As our children grow into teenagers and adults, they often start making choices we personally disapprove of. One of the common choices an adult child makes, is about relationships. Unfortunately though, our adult children do not always make what we feel are the best relationship choices for themselves, and this can create conflict, tension, or friction within the family.
There are many relationship choices our adult children can make that we will disapprove of. Some of these choices may make us extremely mad, while others will be drastically disappointing to us. There are some choices however, which are often difficult for parents to accept and sometimes these can cause rifts in family relationships which last for a lifetime.
Everyone has different family values though, so the types of relationship choices which may be a problem for one family, may not be an issue for another family. It is your personal thoughts, beliefs, and feelings towards your child's relationship that matters most though, so thinking through how you'll react to various scenarios can be helpful in being prepared.
Common relationship choices that adult children make, which their parents don't like, strongly disapprove of, or cannot accept include:
1. Living together without marriage. It is not uncommon for young adults to live together without getting married these days. Some older parents strongly disapprove of this living arrangement and choice, while others have come to accept it as part of the natural course relationships take these days. If you disapprove, you may consider talking to your adult child about it, but in most cases you simply must accept it.
It may help to remind yourself about the soaring divorce rates in the world today, because this may help you understand that living together before marriage can often help create a lifetime relationship.
2. Non Traditional Roles. Many younger adults are now living together or becoming married, yet doing everything seemingly backwards from the "proper" way. Women for instance, will often have high paying careers instead of staying home with the children. Even older adults are getting used to this concept now of course, but the trend has spawned another which has many people up in arms: Role Reversal.
Instead of Mom staying at home and Dad going to work, many families now have Mom going to work and Dad staying at home with the children. And for mature men particularly, this is a very difficult concept to accept. In fact, many older men feel it is unacceptable for a man to stay home and take care of the house and kids, while his wife makes the money to support them.
Whether we like it or not though, we must start accepting that this is how society is moving. If it was once perfectly acceptable for a woman to stay home and take care of the house and kids without earning a paycheck outside the home, then we must also accept that it is just acceptable for men to do it too. We should in fact, be thrilled that our adult sons are so involved in their children's lives. Too many men these days have little to no relationship with their children, because they're too busy working, or because they've divorced and moved on.
Stay tuned as we continue in part two...
3. Getting Married Too Young. Unfortunately some young adult children fall in love for the first time, think it's forever, and decide to get married very quickly. As their parents - with age, wisdom, and experience on our sides - we of course disapprove of this. At the very least we are worried when one of our children decides to marry too quickly, or at too young of an age.
We can try to discuss the decision with them in detail of course, and we can even try to solicit outside help from our church pastor, friends, or relationship counselors. In the end though of course, if the children decide to go through with their marriage, all you can do is try to be supportive - whether it works out in the end or not.
4. Getting Divorced. Another common problem of relationships today is divorce. The divorce rates in the United States alone are now over 50%, and this just seems to keep growing. If your adult children decide to get divorced, there may be little to nothing you can do about it. You may however, be able to have them try counseling first, and that may or may not help. You may also try to talk to them privately yourself, and attempt to see just how severe the problems are.
One of the reasons for such high divorce rates these days may be that everyone wants things to happen too quickly, and too easily. So by talking to your adult child privately, you might be able to determine if they are not really willing to put themselves into the relationship enough to make it work.
Depending on your child and their particular relationship of course, this may do no good in the end. Whatever happens though, do your best to be supportive as much as you possibly can. Don't take sides in the divorce either, and be sure to maintain a consistent relationship with the grandchildren if you have them.
5. Same Sex Partnerships. This particular relationship choice is the cause of many severe family conflicts. There are some parents who cannot and will not accept the idea of their son or daughter having a same sex relationship.
There is no changing their mind though. As the more mature adult with longer and fuller life experiences, it is up to you to try your best to at least tolerate your child's relationship choices.
The definition of tolerating will vary from one person to another however. Some parents welcome their adult child for visits without their partner, while others accept the partner coming along too. Some parents have no problem with shows of affection between the adult child and their chosen partner, while others prohibit any kind of loving display while they're around.
Know this though: How you react to your adult child's relationship decision will have a severe impact on the relationship you have with that child in the future. If your child is in love with and committed to a partner of the same sex, then in their mind they are married and they'll want you to accept that person as their spouse. If you choose to not compromise in any way, you run the risk of never seeing or hearing from your adult child again.
So do your best to choose wisely and rationally how you respond to your adult children's relationship choices. Even if you can't stand the choices they've made, it may be much worse to not have that child in your life at any time in the future.
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