The parent who can’t let go
All parents love their children. At least I like to believe so.
They give up sleep, money, opportunities and sometimes even their own dreams. They nurture, protect, teach, encourage and support. When a parent has a child, life is never the same again yet one of the most important responsibilities of parenting is often one of the most difficult: Letting go.
Healthy parenting is paradoxical. For years, they teach their children to become independent, only to struggle when they actually do.
I have worked with many parents who deeply love their children but cannot tolerate their growing independence. They become upset when their son chooses a career they do not approve of, feel rejected when their daughter moves away, interfere in relationships, finances, parenting decisions and everyday life long after their children have become adults.
The intention is rarely harmful but most of the time, it comes from love or at least what feels like love.
But sometimes it comes from something else.
Fear of becoming unnecessary, losing control, loneliness or no longer being needed.
What makes this even more complicated is that many of these parents were never truly allowed to become independent themselves. Some grew up in controlling households. Others learned that their value came from sacrifice and self-denial. Some spent decades building their entire identity around being a parent. They are not trying to hurt their children. In many cases, they are acting from wounds they never knew they carried.
The problem is that children often pay the price.
I worked with a woman in her thirties who would not make nearly any significant decision without first consulting her mother. Which job should she accept? Should she move to another city? Should she continue dating someone?
From the outside, the relationship appeared loving and healthy but the reality was very different.
She was terrified of disappointing her mother. She had mastered the art of gaining approval but had never learned to trust herself.
I also knew a man who remained in a deeply unhappy marriage for years because his parents strongly opposed divorce. He knew he was miserable and the relationship was damaging his mental health yet disappointing his parents felt more painful than continuing to suffer.
The child grows up, but emotionally the parent is still driving.
The “child” may be thirty, forty or even fifty years old, but emotionally the parent remains behind the wheel. Career decisions, relationships, finances and life choices continue to pass through the same filter: “What will mom think?” “What will dad say?”
The body becomes an adult while the emotional system remains trapped in childhood.
And that’s what’s called enmeshment, a situation where healthy emotional boundaries become blurred. The parent’s feelings become the child’s responsibility, and the child’s independence feels threatening to the parent.
The consequences can be devastating.
I have seen adults develop severe anxiety because every decision feels dangerous. Some experience panic attacks when making independent choices. Others become chronic people-pleasers, constantly searching for approval from bosses, partners, friends and strangers.
Some remain trapped in abusive or unhealthy relationships because they were never taught to trust their own judgment.
Others struggle to build healthy marriages because their loyalty to a parent continues to outweigh their commitment to a partner.
Perhaps the saddest consequence is that some adults spend decades living somebody else’s life instead of their own. They wake up one day feeling depressed, resentful and empty, realizing that many of their major decisions were made to satisfy someone else.
One uncomfortable truth is often overlooked:
Some parents do not need their children because the children need help but they need their children because they themselves need purpose.
When a child’s independence feels like abandonment, the parent may unconsciously hold on tighter. Yet the tighter they hold, the more likely the child is to pull away.
Ironically, the parent who fears losing their child often creates the very distance they fear. Phone calls become less frequent and visits become shorter and that not because the child no longer loves the parent, but because every interaction becomes emotionally exhausting.
True love does not require dependency. A healthy parent understands that the goal is not to raise a child who always needs them but to raise a child who knows they can survive without them.
The strongest parents are not those whose children remain dependent forever, but they are the ones whose children leave with confidence, develop their own identity, make their own decisions, and still choose to come back, not out of guilt, or out of obligation or out of fear but out of love.
Perhaps the greatest compliment a child can give a parent is not: “I still need you.” But it is: “Because of you, I no longer have to.”
Dr. Jabir Jassam is a family physician in Ottawa.
