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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.

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Parenting Adult Children: Their choice of an ill-suited spouse may be our fault–and Darwin’s.

     

     

    Don't like your child's choice of partner or spouse? I have lots of friends, as this previous post attests, who can't understand what their daughters or sons see in the person they've chosen to marry or partner with for life. Take Jane and Lew. Their daughter is on her second spouse and they haven't liked either one of them: Where their daughter is a lawyer, both of their sons-in-law were/are in law enforcement positions that have little upward mobility, to say nothing of a financial future. Jane and Lew are making their peace with the second spouse since he is the father of their grandson. But they're still confused and confounded.

    They shouldn't be, at least not according to Piet Van Den Berg and Tim W. Fawcett. "a  opinion piece by. If I read their New York Times column "Evolution and Bad Boyfriends, correctly, Jane and Lew are enablers in their daughter's choices. They have, in short, gotten what they wanted.

    The authors' first point: All over the world parents and children "frequently don’t see eye to eye on what makes a suitable partner." If it's so widespread, the authors argue, "there is reason to suspect that it might have something to do with our evolutionary history."

    How so? "It is in parents’ evolutionary interests to distribute their resources — money, support, etc. — in such a way that leads to as many surviving grandchildren as possible, regardless of which of their children provide them. Children, by contrast, have a stronger genetic interest in their own reproduction than in that of their siblings, so each child should try to secure more than his or her fair share of parental resources. It is this conflict over parental resources that can lead to a conflict over mate choice."

    After building a computer model to simulate the evolutionary process of dating and mating, the authors came up with this finding: "…[P]arents in our model evolved to invest more resources in daughters who chose mates with few resources. This unequal investment was in the parents’ best interests, because a daughter with an unsupportive partner would profit more from extra help than her more fortunate sisters (the principle of diminishing returns on investment). By helping their needier daughters, parents maximized their total number of surviving grandchildren. But this unequal investment created an incentive for daughters to “exploit” their parents’ generosity by choosing a partner who was less supportive."

    So it's all our fault if we don't like the guy our daughter marries. Jane and Lew are proof of the researcher's point. They are, in fact, helping to support the couple [paying the mortgage when their daughter took a year off to be a stay-at-home mom; loading their daughter's freezer with food; providing vacations]. But there is a co-conspirator: Darwin's making them do it.

    Related articles

    [tt] NYT: Piet van den Berg and Tim W. Fawcett: Evolution and Bad Boyfriends
    The science of why you hate your daughter's boyfriend
    Parents' Disapproval of Children's Partners Linked With Evolutionary Past
    Why Your Parents Don't Approve of Your Husband (or Wife)
    Sorry daughters, your parents will never approve of your partner
    Why Parents Think Your Partner Isn't Good Enough

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Social Media Etiquette: Their Facebook page and your big, fat comments

    I am back from the brink of a Facebook faux pas. Yes, I was about to drop a comment on my son's FB page–the page he posted that linked to a Russian version of a page of his.

    On his post, he was wondering what all those Cyrillic letters added up to, but I
    keyed in on his photo on the "Russian" page. His expression was–to a mom's way of thinking–too serious and kind of dour. I was going to tell him (in the most jovial way, of course) to lighten up–un petit sourire–for his
    Russian ancestry.

    Then, whew, I thought better of it. This is a page that his friends and acquaintances–including those he does business with–see. No matter how humorous or witty the wording, a mom's commentary, especially about his appearance, is a poor choice. Even inappropriate, given that he is a grown man using Facebook to interact with industry peers. It would be belittling to have his mom tell him in a public space to put a more welcoming expression on his face. Besides, how unwise of me to remind him that I am nosing around his musings and casting a critical eye. 

    So I'll just say it here: un petit sourire. Or for those Russian ancestors: Немного улыбаться. He doesn't have to see it nor do his friends and–more to the point–neither do the people he works with.

    Related articles

    Social Media Etiquette: Some people don't have to live by the Skype rules
    Social Media Etiquette: Three tips to make sure your grownkids Skype you up when you call
    19 Facebook Etiquette Rules For Business
    Social Media Etiquette: Insight into Twitter's role in our grown and grand kids' emotional lives

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Their Wedding Plans: How much say do we have over the guest list?

     

     

    I love Miss Manners–her delicious wit and snarky asides that stay just this side of mannerly. Mostly, though, I feel the etiquette expert is on our side. In her everyday life as Judith Martin, she is, after all, the parent of grown children.

    One of her recent brief but pertinent sallies addresses the issue of a grown child's wedding: How much control do we have over the celebratory reception, given that we may be footing the bill? The question put by the parent goes directly to the point: "If I am paying for my daughter's wedding, do I have input on the guest list?"

    Miss Manners replies: "That privilege is not for sale, as Miss Manners gathers you seem to believe. However, it does come free with the position of being your daughter's parent."

    I believe that says it all in terms of how much pressure we are allowed to exert on the number of aunts, uncles and cousins (by the dozens) we insist be invited to attend. Caveat parenter.

     

     

    Related articles

    Q and A with Miss Manners
    Social Media Etiquette: Three tips to make sure your grownkids Skype you up when you call
    An Appreciation of Miss Manners

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    The Complaint List: We may think we’re being “nice;” our grown kids may find it smothering.

    Uh Oh. Here it comes again. Read any "advice" column and you come across the usual litany of complaints about us by our daughters-in-law or sons-in-law: We're too critical, judgmental, intrusive. We want them to run their households our way. We use money to control their vacations and other comings and goings. Some of us have made adjustments when we've recognized an untoward behavior but otherwise, when we read the columns, we just stew over the unfair picture of mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law.

    This time, Carolyn Hax works a compliment from a reader about her mother-in-law into what it really is: a complaint about smother love. It's hard not to take it to heart.

    Her in laws, a woman writes, "are too nice." Case in point: when her husband [the son] and and son [the grandchild] visit the mother/grandmother, she sends back "gifts." Unfortunately, they are usually "foods we're trying to avoid." Worse, each of the gifts "requires a special phone call of thanks." The in-laws also want phone calls anytime the family travels long distances or in bad weather. "They keep track of our kids' doctors' appointments so they can ask how everything went." What this Hax correspondent wants to know is whether there's a polite way "to get them to back off, just a little. We love them and appreciate that they are always there for us, but it's just too much of an emotional burden to handle their anxieties about our everyday life."

    So what does Carolyn have to say about too much niceness? It is, she writes, a variation of smother love.  "You describe a mother-in-law who is manipulative, controlling, insecure and boundary-challenged." Hax then asks whether the husband is "as uncomfortable with this as you are? Is he ready to
    set some limits, or has he too bought into the “nice” canard? I
    suspect you’d both benefit from reading on boundaries and emotional
    manipulation. Don’t tune me out: The best read on this topic is “The
    Gift of Fear    ” by Gavin de Becker. It will seem like a loopy
    recommendation for “just” a fussy mom, but it’s actually square on
    point."

    Having suffered through a non-smothering but manipulative mother, I'm heading for the Gavin de Becker. Better late than never. Besides, I want to make sure I don't see myself in it–that all the "niceness" I like to confer on my children is above suspicion, that it is not turning me into a secret smother-mother or mother-in-law. I will report back on what I learn. Stay tuned.

     

    Related articles

    Leaving a Legacy: A writer's memoir adds a dimension to the intangibles we can leave our children.
    Reader's Report: Ray Bradbury's insight on legacies applies to what we leave behind for our grown children.
    Mother-in-law: too nice, or just plain controlling?

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Social Media Etiquette: Insight into Twitter’s role in our grown and grand kids’ emotional lives

    Those of us at the older end of the baby boom have our frustrations with social media. You can hear our voices when you browse through Ask Ann or Carolyn Hax columns. We raise a litany of complaints about how our grown kids or grand kids are lost in their digital devices, using Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever to express the most personal of emotions. (One constant annoyance raised by an army of letter writers: using email or a text message to thank us for a gift when, top our way of thinking, that should be done by pen-written word on a lovely sheet of writing paper. Dream On.)

    We may find it astonishing when they share deeply personal losses with their followers or friends on various social media. The etiquette answers aren't all settled yet–and are unlikely to be settled in our favor. That's why I found this post on a blog by Nathan Bransford, a writer and former book agent [and soneone's grown child], helpful in putting things in perspective.

    "Social media is a strange medium. You are staring at a computer or a
    mobile device when you post and tweet. By its very nature you are not
    engaging with another human. You are sending messages to an unknown
    number of recipients you can vaguely imagine but can't really identify.

    The result of that communication can alternately feel like shouting into
    a quiet forest or a very loud, crowded room. And yet, because it's so
    public and so immediate, there are moments when tweets and Facebook
    posts can feel shockingly intimate.

    The latter kind was on display when an NPR host live-tweeted his mother's death.

    Some people might find his tweets unseemly and some commenters thought
    it trivialized the moment, but I think this kind of public experience of
    real life will increasingly be a part of our future. We're all living
    simultaneously public and private lives. And not just public and
    private, as in the case of writing a memoir, but instantaneously public and private. It's something entirely new.

    I've remarked in a recent interview about how pleasantly moved I was
    by the outpouring of support after I announced my divorce. It didn't
    strike me as false or trivialized by the medium. It was real, even
    though it was coming through a computer.

    Whatever it is, this is a completely new medium for experiencing life,
    one that is both distant and immediate, public and intimate, and
    mechanical and human."

    Related articles

    Social Media Etiquette: Logging onto a grown child's site? Keep your footprint light.
    Business, Etiquette and Social Media
    Hashtag Etiquette
    Twitter Etiquette to Use Right Away
    Social Media Etiquette: Some people don't have to live by the Skype rules
    Social Media Etiquette: Three tips to make sure your grownkids Skype you up when you call
    The Complete Guide to Twitter Etiquette
    The Complete Guide to Twitter Etiquette

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Leaving a Legacy: Who gets to control your life’s story?

    Years ago when my son was in high school, he decided to interview my mother and tape-record her story. He wanted to know more about how she arrived in this country, how she met her husband, what life was like in "the old days."

    It's not an atypical quest. Kids get interested in their grandparents' lives, especially if those grandparents emigrated to this country and had to adjust to a whole new way of life. I was reminded of this when a friend told me about her grandson's decision to tape-record his grandfather's life. The grandfather–Joe–was born in Russia but grew up in Shanghai when his parents moved there. He left to go to college in the U.S. While he was in the U.S., there was tremendous upheaval in China. He was stuck in the U.S. with no money, no one to pay his tuition and a better command of Chinese, Russian and French than of English. How he managed to survive, prosper and have a brilliant career as an economist–one who spent several years living in Paris, London and other glamorous world capitals–was the tale the grandson wanted to record.

    The grandson, who lives in a city several hundred miles to the south of Joe and my friend, came up north for two weeks this summer to interview his grandfather. He stayed with his grandparents–which had its ups and downs but mostly was a positive and bonding experience. All went well until he showed Joe the typed up pages–"selected parts" of a very long transcript.

    Joe took issue with many details–"I didn't say that," he would claim, demanding to to see a full transcript, which would have cost several thousand dollars to produce. (My friend priced it: $90 an hour to transcribe two weeks worth of interviews.) The grandson had kept an index of "events" as he interviewed his grandfather so he knew which parts he could skip and where he wanted to concentrate his transcription efforts.

    The project had been for a class at school; the grandson handed in his interview and got credit for a job well done. But my friend worries that this legacy-writing project will drive a wedge between grandfather and grandson. The grandson–a college student–says he plans to write a book about Joe and my friend says that is what worries her husband: Someone else will spin the narrative of his life. He would rather it be he who writes it but, as my friend points out, he's an economist who is not particularly blessed with narrative skills.

    She is relieved that so far there has been no damage to the grandparent-grandson relationship. Now that the arguments over the interview transcripts have been ironed out, there's some hope that at least the book will be accurate. The grandson may turn Joe's life into a compelling book, but at least it will be based on lengthy interviews that Joe has had a chance to read and correct.

    Related articles

    Leaving a Legacy: A writer's memoir adds a dimension to the intangibles we can leave our children.
    Baby Boomers & Generation Y: The What About Me? Generations
    Legends of the Edisto: What I Remember

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Social Media Etiquette: Some people don’t have to live by the Skype rules

    My secret Skyper navigating an iPad

    Skype is not a telephone call: We don't video-call our grown children or Grands without warning. That would be a visual and virtual intrusion into their personal space.

    So goes my good-sense rule for proper Skype etiquette. We here in our household adhere to it faithfully: Paterfamilias because he doesn't know how to Skype (he hasn't loaded it onto any of his e-devices; no one's helped him out yet) and me because, well, I wrote the rule.  But there are outliers–rogue Skypers to whom this admonition does not apply.

    My secret Skyper is a case in point. I was sitting at my computer editing a story one morning when the Skype ring sounded. It announced that my daughter-in-law was calling. She's never Skyped me. Doesn't really like the whole Skype thing–three children, she says, are two too many for a Skype call. So there must be a pressing reason for her call.

    I press the "answer" button right away and onto my screen hoves a five-year old, momentarily upside down but smiling. She turns the iPad around and there she is right-side up, my youngest Grand, the one I usually get to spend the least amount of time with. She is a pre-reader but there's little she doesn't know about navigating the icons on her mother's iPad. She had clicked on Skype, saw my photo [I'm one of two Skype connections my son-in-law set up for his sister-in-law on her iPad) and voila, there I was. 

    What a precious time it was for me, who lives some 400 miles away from her. I spent half an hour chatting with her, one on one, just the two of us–no big sister or brother to answer for her, interrupt her chit-chat or demand a turn. She showed me how she had imitated a dog in drama class in kindergarten (woof!), she ran and got her spiderman mask and put that on, she gave me details about the family's canoe trip (she did not paddle). At some point in our chat, her mother wandered by and asked who she was talking to–one of her voice-activated games? "I'm talking to PenPen," she announced.

    That was not the end of my secret Skyper. Later that day while I was out buying something for dinner, my iPhone's Skype rang and there she was again, ready to share some more of her thoughts–and a little more of that Spiderman mask. (I got to show her the rows of cereal and bins of apples at the store. Otherwise, our conversation was brief: a Whole Foods is not the best place to chat up a five-year-old.)

    I await more Skype time with her–whenever she deigns to tap my Skype button. It is our little private way of communicating–something we share that doesn't include anyone else; something she does that her brother and sister don't. The Skype rules of etiquette have no relevance here. "Intrusive" is not a word to apply to a five-year-old's impromptu visit with a grandparent. The rules are for my generation–the ones who are tiptoeing around their grown children's lives and hoping not to make a social media faux pas. When it comes to Grands, it is not a two-way street.

    But I do have secret-Skyper competition. After we hung up, my littlest Grand pressed the other Skype button on the iPad and rang up her uncle–the very one who had set up Skype on the iPad in the first place. He says he was delighted to get her call. Only hitch: He and my daughter are living in Berlin. It was midnight there when she called.

     

     

    Related articles

    Social Media Etiquette: Logging onto a grown child's site? Keep your footprint light.
    Social Media Etiquette: Three tips to make sure your grownkids Skype you up when you call
    Microsoft reveals Skype was almost called Skyper

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Grandparenting: Advice on giving unsolicited advice to the newborn’s parents

     

    This is not a "don't do it" admonition. We all know–and remember well–how we got through that first year of bringing up baby: the sleepless nights, the feeding glitches, the tummy aches, the diaper rash, the teething. Our parents gave us advice–sometimes helpful, occasionally outdated, often based on a memory bathed in hazy afterglow.  They knew it all or thought they did, having weathered the sturm und drang of our first year.

    Now it's our turn. And like our parents, we may be tempted to share all our remembered knowledge and experience. Some of us do it successfully–we manage to impart advice without being intrusive or making the new parents feel like the rookies they are. But many of us bumble and come across as being critical rather than just offering a suggestion. Or we think we know better and countermand given instructions–like slipping a breast-fed baby a bottle of formula or not bothering with the car seat for a short ride.

    It's an issue that's front and center in a new New York Times parenting blog, "New Parent, Old Parent." There isn't much advice on there yet–the blog is looking for anecdotes from both the new parents and the new grandparents on what works and what doesn't in terms of unsolicited advice. (Grandparents interested in writing their memoir-ette on the topic, the blog whats to know how you "emerged with your relationships with your children
    and their spouses intact, what was the secret to raising your children
    through their own entry into parenthood?" Or conversely, your insights into what didn't work out so well.)

    Here's a thread to follow if you have something to share or want to see how others cope.

    Related articles

    Dealing With The "Parent Police"
    Living with Children: Grandparents' advice should be limited
    Grandparents: Only give advice when it?s asked for
    Monday Morning Reader: Elinor Lipman's insights on the joy of being the parent of a grown child

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Social Media Etiquette: Three tips to make sure your grownkids answer your Skype call

     

    photo: Palo Coleman

    We just had a delightful visit with our daughter. We got to ooh and aah over the view from her window. We took a quick tour of her apartment and sighed over the smallness of one of the bedrooms. We talked about what an attractive neighborhood she was living in and how the nervous energy in the home was rising since school just started for our Grand. The dog came over and gave us a paws-up.

    Our daughter and her family are living in Berlin for a year. We sat at our computer here in Maryland, she at laptop in Germany and we linked up via Skype. There is a very "you are there" feeling with a video call, and when a grown child lives far from you, it makes you feel as if you've just dropped in for a cup of tea. It's just that you each bought your chai from emporiums on opposite sides of the Atlantic. You can chat while one of you makes dinner or is busy straightening up the apartment. It's intimate. It's personal. Almost as good as being there, except that there's no hug at the end–just an air kiss and a few shouts of tschuss [the informal German for bye-bye].

    Technology helps cut distance down to size. There are visual clues to go along with the timber of the voice you hear on the phone. You can pick up the vibe of whether your child is happy or worried, whether things are going well or poorly.

    But what we've been learning about the visual chat–Skype or other services–is that, as Tim Gunn on The Runway would put it–we should "use it wisely." Otherwise, they may stop clicking on "video call" when you ring them up. Here are three tips for proper Skype etiquette:

    1. Don't press that video call button just because the Skype button is lit. It's the same as dropping in at their home for an unannounced visit. Popping in via Skype can be intrusive: Maybe they just got out of the shower or are in mid-Yoga workout or are having a spat with a spouse. Better to arrange times for calls or set a particular day and hour for a regular call.

    2. Don't try to talk to everyone at once. With my daughter, we've been dealing with the question of the order in which we speak to family members–the Grand first, the parents second or the other way around? Skype really isn't the same as sitting at the dining room table together–there's no way for two people to break away and have a private conversation. With our son and his family of five, it's even more difficult to impose order. With the kids vying for screen time, the visit descends into minor squabbles over whose turn is when. And if they're using the iPad, OMG: It gets passed around and upended, giving those of us at the receiving end a dizzying view of the household, the ceiling and  upside down views of faces. 

    3. Don't underestimate the power of emoticons. They are there, right in the instant message section of Skype. When the talk gets to politics or news of the day, my Grand tends to wander off. One way to keep her in the visit is to type messages and attach emoticons–with an emphasis on the plural of the latter. That's right: There cannot be too many teeny tiny dancing monkeys, lit-up birthday cakes or grinning clowns at the end of a message–or as the message itself. Hard to believe, but yes, it will keep them with you for a while–and they really really do see it as a form of personal communication. 🙂

     
    Related articles

    Social Media Etiquette: Logging onto a grown child's site? Keep your footprint light.
    The Pain of Parting: A grown child will be living abroad for a year. Again.
    Skype Around the World
    Skype 10th Anniversary: a history
    Skype for iPhone adds two-way video calling
    Hooray! Skype iPhone update lets you join group voice calls

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Leaving a Legacy: A writer’s memoir adds a dimension to the intangibles we can leave our children.

    A few posts ago I quoted Elinor Lipman's insights in her book, I Can't Complain, on the joys of having brought up baby–that is, the delight in having your small child grow into an independent adult. But one of her essays also looks back at her mother's influence on her–the chicken soup recipe, the gardening tips.

                    

    She also writes in an essay called "I Still Think, Call Her," about how, when her mother was widowed, she moved her mother across the state to live near her in a condo of her own. The two of them went shopping together to pick out curtains, rugs and dishes. She took her mother on a variety of outings, both personal and professional–despite noting that "parents at a distance are a little more charming than they are close-up." Nonetheless, the picture she drew of her relationship with her mother had me tearing up when her mother dies in her 90s–not because I identified with her loss, but because I couldn't.

    When my mother became ill and needed more care than I could give (she lived a three-hour plane ride away), I asked her to move to live near me. And, yes, I was relieved when she said no. I didn't press her further. Ours was a difficult relationship–not particularly charming even from a distance. She said no for the usual reasons–not wanting to be a burden, I supposed, but even more a rootedness in her home: not wanting to leave the apartment she had filled with the memories and memorabilia of her days as a full-time wife, mother and homemaker.

    What strikes me now, after reading Lipman's essay, is this: I hope I can be generous enough to my children to let them help me if and when that time comes. I can see how much it meant to Lipman and see how much I lost out by not insisting that my mother move. Not that an insistence would have necessarily worked. But I didn't make sure that as she reached her 80s, as Lipman's mother did, she felt wanted and needed. It turns out, it was my loss.

    Related articles

    Monday Morning Reader: Elinor Lipman's insights on the joy of being the parent of a grown child