Just For Caregivers

Study: Family Tensions Between Parents and Adult Children May Worsen With Age

I was a young adult when my maternal grandmother was in a nursing home and I remember my mother bickering with her at times for various reasons. During those times, I remember thinking, “Wow, I thought people outgrew that.”

When it was my turn to take care of my mother a few years ago, I learned about the stress, and yes, frustration firsthand. I was a bit caught up in my own anxiety when I was taking her to the doctor one day for breathing problems related to lung cancer, and I’m not sure what exactly I was doing at the time, but she said, “Will you quit? I’m not going to die right this minute!” That’s when it dawned on me that even though I was an adult and she was ill, we could still aggravate each other.

In fact, there’s a study that shows that adult children and aging parents do get on each other’s nerves, and that parents may be more bothered by the tensions:

The researchers asked about tensions related to a variety of topics, including personality differences, past relationship problems, children’s finances, housekeeping habits, lifestyles, and how often they contacted each other.

Parents and adult children in the same families had different perceptions of tension intensity, with parents generally reporting more intense tensions than children did particularly regarding issues having to do with the children’s lifestyle or behavior (finances, housekeeping).

(For the study, supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Birditt and colleagues at Purdue and Pennsylvania State universities analyzed data on 474 parents and adult children who were at least 22 years old. The adult children lived within 50 miles of their parents. African Americans made up one-third of the sample and the rest were European Americans.)

The study goes on to explain that tensions may even get worse as the child ages:

…parental perceptions of tension increased with the adult children’s age, particularly about topics having to do with how they interact (e.g., personality differences). “Middle-aged children may be less invested in the parent-child tie than young adult children because they’re more likely to have formed their own families and experience multiple role demands.

Of course, tensions in the family may be related to several factors, but it’s a good reminder to look at it from a parent’s point of view. They may not be enjoying some of these things any more than you do, especially when it comes to matters of their increasing dependence.

-Elizabeth Thielke

How do you handle such situations?

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