than a parent. Growing up, we openly discussed topics that many parents shy away from such as boys, sex, and her personal experience with drugs and alcohol. My parents divorced when I was eight years old and, as I grew older, my mother made no mystery of their relationship struggles and the affair that ended their marriage. The lessons I learned from talking so openly about her failed relationship with my father, in my opinion, positively impacted my own approach to relationships and marriage.
We were open with one another. It's a dynamic to which I credit much of my success as an adult. I have learned from my mother's mistakes. I've saved myself the heartache of many a misstep, because I've always felt comfortable talking through with her without the fear of judgement or disappointment.
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I recognize that my mother's peer parenting is unconventional. I first became aware of this when I entered my teenage years, and my girlfriends expressed shock when I openly relayed the details of a date within earshot of my mother. But as an adult and now a mother myself, it's the form of parenting I plan to employ with my own daughter.
I recently read an article in New York magazine dissecting the evolution of the best friend approach to parenting. In it, Paige Williams discusses the transition from mothers who consider the generation gap between themselves and their children appropriate and perhaps too wide to traverse to the equitable relationship chosen by many of today's mothers.
"Moms have never had at their disposal so many resources allowing them to shrink the generation gap. If they want, they can practically turn themselves back into teenagers," writes Williams. The essay explores the relationship between Julia and Samantha Bilinkas, a mother-daughter pair who consider themselves best friends. They discuss the bond they share and how it differs from a friendship with a peer, a bond that according to daughter, Samantha, is less superficial and more deep than those she holds with the girls her age.
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Williams also interviews Camilla Mager, a psychologist that specializes in women, who had this to say:
"The question you have to ask on some level is what's going on in the relationship that two people of such different generations consider themselves best friends? As close as you may be to your mother, ideally on some level she's always a guiding force, someone who's been there before you; therefore you're never peers. Not that mothers and daughters wouldn't share things or that moms can't speak to relationship issues, but you're never actually on the same level. If you are, that suggests to me that the daughter is way too grown up or the mother is missing something in her life."
I disagree with Mager's assessment that in order to be friends, something must be amiss with the maturity level of the daughter or the personal fulfillment of her mother. But I think it's important to note the greatest problem with being best friends with your mother -- boundaries. Where do they lie?
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Discipline is not generally a necessity between two pals, and it can be tricky to switch from the role of friend to that of an authority figure. The role of women in society has changed dramatically over the last century. It's only fitting that our approach to motherhood would also evolve.
How do you feel about mothers being best friends to their daughters? Is it a parenting strategy you'd adopt?
- By Amber DotyFollow Amber on Babble
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