Are You Friends With Your Parents? | Cup of Jo (2024)

When we need to. I finally moved 2 flights away. Wish I had sooner. Nope…parents pretending they’re their kids’ friends has always made me cringe. Maybe because I grew up around people without boundaries. They don’t really know how to have a relationship with me, so they lean on old patterns.

Well coming in from the parent side of the issue I gotta say this parent child relationship is a complicated stuff. I got two daughters, the older is quiet, sensitive and self conscious much like her father. The youngest is out-going, open, and engaging much like myself. I love them both unconditionally and while I welcome the extra time I have in my life for my work, interests and hobbies, I also look forward to the time in my life I share with them. I do find there is a special bond between a mother and her children and being an adopted child myself and never having had the benefit of a relationship with a biological parent (I had a poor substitute….a long sad story) I do realize how deep that bond goes and how unique and special it is. Children are like dimensions of our own personality that take on a life of their own. It is through the prism of their lives that we learn so much about ourselves and feel every triumph and every wound they must experience in order to grow and be their own people. But life is a journey and we all have our own road to follow and in the final analysis, it truly is not the end that matters but the wisdom we have gained from the journey itself. Its a long road (if we are lucky) so if we can get along and share the best of each other with each other along the way then that is the best we can do. Remember how you look at things now may not be the way you will see things in ten years from now or even twenty, time will enhance your vision and the relationships with your own children will open up new doors to you. In the mean time, continue to learn and grow (that continues up until your very last breath) and love yourself for who you are and your children for who they are and remem ber your parents did the best they could as parents and now they will do the best they can as friends. They are finding their way too.

I dream of having a great relationship with my mom, but I don’t think we ever will. We are complete opposites in personality and there are too many hurtful things in our past (really hard to silence the ugly comments she said about my personality growing up). I try so hard to find common ground, but there’s just not much there. She adores my children and sees them often, but when we’ve tried to have lunch dates, it almost always spirals down into political arguments or about my brother (which is a really long story). My dad died 2 months after my oldest was born, in 2004, and I miss him like crazy. As I got older he was turning into a friend. I really wish I could call him and ask him questions and oh how I would love to get a text from him! I am crazy fortunate, however, to have in-laws that I love and enjoy spending time with.

My mother passed away in July. We weren’t “girlfriends” or friends at all. We lived very different lives, despite being fiercely raised by her. That said, we shared our lives with each other and had gotten very comfortable with simply being mother and daughter. Something we’d worked tirelessly, our entire life together, trying to perfect. http://brooklynchateau.blogspot.com/2017/03/my-single-mother-beauty-reals.html

Reading this made me tear up! Thank you for putting to words what I’ve been experiencing lately with my parents.

No, we are definitely not friends. My mom seems to think if we do any activities together that means I don’t have enough friends so that has always been out of the question (I am a shy person, but I have always had plenty of friends). So I am always jealous when I hear of families doing “family fun” type activities. Also my parents must have read some parenting book that said not to spoil your children so I am extremely unspoiled. I’m in my 30s now so I just want to say to them, feel free to start spoiling me anytime! I’m totally sufficiently unspoiled so you don’t have to worry about that anymore! But no. I understand not wanting to spoil me with material things but I could really use some attention. My mom does not think before she speaks (#nofilter, but in a bad way) so I have many verbal gems that stick in my head forever (if a random person said these things, it wouldn’t stick, but since it’s my mom, I will never forget them). Like the time when I finally got out of a five-year abusive relationship and went to my mom for some motherly comfort and when I told her he had been abusive, all she said was “oh i thought you stayed with him because he’s really good in bed or something.” Also my dad works with developmentally disabled people and if affects his ability to talk to people who aren’t developmentally disabled. For example when my cousin Joel was getting married (a cousin I know pretty well, we used to spend every Christmas together when we were kids) my dad called me and spent what seemed like 5 minutes checking if I remembered who my cousin is…. I tried to cut him off saying, yes I already heard that Joel is getting married, of course I remember him, he’s my cousin, I know him! My parents are hoarders and their house desperately needs organized, I would love to help them because interior design is kind of a hobby of mine but I can’t be around them long enough to help. They live in a bubble and don’t seem to realize it.

Hi Stella! I found your article incredibly touching. Probably because I’ve always had a very good relationship with my Parents, even through those ‘tough’ :) teenage years!
They were and continue to be very, very cool parents, so my house always felt like a real home :), my safe haven. My brother shares the same feeling too and it remains as such today, despite the fact that both of us no longer live with them anymore.
I grew up thinking that they had ‘all’ the answers and that, in times of ‘crisis’, they would know how to make things work out. It felt so reassuring…
Today, in my (late) thirties, I know more of their vulnerabilities, tastes (basically, personas) and, although it has come to my realization :) that they cannot actually fix everything, they are here, by my side, as I am by theirs, and that feels great too.
I feel that they count on me as well and I just want to make the best of the time spent together. Because, no matter what, they will forever be part of my life. :)
Thank you for, with this comment, allowing me to remind THEM how important they are to me and that my existence is definitely better because of THEM. :)

What a fun post! I loved reading through the comments and am saddened that not everyone can relate. I have always been very close with my parents. During my last week of college, my mom came and visited. She slept in my bed with me in my apartment that I shared with three other girls. She got ready to go out to the bar with us, took us to dinner, and watched TV in bed with me. I was never annoyed that she was there-I was just happy she could be there for my last week. We are so close that sometimes the boundaries blur between my own family now and my family growing up, as my parents tend to take over. But I am a new mom and especially now I realize, more than ever, just how much my mom needs me as much as I need her. Love this post!

I have a rather strange situation, can anyone else relate? My mom was an absolutely fantastic mother, loving, confident, strong, nurturing, an actual supermom……*until* I became an adult (post-college). Then she became a different person (to me). A very needy person, with low-self esteem who needs constant reassurance. I think she rooted her identity in mothering her children, and found such pleasure and fulfillment in it that it filled all of her internal voids. When she no longer had children to mother, her needs were no longer being met, and that left two human-sized holes in her. It’s been 10 years, and it just gets worse. But I realize I can’t fix her. I can’t cater to the neediness, it drains me to no end. I miss the mother I knew, the one who raised me. I don’t recognize the person she has become. It’s utterly baffling to be mothered by someone for 22 years and then suddenly they reveal themselves to be a conpletely different person. So, a warning to mothers: please don’t derive all of your fulfillment from your children. Realize now that they WILL grow up. You will have to live without their constant presence someday. Prepare for that in advance. Put your oxygen mask on first!!!

I really loved this post. My dad passed away when I was 20 and the only silver lining is that my relationship with my mom blossomed much more quickly into a relationship of equals/friends. You can’t help grow up pretty fast after such an event. I loved hearing about what she was going through when she was my age and she always had the best arms to run into after a tough day or a sad break-up.

My relationship with my parents is complicated and stressful, but I’ll not go into it in detail here. Reading through the comments has made me wonder about something though, and it’s something like this: I’m really surprised, given how conflicted and divided our nation is politically, that more people in the comments section aren’t experiencing that strain in their relationships with their parents (the majority of relationships described here sound unbelievably perfect). I certainly am dealing with this strain, and I know others who are. Maybe it’s because I was raised in a red state/conservative household and have radically changed in my views as I’ve aged, but as cliche as it may seem, politics has become an albatross around the neck of my relationship with many people in my family, my parents included. It would actually be really interesting for you to write more about this – to explore how the culture of constant conflict we’re immersed in as a nation is affecting personal relationships and maybe some strategies for dealing with that. Or maybe some first person stories about how people are navigating this. It’s not a happy or peaceful country we live in right now, and some of us are experiencing that in really intimate, painful ways.

No, I’m not friends with my parents. My parents are good people and while I have some qualms with the way they raised me, I think they were doing their best. But now that I’m an adult, it’s just clear that we’re different people, living different lives. I call them once per week and we have a friendly, sort of perfunctory chat. It feels as though we have nothing in common – no similar hobbies, different values and worldviews, nothing of substance to discuss. Which it nuts, because we shared a home and 18 years of life experiences. The generation gap, culture cap, age gap just feel huge.

Growing up, my parents were the “cool” parents, but I always struggled to see them as friends. While we were close, got along, and did lots of things as a family, they were still my parents. They had (some) rules and yelled and did all the parent things. And, let’s be honest, most of us were embarrassed by our parents at some point. I found that, as I got older, I became closer to them in a friendship way. Like calling or texting just to say hi rather than asking for something or needing something. I think it helped that I moved away from home, and we only see each other once a year or so. The distance makes the bond a little stronger. We often joke that we could never live in the same city or even state again. The hardest part of living so far away is watching them get older and not being there. I find myself worrying about them and undergoing the weird transition to feeling more like a parent and wanting to take care of them. They’re often go out drinking and have way more fun that I do now!

My parents are easily in my closest inner circle of best friends aside from my fiance and my best girlfriend. I have a special relationship with both of them individually and them together. When I think about my dad and how hard he worked to give my family the life that we had growing up (and have today), I get emotional. I realize it even more so now as an adult that my dad has a unique ability to speak to my heart and mind at the same time in such a flawless way.

I’m 38, divorced for 10 years, own my own home where I live alone, have a job and live a lifestyle of crazy dating, outdoor adventure, and travel. My mom at my age was a stay at home mom with 5 kids, me being the youngest. It’s been interesting as I’ve developed my own lifestyle over the years to still call my parents and ask them advice or sometimes even permission to do things. It’s gone from parent to friend as our lives took different directions. I remember the first time I asked what they’d think of me going to Argentina at the last minute with an old friend soon after my divorce. My mom said she didn’t think it was a good idea, but that I paid my own mortgage so why did I need her permission anymore? It really hit me, my mom no longer had the “been there done that” life experience to give me advice as a guide. She was now a friend watching from the sidelines giving advice and cheering me on. What a difference it makes still, but what a change from what I’m used to. I do stuff all the time that she may disapprove of, but instead of her old mom replies, they’re now, “I don’t know what life is like for you, do what you think is best I guess.” It gives me an openness to share my experiences with her that I’d normally have kept private for fear of getting in trouble. And sometimes I know she’s a little jealous of the freedom she sees me have, something she knows she would have loved, but couldn’t have in the 60s. My dad is the same way, having given up a pretty adventuours outdoors life for a career and a family. He eats up every detail of my trips and ends every time with, “Boy that’s a life I’d have loved.” They both live a little through me and that brings us both a little extra happiness we can share.

I’m an only child and I have been very bonded and close to my parents throughout every stage of life so far. My mother and I have had some strained months, years etc but I think that bond can be difficult to navigate sometimes. I am very lucky that they are genuinely my bestfriends. Even my friends love hanging out with my parents! There’s been so much fun and life wisdom passed down during late night drinks around bonfires with them.

Great post!
My parents are both retired school teachers, and growing up, two of my sister’s closest friend’s moms we my teachers- 8th grade English, and an elementary school substitute teacher. I grew up in a very casual home, friends referred to my parents by their first names, etc. I loved having that regular connection with some of my teachers that most of my peers didn’t have, it was like being in on a secret.
As for being friends with my parents, they are honestly two of my best friends- I know I can call them any time and they will give me good advice, or just listen (we live on separate sides of the country). However, I will always see them as my parents, and I don’t want to be privy to any of their drama (they divorced when I was 22, married, and moved away). I admire them and love spending time with them, and am forever grateful for them for giving me a great childhood and being good role models.

I was raised by my father as a single parent, and he definitely had an authoritative rather than friend style of parenting. Now as an adult, we have an ok relationship but I wouldn’t say we are friends. We differ greatly in our social/political views, and he is not an easy person to have a civil discussion or debate with. I live overseas and we skype about 4 times per year, just to check in on how things are going.
Funnily enough, these days he’s pretty much best friends with my eldest brother, who was a rather difficult teenager and with whom he constantly had massive arguments and screaming matches.
I’ve often felt envious of friends who had close relationships with their parents, but I guess our experiences make us who we are.

This is beautiful.

Thank you. Like so many others I never really appreciated my parents until I went to college. We still have those mini-power struggles with my mom, now as a mother with a pre-schooler and she as a doting grandmother to a pre-schooler, but I guess I understand her more and more.

I recently had a fascinating discussion with my mother about being a woman in the workplace. I’m a millennial and she’s a boomer and we both talked about our colleagues from the other generation. It was really great to hear about how she’s acting as a mentor to women my age. I told her about how relieving it is to have women of her generation as role models who have pre-charted a course on how to navigate motherhood, family and work gracefully. I love having her as a sounding board–I don’t know if friend accurately captures our relationship, but it is intimate and I really love that this is where we’ve landed. It makes me hopeful in considering what my own future as a mother might look like and to see what it can grow into.

This was so beautiful to read, Stella. You know that kind of warm, glowy feeling you get when something reminds you of home or those you hold dear? This article did that for me. Thanks so much for that. :)

My mom died on February 1st of this year, and I feel like I’m seeing my dad in a whole new light. He’s been hanging out with a lady – ok, I guess we’re calling it dating – and … it’s like seeing my Dad as, well, a single guy. It’s beyond weird, but it’s interesting to me to finally see him for himself, and not something that he was with my mother. It was hard to see where one stopped and the other started, for so long, and now? Well, it’s a reminder that all of us are humans trying to navigate our lives as they come. It’s a far cry from being a child and thinking that the grown-ups have everything figured out.

I thought I was in a good place with my parents. I thought we’ve gone through our moment of zen when they realized I was an adult in my 20s when I moved 800 miles away from them, and their … stuff. After a 18 months away I came back to the area and actually lived in my childhood home for 6 months, and soon began to realize why I left. After getting my own place, and then years later getting married, and having my own kids, I thought that my parents were not necessarily my friends, but my parents who I could talk to, and not have that — while under my roof — stuff. Now that I’m almost 40, I’d like to deal with them on an equal footing, but that’s not possible, and recently some things happened which brought back the reason why I did move away in the first place — nearly 20 years ago. The guilt trips, the passive aggressive, you should know why I’m upset, we don’t feel welcome in your house when we show up unannounced. I wish I could say we are friends, but if a friend was constantly reminding you that he helped you move back in 2001 — would you keep being friends with them, or just say, ok how much do I owe you for the move so you’d stop bringing it up? Or if a friend would get randomly pissed off at you because you didn’t call them for 2 days. And those are just the minor things. My parents would go to the end of the world for me, and give me the shirt of their back, but I’d never hear the end of it, so I’d rather ask anyone else. I guess that’s sad, and again that upsets them that I don’t ask…so I guess it falls under it’s complicated? Right? As a father of 2 small kids, I know that guilt tripping your kids into a relationship will eventually backfire. And constantly bringing up that one time you needed my help and I was there… That’s not a friendship — not sure what that is

Love this post – my mom and I talk daily and she is one of my best friends. As a kid I thought that moms just NEVER got sick (because they are moms?). I never saw my mother with any sort of weakness. It led to an almost SUPER HUMAN/MAGICAL quality that once I grew up – and reality shifted – I realized was probably just her having to power through being sick and still having to be a parent.

My mother is rather proud of a memory, I was a teenager and we were having a fight and I said “why can’t you be a friend like my friend and her mother are?” My mother responded “I am your mother, not your friend – and one day you will thank me”. She is really proud of this particular moment in time, thinks of it as a wonderful proof of what a great mother she was. The thing is it is my least favourite memory of our relationship. And we’re not friends – and I know that she wishes we were closer. But I don’t enjoy relationships where one person raises their tone to indicate authority. She never learned to be my friend, and is sad that we have not found our way. I try to fake it, I really do and most of the time I think there is success. But we are not friends. To be friends with your child I believe is a great and masterful experience, and I try very hard to develop a true friendship with my son. My mother has never been my go-to person, because she was never my friend. I know she loves me and will do anything for me, but it’s different.

My mom died when I was in my early 20s, so it is a question mark how our relationship would have evolved. She was always pretty private, so I’m not sure if we would have gone from mother and daughter to buddies. My father is definitely my friend though. I’m only child and lived with him all through my 20s til I got married. I know a lot of people do it now, but I’m 42 and my friends were most definitely not living with their parents after college. I was frequently teased by friends about when I was going to move out and of course I thought about it but I don’t think my friends realized that I actually enjoyed living with my father, watching tv and movies, just hanging out. Of course he is still my father and he will still encourage me to do certain things in a fatherly way (investing etc) but otherwise I will talk to him just like any other friend and I’m happy we have that relationship

I am that teacher, and I constantly run into my students at the on-campus gym. I’m embarrassed, but they seem horrified. I’ll wave and say hi to a student by name working out on a machine three feet away from me, and I’d call their tactics almost artistic in the way that they acrobatically avoid making eye contact or acting like they heard me. This semester I decided to announce the first week of class: “If you see me at the gym or the grocery store buying Oreos or walking my dog in my pajamas, it’s OK if you say hi.” I remember once seeing a professor of mine on a treadmill wearing jorts when I was in undergrad, so I get it. But hey, I don’t wear jorts and my students still won’t say hi!

I found this post and the comments to be so comforting. I so identified with everyone commenting on their strained relationships with a parent. While my dad and I had a great friendship before his death two years ago, my relationship with my mother has been strained for a number of years. I was inspired by the comments from all those who are friends with their parents. I have a 3 year old daughter and you all give me hope that she and I can have a close relationship and friendship in the future. Thank you!

I just want to say that my husband is a high school football coach and teacher, and he still gets that reaction when he is “spotted in the wild.” Even 18 year-olds are surprised that teachers have a real life outside the school!

My four year old sometimes says I am her best friend which makes my heart melt. I have given up on my mom ever being my friend, but I can be the mom I always wanted and love my kids with all my heart. :)

I remember the exact moment I began to be friends with my mum, as opposed to just mother-daughter. I was maybe 18 and we were playing badminton together in the back garden. Nothing serious, we never had a net or anything, it was just a knock-about.
Well, I hit a shot, which mum failed to return. I licked my finger, touched it to myself and made a hissing sound, like I was red-hot. Well, mum had never seen anything like that, and started to literally cry-laugh. She was laughing so hard she fell down on the grass, which made me laugh as well. And before I knew it, we were both cry-laughing, and rolling on the grass together. And at that moment, I realised, we were going to be friends for a long, long time.

Currently I am on a trip with my mother and two sisters to Iceland and Copenhagen. I’m 30 and my sisters are 26 and 23. We are having a blast, but often times find ourselves asking why is our mother not being the mother! Wandering downtown Reykjavik we kept losing her as she was taking pictures and wandering into shops and lagging behind, definitely not taking charge and leading us while we were trying to find the grocery store that closes in 20 minutes! We are having a great time and I’m sure many more of these instances will happen along the trip.

To this day, every time I walk into a Target (which is often) I remember seeing my 2nd grade teacher there once, and because I thought I was so grown up at that point, I said “Jane? Is that you?” I was 10. Such a random memory from my childhood, but it has never left me. How funny! And thank you for your sweet words about be-friending your folks. I am in the thick of raising an almost-13-year-old, and it. is. hard. I am 36, but to her, I may as well be 110. I still feel pretty cool! I am weathering this storm in the hopes that one day, she realizes I was her age not too long ago!

My dad was only 53 when he died from cancer, and we were close. I was a sophom*ore in college when he passed, and he was so proud of me because I was going to college and doing well. I had my ups and downs in my relationship with my mom, but as she grew older, she really mellowed, and our relationship was wonderful. She really loved my 2 daughters who were her only grandchildren. When I had my own children, I realized my parents did the best they could with the resources they had. My mom passed away last October, and there have been times when I got ready to call her and realized she’s gone. I talked with my oldest daughter last week, who told me she got the job she wanted, and she said she was going to call my mom and tell her, then realized she couldn’t. I have a great relationship with both of my daughters who are in their 30’s. Last summer, my youngest and I were having lunch in a nice restaurant and having white sangria, when she said it was so fun for us to have lunch like two friends. She said it was something she imagined growing up, and now it’s happened. They both call me just to say hi or ask for advice or just want someone to listen.

My parents are basically the BEST friends I’ve ever had. Sometimes it seems like society has this unwritten rules for us to think it’s uncool to hang out with our parents, but at the end of the day I will never regret spending extra time with them or choosing their company over someone else my age. We don’t get to keep our parents forever so it’s these moments I’ll continue to cherish the most.

I really hoped this would be the case, because my mother and I have always had a tense relationship, but as i got older (now 31) things didn’t seem to change much. I can’t decide if it’s because we’re too similar, too different, or if the hurts from the past too indelible. Either way, we’re not friends. I hope to be friends with my daughter once she is an adult. Definitely not happening until she’s grown and out of the house! :)

This is a beautiful post Stella. I don’t know why but I teared up reading it!

I love this post! I can totally relate to what you wrote. Growing up I did not feel like my parents were my friends, I felt like they were my parents and I am extremely grateful for that. I always knew they will be there and support me, but they did not try to be too involved or act like if we were buddies. After the teenage/college years I started to see my parents as friends and right now my parents and siblings are probably my best friends. I am so grateful that we managed to be that close emotionally. Right now my sister lives in London, I live in New York and my other siblings and parents in Barcelona… we do not talk or text every day necessarily, but I know they are the most important pillars in my life :-D

Love this post. And from the other side, I am a mother to 3 beautiful people in their 20s and one teen. Just this morning, I had funny, thoughtful, and loving chat/text/FaceTime with each one. (All in one day!) I feel like we are friends and I hope they feel the same. They still ask for advice and they still sometimes roll their eyes, but friends do, too, right?
Also, I thought the photo was of your parents and was amazed at how much your dad looks like Paul McCartney. Haha!

i try to be close to my parents! it’s not super easy or natural for us though. my mom and i are very different personalities – she is easily overwhelmed and prone to self-pity – she probably would have been somewhat overwhelmed by parenting in general and then i had a mentally ill brother, so i mostly remember just fending for myself as a kid. also she was/is a huge hypochondriac – i can divide my childhood into eras by the health issues she was experiencing: the sinus years, the stomach issue years, the menopause years….there was also a ‘we are poor and everyone else is rich’ era (really not true). with all these issues i’ve never felt like i could go to her with my issues…plus there is a self-centeredness that is just hard to swallow (when i told her of my infertility issues, she responded: i’m so glad you told me, all my friends have been asking when you were going to have kids and now i know why it’s taking so long). so we’re not ‘buddies.’ but she and my dad love my girls, and i’m close with my mom’s siblings and my cousins, so we spend a lot of family time together. every once in a while there is some dramatic blowout (usually drinking is involved) when all these issues get on my nerves. sometimes i envy people that live further away and/or are just comfortable keeping their distance! and sometimes i’m grateful to be part of my messy imperfect family. families are complicated…..

Loved this. Such a lovely read, Stella. My dad signs all texts ‘love, dad’ too! Does make me laugh!

My mom is my best friend! We talk often and always have to chat after the dateline episode on Sunday nights! We enjoy a lot of the same things and I know as I become a mother one day, our relationship will get that much stronger. But my daddy will always be my daddy and I will always be his little girl :-).

Last year, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself because a trip I had planned for New Year’s had fallen through and most of my friends had vacations planned with significant others or their families. As I was thinking through my close friends might be someone available to share in celebrating the past year and ringing in the new one with, I remembered: my mom! That moment of epiphany was well-paired with the holidays, as my mom is absolutely impossible to shop for, while also being the person who I want to give the most as thanks for being the hardest-working, most resilient, and most superfluously loving person I know. I ended up splurging and buying us both a trip to a gorgeous resort in a small town on the west side of Puerto Rico. We spent an entire week lying on the beach, reading, having heart-to-hearts, people-watching, drinking champagne at all hours of the day, staying up late watching The Office sleepover-style, having three hour dinners at the resort restaurant, and just hanging out, and then rang in New Year’s together dancing on the beach next to a bonfire beneath fireworks. A waiter at the resort was so tickled by our mother-daughter vacation that he gave us a free bottle of champagne after midnight just because he loved the idea of our trip so much! It was one of the best trips I’ve ever taken, and one I would consider as a big, fun landmark within one of the greatest friendships of my life.

I completely relate to your experience. My mom and I butt heads a ton when I was growing up, and having her as a teacher in my high school didn’t help matters. But as I’ve gotten older, and especially now that I am a mother, we’ve become so much closer, and I’ve come to appreciate how she pushed me to be my best and was always there to help me (even when I refused it). We recently escaped to the beach for a few days with my young son, and while spending days in the sand with him were a blast, my favorite moments were sitting outside the room after he fell asleep, sharing a bottle of wine and laughing with my mom. I only hope I can grow to be as wonderful a mother as she is.

Hmmm. Yes and No. One of the upsides of my parents divorce was getting to know both of them very individually and less as an entity in my burgeoning adult-ish years (I was 17-18). Twenty years later, I am friendly with each of them, if not friends. In some ways, because of some stuff that happened during harder times, I draw a hard line at calling either of them friends because I already found out waaaaaaay more about them then I wanted to as a kid, and I prefer some parental remove. And yet I still want (and sometimes need) my parents to be my parents, no matter how old I get. As they age, though, I see that our roles will soon reverse and I’ll be taking care of them. For now, I love that my Dad still clips articles for me & sends them via old fashioned mail, then badgers me via email until I’ve rec’d said article so we can discuss it on the phone. Hilar. My Mom, sister, and I recently took a trip to Santa Fe and Taos together to celebrate her 70th birthday & had a blast hiking, art grazing and drinking beers in the hot tub at night. Embracing relationships as they evolve seems to be a chunk of the pain & joy of life.

This post felt eerily well-timed as it is a subject I’ve been considering a lot as of late. I would place myself somewhere in the “it’s complicated” category when it comes to my relationship with my parents. Particularly my mom. As a daughter of a mother who struggles with depression and other mental illness, I’ve really resonated with a lot of the comments here. I find it so encouraging and it makes me feel a little less alone. This community is really great for that–so thank you!

Waxing and waning, I would say. A very rocky time a few years back but better now. Hard to be a mother, wife, teacher and daughter all at the same time, all with demands and limited time to do it. I now deliberately refuse to engage with flash points and just try to do my best. Can’t do more. Won’t do more.

I got so lucky with my parents, sometimes I wonder if we didn’t already know each other in previous lives. When I studied abroad in France (something they were both supportive of since they left their home country in their early twenties to live in the US), they came and visited me and I got to show them around and be their tour guide. My parents also planned a road trip through France and Spain, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had with them. I love traveling with them, and they’ve been my best teachers all my life.

I have a philosophical issue with the idea of being friends (or best friends) with your parents. I am friendly with my Mom (my father left our family), and appreciate her as one adult can appreciate another. However, I am still her daughter and she is still my mother. There are webs of expectations and history that are not present with friends. There will always be a power dynamic that is not equal, and I’m OK with that. I don’t think the trend of parents as friends is that honest or healthy.

I’m lucky to say my mom has been my best friend ever since I can remember. We are like two peas in a pod. I was never really a typical teenager, because I’ve always been super close to my parents.

Not sure if this has been said already, but while being best friends with your parents is lovely, it may not be the healthiest relationship. I imagine if you feel your parents are your best friends it is because you already have a solid, nurturing relationship with them and this “friendship” does not violate the appropriate boundaries. My mom over the years has demanded that we be friends where as I feel I need a mother instead. I am adamant that I am a parent first to my children and a “friend” second. I cannot replace the role of friends in their (children’s or parent’s) lives just like friends cannot replace my role as a parent/child.