Defining Healthy Boundaries in Parenting

My post last week, Defining Healthy Boundaries and Setting Limits, was an overview of the implications of healthy boundaries and limit-setting in adult relationships. Some comments and feedback I've received on this topic and also my post on Codependency prompted me to explore these topics further. How do these important concepts play out in young adult/adult - parent relationships?

In my therapy practice, I work with adolescents and adult patients and as I do not have specific expertise working with children under 12, I can't properly address boundary issues with that population. For a good discussion of boundaries in the child-parent relationship, I refer you to Implications of Parent-Child Boundary Dissolution for Developmental Psychopathology: Who is the Parent and Who is the Child? by Patricia K. Kerig, PhD and some of the many other books on the subject.

What's wrong with your parent being your BFF (Best Friend Forever)?
Although a close relationship with a parent can be a healthy, important aspect of growing up, I often hear adolescents and young adults describe their mothers as "friends" or "just like a sister." That always sends up a red flag for me. How can you parent someone who sees you as a sister or friend? In our popular, celebrity culture, we are bombarded with examples of this - the most extreme being the mothers or fathers of (underage!) alcohol/drug-abusing celebrities who seem to implicitly approve of their children's behavior, often to the point of going "clubbing" with them!

But what of the "normal" folk? Kristen King, who writes the Lively Women blog, forwarded me a link to this recent New York Times article by Stephanie Rosenbloom, "Mommy is Truly Dearest." The article describes young adult women, living on their own who may check in and talk to their mothers as many as 4-5 times a day. And the content of these conversations? One woman tells her mother about the quality of her sex life with her husband.

Beyond the blurred boundaries of these relationships, the article talks about a level of dependency not seen in previous generations.

Additionally, parent-child contact during the college years has dramatically
increased. Professors say that many students these days stroll around campus
talking into cellphones — and not to one another. It is not surprising, experts
say, that some of that behavior spills over into the post-college years,
including a reliance on parents to continue to pay the bills.

Some level of financial dependence on parents during the college years is to be expected. But a recent Wall Street Journal article "When Kids Don't Leave the Digital Nest" described a 29 year-old woman, who although gainfully employed, still has her cell phone bill paid by her father! Of course this can be a way to maintain communication with your adult children - no doubt one of the perks of this arrangement for the parents.

With this high level of parent-child dependence AND codependency, how do children learn to be autonomous? How do young adults learn to have appropriate relationships with authority figures like bosses? Without adequate boundaries modeled for them in their parent-child relationship, they have no point of reference for healthy, productive behavior within these relationships.