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Link to share: https://hanglberger-manfred.de/en-kinder-verantwortlich-fuer-eltern.htm |
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Are adult
children responsible for their elderly parents? What adult
children owe their parents 1. Adult
children are responsible for supporting their parents, but not for their
meaning in life - just as parents are not allowed to determine the meaning of
life and career choices of their adolescent children. 2. Some
parents, especially if they have symbiotic psychological structures, are in
danger of pushing their children into a substitute parent role for themselves
and increasingly taking on the role of a child themselves. This can be
extremely stressful for their children. 3. Some
elderly parents then interfere massively in the
lives and possibly in the families of their children - e.g. by lecturing
them. Some elderly parents are very good at making their adult children feel
guilty by accusing them of ingratitude. Some try to bind their grandchildren
to themselves through gifts and other methods and play them off against their
parents. For such children, a healing ritual may be useful: ("The Lake of Tears" >>>) 4. A
therapeutic family tree can help to understand the reasons for the parents'
possible child role and to use therapeutic healing rituals to resolve these
problematic roles and to separate oneself from the parents in a healthy way: >>> 5. Often
the elderly parents are not prepared to recognize and deal with their
problematic role. But the adult children can carry out the necessary healing
rituals for themselves: >>> 6. Such
healing rituals help to separate oneself in a healthy way by being able to
say NO at the right time but accepting one's life from the parents and
respecting them. 7.
Respecting the parents and honoring them as parents (cf. the 4th commandment
in the Decalogue) does not mean obeying the parents and fulfilling their
expectations in every respect. The necessary gratitude of adult children must
not lead to allowing parents to interfere in the children's families or to
pushing them to take on inappropriate care of the
elderly parents' leisure activities. 8. Some
elderly parents enter into rivalry with their
daughter's or son's spouse. They are often devalued. 9. To
prevent this, for example, the son always goes to his widowed mother after
work before going to his family. However in the long
term, this damages his marriage. 10. However for example, if an adult son despises a parent,
his unconscious love for this parent can lead him to take on the parent's
devaluation of his partner out of unconscious solidarity and then devaluing
his wife himself. 11. If
there are several children, it is important that the financial burdens in particular are distributed fairly. If there is a
"main heir", e.g. if the parents had a farm or craft business, this
person will of course have to bear the main
financial burden. 12. In
some families there are “sandwich children” or a favorite child and
"shadow children". If a child was less loved in the family or was
neglected in some other way, this child is often willing to take on the care of the parents - in the hope of receiving
the love that he or she did not receive in childhood. However, this is a
problematic mistake that can lead to two people becoming unhappy and
dissatisfied later on; because then both the caring
person and the person in need of care will have longing hands that are not
filled. It is therefore important for such adult children not to take on the
main task later on when the elderly parents become
in need of care. 13. In
relationships between a woman from Europe and a man from countries in the
global south, it is to be expected that the families there, who have always
been the only "social network", will interfere heavily in the
relationship, and usually think and act in a very symbiotic way. In such
cases, many discussions are necessary! Above all, it is important to talk
about the partner's feelings of guilt that arise due to the need to distance
themselves from their family of origin. Manfred Hanglberger |
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