George Floyd’s death has provoked a fierce call for equality, for recognition that black lives matter. His words “I can’t breathe” have become a symbol of the horrific weight of racism experienced by black people in most Western countries both explicitly and structurally.
Before he died, George Floyd asked for his mother nine times (for an excellent article check out Lonnae O’Neal for National Geographic. As O’Neal points out, Floyd’s mother had died two years prior but that didn’t stop him reaching out to her in his last moments, calling out to the woman who had given him life and protected him as a child.
There is much anecdotal evidence of soldiers who’ve faced terror and bullets, illness and loss on the battlefield and in hospitals calling out with their last breath for mother.
While these are extreme examples of desperation and despair, I draw attention to them because in Western society, we have allowed ourselves to sever or at the very least dilute the bond between mother and child once that child becomes an adult, particularly if that child is male. Yet if on their deathbed adults call out for their mothers, we have to ask – is the typical or prescribed severing of the ties between mother and child really all that good for us? Or all that honest?
How many mothers have felt the pain of separation as their children have grown up and grown away? How many of us have said to ourselves, as well as our friends, ‘well, I can’t hang on to them forever.’ We all look at one another and take it for granted that to be a good mother is to let our children go. Somewhere. With someone else.
Teenagers often pull away physically, they begin consciously creating their own space, they mooch off to their room or hang out with their friends and really don’t want mum giving them hugs and kisses at the school gate. We might feel a bit hurt, but we accept this as natural. In many ways I feel it is. We’re not going to be holding our adult children the way we held them as infants and toddlers, nor as often. It’s not even practical if they’ve moved out of home. Our relationship naturally changes over time.
But there’s something underneath this accepted wisdom that has always niggled at me. Like maybe the loss we as mothers feel is not only valid and normal, after all, we’ve spent so much time loving our little people and watching them grow, maybe this loss is telling us something. Perhaps paying attention to that feeling of loss and pain might help both of us.
I wonder about the ways in which we associate independence, agency, power and explicitly masculinity with separation from the parental home. Particularly separation from mother. We don’t want to ‘cling’ to our children, we want them to find their own inner resources and develop their friendships and supports so that when they move out into the world, they’ll be okay.
Our adult children won’t ‘need’ us anymore. They can ‘stand on their own two feet’. Certainly, in our films and books when a son is too close to his mother the dire outcomes range from a pathetic ‘mummy’s boy’ to Norman Bate’s Oedipal Complex in Hitchcock’s Psycho.
But do we necessarily have to associate these positive qualities of independence and agency with relational distancing? Isn’t it possible that a parent might continue to have gifts of experience or at the very least support for their children as they grow? Don’t they have a unique history shared with their children that might be beneficial and might it not be important to develop that relationship with their parent in adulthood?
From the standpoint of the child, if the relationship with their mother was good, why wouldn’t they continue that relationship after they’ve moved out and into other connections? They’ll never have another mother. She is the only one who can play that role in their life. It’s quite possible that the children feel that artificial sever too when they move out of home. Just because you don’t live together, and you don’t see each other as often, it doesn’t mean that the relationship can’t evolve and continue to grow. You don’t have to grow apart. As some people find when they have children of their own, their relationship with their parents becomes even closer.
Just because a child is 20, 30 or 40 years old, doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from ongoing contact and affection with their mother. As children mature, they also see their own experiences differently. They might want to talk to their mother from the perspective of being a parent themselves or as they approach a new career or relationship. They might want to confront old patterns between parent and child that haven’t worked. The relationship continues on, even after the parent’s death.
Instead of nodding sagely and associating children’s independence with separation from mother, perhaps we might talk of relational evolution and depthing, an actual development and strengthening of the relationship with mother. If at their most desperate times, our children call out for us, and if we suffer so much (though quietly) when we ‘let go’ of our children, maybe the answer lies in a reframing of the mother and adult child bond: Don’t let them go, let your relationship ‘spread its wings’. Ask for that phone call, offer that dinner, organise that coffee catch up, don’t just step back and wave goodbye.
This post is written by Dr Ariel Moy. She is passionate about developing mother/child relationships, she has a private practice as a creative arts therapist, is a Professional member of ANZACATA and is an academic teacher at The MIECAT Institute in Melbourne, Australia.
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