I must agree as a parent there is some comfort in thinking our children will always need us and will never be able to leave us but rationally we all know the cruelty and tragedy of raising our children to grow up and not have an identity beyond what we give them.
The sad truth is that there are more adult children ,than most realize, that never do untie the apron string just for that reason. Parents that refuse to let their children grow up, for fear that they will leave them, is a form of abuse that has been going on for generations.
Other times, it is the child that refuses to grow up. They are content and happy with being Mama’s boy or Daddy’s girl. As such, they never do have to do anything that normal adults do and they end up, many times, wards of the State, when their parents do die because they are incapable of holding down a job or making a decision. If they do marry, at anytime in their life, the marriages quickly ends due to parental interference.
Often parents will deliberately sabotage their childrens’ dreams in both preventing them from leaving home beyond a local college and if they do try to strike out on their own,they will guilt them into staying home and then it becomes a joint effort, of fear and failure, on both the adult child as well as the parents’ efforts. Many times parents want their children to forget about education in favor of taking over the family business. Never mind if there is no real interests on the part of the adult child, they will justify it with, “Look at all that I am doing for them.”
These people often live in denial or fantasy land or fill their heads full of dreams that will never take place or happen. If they did get out for a year or so and away from the influence of their parents they will relive that time over and over again in their heads. It will either become the reason for why they did or did not achieve. Remember, people living in denial or fantasy land, never have to own up or take responsibility for their own failures. Denial is permanent in their lives.
Or it will be the year they would have been a success story to top all success stories, if their parents had supported them, or in their mind allowed them to become the person they wanted to become.
Sometimes there is truth to this as many times these children will excel only to be afraid to stand on their own and have parents that will then insist they come home rather than stay and follow it through. Instead if these parents had encouraged them to try harder , we often times would have had the advantage of the next great:technologists, Doctors, Supreme Court judges, philosophers,scientists,teachers,researchers,artists,musicians,Wall street tycoon, financier, or inventors etc. It may have made a huge difference not only in their lives but also in the future of our Nation and society as a whole.
In cases ,where parents do their job, and try to encourage or teach their children to be independent and self-sufficient, it is not uncommon, that one child, will refuse to grow up no matter how hard the parents try to enforce their independence. In these cases even if the child does leave home and marry, many times they will not be able to make a decision, without first conferring with their parents or will become totally dependent on their husbands or wives if the parents do tell them they need to make their own decisions.
We often see these people lose their mates through either death or divorce and they will develop all kinds of destructive habits in order to fill the hole made by the absence of their mates. Many will be unable to go on with their lives and unable to support themselves as a result of never having made their own decisions due to their own dependency.
Regardless why parents or child refuse to do their job and make sure the apron strings get untied or couples refuse to insist on having their own space, if we never do learn to make an independent decision on our own or insist on taking on separate ideas, (no two people will ever see the same thing the same way 100% of the time) we will all find, that loss through death or divorce, will ultimately bring out the weaknesses in us.
At this time, grief and loss, will be so much more difficult than if we had kept some part of our lives or identity separate, as our own. The real danger, then of dependency, is that without developing our own identity we never do know who we are or what the purpose of our lives was and many times die quite bitter as a result of not having done so. Dependency, whether on drugs or people, becomes a crutch that will weaken us in areas that render us, irresponsible.
Joy of life and living comes from experimenting or knowing instinctively what direction and what path we were intended to take. We only recognize this through making decisions on our own and knowing that we ourselves are responsible for our own joy and happiness in life. No one but we, ourselves, can ever find out or learn this direction.
No one will ever know or understand our own dream as well as we do.The people that we allow into our lives are simply the frosting on the cake. Parents and Spouses, it is our duty, not to stand in the way of these dreams and efforts, when they are based in reality, on the part of either our spouse or child. People that are both dedicated and unselfish instinctively understand and know this, but in cases, where parents as well as adult children, always did as they were told, we as a society, only perpetuate the tragedy by repeating it.
