Values and estrangement

[Danden]

Hello all,  I just want to share an article I just read: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4507819/
Estrangement Between Mothers and Adult Children: The Role of Norms and Values  by M. Gilligan, JJ Suitor, K Pillager in the Journal of Marriage and Family

I normally don't read much about these types of studies, but I came upon it as a link from another article and I was intrigued.  It's always more interesting to read a research study when I can relate to so much of it.  The researchers asked, between mothers and their adult children, what factors contribute to estrangement?  They found that having different values was a very big factor.  The risk of estrangement from having different values was 0.49, whereas the risk of estrangement from a violation of societal norms (for example, going to prison) was 0.03.  This was surprising to me.  I always knew my values were different from my M, but didn't fully appreciate how much of a factor this may play.  And how little of a factor my so-called transgressions (from  her point of view) would matter in fact.  Not that it changes anything in the real world, but it is just interesting to think about.  It's a "perspective corrector" in a sense.  It also says that the issue of different values was something the study participants (mothers with estranged children) almost always brought up on their own, even when the researchers didn't specifically ask about it.  So it appears to be front and center in their minds.  It seems the estranged child is just not what the mother expected him/her to be.

The article gives some examples of study participants who clearly had one child who could do no wrong.  That is familiar to many of us of course as the golden child.  There were also several examples of adult children who were outwardly successful in life yet disfavored by the mother.

Another interesting finding:  17% of the mothers were estranged from more than one child.  That seems very high.  Estrangement appears to be much more common than I thought, in fact extremely common.  Perhaps what is uncommon is to be like we are, to have come Out of the FOG.  This gives me a new and more positive perspective on my life.

So I just wanted to share. 

[all4peace]

I'm concerned that the entire study is based on the mothers reporting alone.

[looloo]

Danden, your last sentence in your second paragraph:

"It seems the estranged child is just not what the mother expected him/her to be."

I think this is the crux of why estrangement occurs, and that "different values" is PD code for this.  Every individual is bound to have their own values, priorities, and goals, and these will change over time.  A PD parent doesn't understand or accept this, they don't accept that their adult children are meant to be autonomous and to live their own independent lives—they consider it a personal affront if their children are no longer compliant, obedient malleable young kids.  And IMO, when asked why there's an estrangement, they'll cloak the reason in a "judgy" comment, implying that THEIR OWN values are more riteous and worthy, and that their children have gone down the wrong path in life.

[Danden]

All4peace, Yes, the study was from the point of view of the mothers.  This is useful if we want to understand how they see the matter.  From the point of view of the adult child, it is also useful because it takes us off the hook, in that our values are our values.  Even if we wanted to, we probably would not be able to change them.  The researchers didn't want to talk to the adult children, so as to not become biased in their reporting.  It would be interesting to have the same researchers (or different researchers, to prevent unintentional bias) contact the adult children, if they could be blinded to which child belongs to which parent, and ask the same questions.

Looloo, you are right I think.  "Different values" is typically PD code for not being what the parent expects.  But it is also how I see myself with respect to my FOO.  So I just have different values and it is also true that my values are not what my M expects.  It was interesting that the estranged parents in this study did assert, as you say, that the children had gone down the wrong path in life.  This was their belief even if, to an outside person, the estranged child was doing better in life than the non-estranged child.  One mother had a child in prison and in  her view that child just needed support, while her estranged child, who was not in prison, was judged negatively.  It all seems to depend on emotions, not objective reality.

[StayWithMe]

I have come to believe that parents can be jealous of their children.  And that some parents are capable of taking advantage of thier position as parent / disciplinarian / provider  to even the score.

My parents would be the first to tell you that education is VERY important.  yet, even though they sent me to a private school with a hefty tuition (for that time, more than some universities), they accused me of putting my homework ahead of housework.  That is not only keeping my room clean, but also cleaning up rooms that other family members used.

When we spent all day Sunday at my grandparents house, my father would become angry if I tried to do homework there.

My mother called me stupid and couldn't understand that if I was so smart as some my teachers told them, why didn't I have any common sense. 

For anyone who regretted not getting good grades, this is one way to level the playing field.

[Danden]

StayWithMe, Yes!  I have a similar experience.  I believe my M has a feeling of insecurity/inferiority and she is jealous of me.  She always said education was important for her children, and I believed her.  I excelled and achieved and now she resents me for it. 
She also always told me "why do you always have  your nose in a book?" and she meant it in a negative way.  So if she really thought education was important why did she say that?  It is the double bind that makes us confused. 

But she didn't allow me to have friends either, cause all my friends were a "bad influence".  So what does she really want?  She scorned me because I didn't have common sense or "experience in the world" like she had-I just had book learning, which she didn't value.  As if having experience living life is something only specially talented people have.  Or maybe it is for people who are "allowed" to have it, like her?).  She also always wanted me to do housework instead of normal kid stuff, or reading books.  That was another thing she put me down for, that I didn't do enough of that, and I didn't know what was important in life. 

I think another thing that makes it confusing is that with my own children, as I see them become adults, I do think back on my own younger days and the  hopes and dreams I had and how my life turned out.  They have their own personalities and values and are making different choices in life.  So I think there is also a bit of natural mild "jealousy", in a sense, that is inherent in life, I think.  But with the PD it is expressed to a high degree and becomes destructive, so that is the key difference.  I suppose that is the key difficulty of having a PD in your life-things may appear "normal" but they are not.  Their behavior can always be rationalized somehow.  We just have to come to the realization that the rationalization is not the reason for their behavior.  And it can be very difficult to discern that.  Hence the FOG.

[Pepin]

I have come to believe that parents can be jealous of their children.  And that some parents are capable of taking advantage of thier position as parent / disciplinarian / provider  to even the score.

My parents would be the first to tell you that education is VERY important.  yet, even though they sent me to a private school with a hefty tuition (for that time, more than some universities), they accused me of putting my homework ahead of housework.  That is not only keeping my room clean, but also cleaning up rooms that other family members used.

When we spent all day Sunday at my grandparents house, my father would become angry if I tried to do homework there.

My mother called me stupid and couldn't understand that if I was so smart as some my teachers told them, why didn't I have any common sense. 

For anyone who regretted not getting good grades, this is one way to level the playing field.

O M G.  Can I relate to this!  Except that I did not have grandparents to visit....replace that with helping NF with his home business instead. 

NF typically rolled himself into bed around 8pm.  I would quietly be working on my homework until 10pm or later.  He would wake up, come into my room and harass me for being up so late!  Y'all, I was not a 4.0 student and had to work very hard to have semi decent grades.  School was a challenge for me because of everything else going on around it in my life: being motherless and having to heed to NF's demands about whatever he needed to be done that he couldn't do himself.  UGH!  The list of things that he was capable of doing on his own in his life was very small.   

I would also like to add that I am not jealous of my children.  It brings me GREAT joy seeing them excel and take command of their own lives.  It is MY PLEASURE to take care of everything behind the scenes for them so they can just live and enjoy their lives. 

NF has often (so he claims) *whined* to others that his children have "the problem" since they all abandoned him.  Only a fool would believe that.  Three children that gave their father the boot from their lives without asking for any compensation speaks real loud.   

[treesgrowslowly]

Hi Danden,

Thanks so much for sharing this article.

The word narcissism appears 0 times in this article.

I would love to know how prevalent estrangement truly is - I think it is a hidden element and I think that children who go NC with parents silence themselves because of the intense stigma and judgemental attitudes they are met with when talking about their parents as abusive. Most people don't want to hear it. The word abuse appears in this article 3 times, and it is in the context of 'substance abuse' that a mother says her adult child has.

Perhaps estrangement is hard on people with PD's. This study doesn't seem to address that particular question since they didn't bother to consider PD's. IMHO it would be impossible to ask (most) PD's about the effect their PD had on their children.

[all4peace]

It would be a tough study to do fairly from both sides. I know my uNBPDm who raged and behaved violently to every person in our family, including my father, has felt terribly wounded and hurt by our estrangement. She sees it as "our" or mainly "my" problem and has never actually acknowledged how much trauma she caused in all of us.

[Danden]

I suppose it would be useful to do the same study, but only from the point of view of the adult children.  Even if they were talking to different children (i.e., not the children of the mothers interviewed) it could still give useful information about how estranged children see the matter, in general, as compared to how estranged mothers see the matter.  I can only speak for myself in that the principal reason for me is that I just want to live my life in peace.  I don't want to always feel I have to be on guard when I am around her and on the lookout for someone attacking me, be it her or other family members who do her bidding.  I want to be accepted, which should be normal and a given within a family, but it is not for me.  The fact that our values are different doesn't really bother me, because I am who I am.

[StayWithMe]

I don't want to always feel I have to be on guard when I am around her and on the lookout for someone attacking me, be it her or other family members who do her bidding.

My mother tries to tell me that she's just being a mother.  But there are things I just don't want to hear and when I have asked to stop raising dead issues, she just does it even more. 

[RavenLady]

My uPDm gets very very haughty around her "values." I departed from her world view long ago and definitely offend her "values" now. She likes to paint contrasts between her right way of doing things and the rest of us. But I've come to see her retreat to her "values" as defensive because she uses her dogma as a shield to protect the extremely fragile person she is inside. That's okay with me, whatever works for her and I learned to ignore it long ago, right up until she uses the dogma to attack me directly, which she unfortunately seems to do more often as I age. I think she's increasingly frustrated by how decreasingly interested I am in any of it. Those attacks were the last straw for me and why we are VLC right now.

[JustKat]

The word abuse appears in this article 3 times, and it is in the context of 'substance abuse' that a mother says her adult child has.

Interesting. When I started having really serious problems with my NPDmother in high school she told people that I was using drugs. Now that I think about it, it was an easy out for her. At one point she even framed me for underage drinking by tampering with my father's liquor bottles and telling him I drank them. I begged him to believe me but he never questioned it. Substance abuse = bad behavior. Back in those days (the 70s) there were no home drug testing kits, so it gave her a great excuse that could never really be proven.

[Just Jay]

This line from your post truly resonates with me:

"It seems the estranged child is just not what the mother expected him/her to be."

Before I had my son, I didn't recognize how unaware of "me" my parents are.  I truly thought that my son was a blank slate who would be moulded by his father and I, because that's how I was treated by my own parents. It became utterly apparent in his first year of life that humans are born with a lot of personality. You  parent the child you have, not the one you would pick off a shelf. Now don't get me wrong. My son, now a teenager, is a very cool guy. I appreciate and admire him, and wouldn't want him to be anything else than what he is.

My parents don't even know me, I've come to realize. They were convinced that I am gifted because they wanted gifted children. So I'd be shamed for being a poor student. That's just an example of many things.

[treesgrowslowly]

Just Jay,

You hit on something I have not thought about in a while. It was so normal growing up, that my parents didn't get to know me, I didn't consciously process that they had ignored "me".

I became a parent and for me it was a surreal experience that i knew my child's preferences etc because it was like being in a new universe.

Ive had To learn the hard way that I have to find ways to nurture my interests and grieve the lack of experiences. I was also painted as the gifted child because I could do so well in school.

Now I know that my intellect or "giftedness" was manipulated not celebrated. I'm working now on feeling good about my self. I can now see, in middle age, how different things would have been for me if I had been known and celebrated and loved for "me".

Narcissistic parents are like theives who are just constantly stealing from their child the whole childhood. Every opportunity to connect with the child is turned upside down instead. Instead of giving the child a feeling of confidence, love, nurturing, for passing a grade or learning a new skill or being funny, etc etc, the NPD parents take away the child's developmental milestone or accomplishment or new interest, and denigrate it.

Of course in public they pretend they are able to celebrate their loved, gifted child but it's all a show. Fake news. Lol. A lot of grieving has been needed during my recovery. Im grateful for people in this forum because most people just don't get it. Even my counsellor is convinced that my intellectual self is "me". She doesn't understand trauma and my meetings with her are limited because she focuses on my intellect. But Grieving is not an intellectual process. So yet another stage in my own journey is to learn how to identify when someone is manipulating the "gifted child" because this actually blocks my healing and serves them because its easy to interact with an adult child of narcissist who has used intellectualizing as a coping mechanism. But it is a manipulation that most therapists are probably unaware they are even doing when they do it, never mind aware that it is retraumatizing. My guess is that their intellectual, well read, clients can feel more like peers to them which clouds their judgement regarding the reality of what that client actually needs. I've been through the ringer with counselling that doesn't help and at times I have felt worse after spending the hour intellectualizing with them rather than getting help from them. Which would follow as the "gifted child" who intellectualized to survive in early life.

The real support is from people who help an adult child of a narcissist to grieve and process loss. Gifted children of narcissists survive partly by intellectualizing instead of emoting. But we cannot go through our entire life without processing the losses we've had and grieve. In adulthood we must find ways to grieve our loss.