What’s your role in your child’s new life? Is there still parenting left to do once your child has married?
When asked to write about mothering marrieds, my first instinct was to decline, because pontificating on parenting in a magazine would make it pretty embarrassing to mess up. I have to admit that when reading columns about relationships, a little voice inside me wonders if the writer’s spouse or children are snickering in the background.
Another problem with pontifications is that so much about our relationships aren’t in our control. Like anything else we take pride in, successful parenting often has much more to do with gifts we were given by Hashem and much less (than we’d like to admit) to do with our skills, principles, and theories. In fact, I think most honest parents would agree that when things do turn out okay, it’s more despite the mistakes we so often make than because of any brilliant choices on our part.
Yet, ideas kept whirring around in my head because the incredible-not-to-be-taken-for-granted gift of mothering marrieds can be such a rich and beautiful experience. Here is an adult, your child — on the one hand, so much a part of you, and on the other, so completely (and often, surprisingly) different than you. And here’s another adult, your in-law child — so completely not you (product of a different family culture, background, mindset) but on the other hand, often occupying the place in your heart reserved for birth children.
Mothering marrieds is yet another permutation of the endless dance between the poles of connection and differentiation. I offer the following three thoughts less as theory or advice, and more as meditations on the intricacy of the steps.
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