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© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

 

In her memoir, "A Fine Romance," Candace Bergen (aka Murphy Brown) reflects on her closeness to her daughter as her child grew from a cranky baby into a creative young woman. Mother and daughter had struggled together through the painful illness and death of Louis Malle, Bergen's husband and her daughter's father, and the mother-daughter challenge of Bergen's remarriage and relocation from Los Angeles to New York. But it is the breach of her child's growing independence that Bergen observes in this passage:

"We do not have the intense intimacy, the giddy banter we once had. I remember friends telling me years ago that this is what happened with their relationships with their daughters. They become friends. There is a distance. There are boundaries. That will never happen to us, I thought. Our relationship is unique. Our bond will go the distance. But it has happened.  I have to cave on this."

 

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3 responses to “Observation: Candace Bergen on coming to terms with a grown child’s independence”

  1. Katherines Corner Avatar

    My baby is 35 now and I can certainly relate to this post.thank you for sharing at the Thursday Favorite Things blog hop. xo

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  2. pia Avatar

    Candice Bergen has always been somebody I admired and wanted to emulate. I think she might find that once her daughter has a few more years on her they will get that bond back
    Though most of my friends and family have incredibly close relationships with their grown daughters. The texts are never ending.
    In my daughter it was more under the table. People didn’t get such a close relationship though we didn’t live near each other or usually see one another more than once a month.

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  3. penny Avatar

    My daughter, too, doesn’t live near me [she lives in a city some 400 miles away]. Distance is not an issue. We may not see each other often but since she became a mother, we have maintained a special warmth and closeness. The ties bind.

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