When I discuss family dysfunction, the question of “who’s to
blame”– the adult children or their parents – frequently arises. Emotions then
tend to run wild. I believe this is the wrong question. The fact is that all family
members are beans in the same soup,
acting out patterns that have been building up for generations and are being
passed down. The right question should always be, “How do we FIX this?”
The question of blame is often the subject of vehement
defensive reactions by the community of parents in the US, who gripe about anyone
who engages in“ parent blaming” and “parent bashing.” They want to believe that
they have absolutely nothing to do with their children’s problems, which they
like to think are all genetic or all caused by peer groups at school.
Many mental health practitioners have sided with these
nonsensical ideas. I’ve written before about a time when, at a nearby child and
adolescent psychiatric hospital, juvenile delinquency and even suicidal
thoughts were blamed entirely on heavy metal music. That way, parental guilt
could be assuaged so they would pay for their kids to get “treated” for
listening to Judas Priest. Well, at least until their insurance ran out.
So are these folks saying that even physical and sexual abuse
by parents has nothing to do with
children’s insecurities? Or their acting out? Even here, the answer seems to be
a sort of yes – people falsely opining that the incidence of this abuse is actually
minimal and that almost all of these accusations of such are false. Really?
It is true that if a therapist makes a parent feel guilty,
they are less likely to look critically at their own parenting practices or
seek help, so therapists have to figure out a way around this paradox. My
therapy model attempted to do just that with patients who were adult children facing
this conundrum.
I have also written about the massive increase in recent
years in parental guilt caused by cultural changes in gender roles. In
reaction, this has led to an epidemic of so-called helicopter parenting. That
this type of interaction is a major correlate of adolescent depression, which
means probably with the rate of suicide as well, has been recently demonstrated
in studies (for example: Wattanatchariya K,
Narkpongphun A, Kawilapat S. The relationship between parental adverse
childhood experiences and parenting behaviors. Acta Psych. 2024(243). While correlation and causation are two different things, I
believe on the basis of my wide clinical experience that in this case these
studies are indeed about causation.
Another complication of parent guilt was described in the
2/27/24 column by advice columnist Carolyn Hax. A mother described herself as being wracked
with guilt because her teenage children suffered from anxiety and depression,
despite her and her spouse loving
them immeasurably and doing their best every day to support, listen to and
nurture them. Ms. Hax of course tried to tell her that she did not screw up because
“kids everywhere are having an extraordinarily difficult time right now” and
that “depression and anxiety are way up, stress is up, mental health resources
are strained, and schools are overburdened, underfunded and understaffed.”
My fear is that Ms. Hax’s advice for her to stop beating herself
will fall on deaf ears. As I have described in previous posts, parental guilt
has become more widespread, and parents often feed into the guilt of other parents – especially if the
parents try to set limits with their kids instead of helicoptering. I can
recall other families giving us a hard time when we wouldn’t give our kids away
at college unlimited funds to do whatever they wanted.
Besides stopping parents from setting appropriate limits with
their kids or disciplining them properly, another big problem is one that I
have seen clinically but which is not described in the mental health
literature: the kids see their parents feeling guilty all the time even when there
is no obvious reason for it, and take this to mean that their parents need to feel guilty. They may therefore
act like they are more impaired than they actually are so that the parents can
continue to indulge this need. The fact that the guilt remains omnipresent in
this situation confirms their beliefs!
In a column the very next day, Ms. Hax answered a letter in
which a wife in an abusive relationship will not leave for fear of harming the
kids. The letter says “But I read so much about how kids thrive in stable families and
are damaged by splits or divorces other than in highly abusive situations. My
partner is not physically abusive but checks a lot of other boxes: yelling,
vicious anger name-calling, silent
treatments.”
How anyone can possibly believe that subjecting kids to this
sort of abuse is better for them than coping with their feelings about a
parental divorce is beyond me. And kids are smart enough to wonder about that themselves.
So how do they then interpret Mom’s
refusal to leave? Perhaps mom is using the kids as some sort of excuse because
deep down she thinks she needs or deserves her husband’s abuse? I know that
sounds bizarre, but you would be surprised.
In fact, although obviously I can’t say in this particular case
on the basis of a letter to an advice columnist, there may even be an element
of truth in this idea. The answer to what might be going on can often be
obtained by a therapist using the Adlerian question: “What would be the
downside of successfully getting out of this bad relationship?” A common
answer: "My parents would blame me and tell me I should go back to him and be a
better wife." I kid you not! Maybe because those parents themselves are in a
similar relationship. If so, we’d have to find out whether this is indeed the
case, and then ask the Adlerian question to the grandparents about why they
continue their relationship.
When people feel guilty, it leads to defensiveness, which can lead to fight, flight or freeze reactions which cut off conversations about how to solve problems. Since the problems go back many generations, I have always suggested that we just put the blame on Adam and Eve, and be done with it.
