We never outgrew the village problem.

We never outgrew the village problem.

We talk a lot about parents without a village. We don't talk enough about how that village problem doesn't actually end when the kids grow up. Could we actually be closer if we stopped trying to be so close?

Somewhere along the way, families got smaller. More isolated. Parents were told they should be their child's primary source of friendship, advice, and influence. The village quietly disappeared. And then we kept walking through the rest of life like that.

What you end up with is a parent and an adult child sitting across the table from each other, both expecting the other person to be everything because they have operated that way for so long. Emotional support. Career mentor. Best friend. Confidant. Grandparent. Therapist.

One person can't be a village. Even a parent. Certainly not a child.

For the child, this shows up in waves. Usually around 15 or 16, you notice that maybe you and your parents don't really like to do the same things anymore. You have way more fun with your friends. You're still going to your mom for advice and comfort and the big stuff, but a small distance opens up.

Then you take a job in an industry your parents never worked in. Or you outpace what they know. Or you start running into questions they never had to answer for themselves. They can't meet you there. Another box doesn't get checked.

Then maybe you have kids, or decide not to. You're parenting in a different era than they did. You're processing things they were never allowed to process. You bring them something you're working through, and they look at you like you're speaking a language they don't have. Another box.

Most people read those moments as evidence that something is wrong with the relationship. Sometimes it is. But often what's happening is we are asking one relationship to do the job of an entire village, and it cannot.

(I want to be clear that I'm not talking here about people whose parents were genuinely cruel or abusive, or about adult relationships that aren't safe. I'm talking about the people who keep running into these growing pains and feeling like something must be deeply broken, when really their parent is just one human being. And so are they.)

It runs in the other direction, too. Parents who relied on their child emotionally for years, or parentified them, or treated them more like a partner than a kid, are now watching that adult child build a life that doesn't revolve around them. The same panic shows up. Where did my person go? Obviously, this is a different problem, because the parent shouldn't have been doing that in the first place. But it creates a similar type of tension and demand. The parent is trying to pull their adult child closer and recreate the bond when they did everything together. They're longing for a closeness that no longer exists.

The answer for both sides is the same. You don't fix this relationship by asking it to do more. You fix it by widening the village. You have to figure out what boxes this relationship can check during this stage of your life. And it will constantly be changing. Your relationship with your parent in your early 20's won't look the same as when you get married, or when you have children, or when they are at the end of their life. It will constantly be evolving and changing. And neither of you will meet all of the other person's needs. That is a fantasy.

You stop expecting your parent to be your career mentor and you go find a mentor. You stop expecting your adult child to be your closest friend and you go build a friendship. You stop expecting one relationship to carry every role, and you let it carry the role it can actually carry.

Some of these adult-child and parent relationships are not broken, they are overloaded. The expectations far exceed kindness, respect, and autonomy (all normal expectations). And it makes sense why. It is hard to find friends or people to support you today. We are so disconnected from our communities and it can be challenging to trust new people. It would be amazing if you could find one person to check every box for you (some lucky people do), but it also puts so much pressure on that relationship whether it's a parent, a friend, or a partner. We need to have different people in our lives for different things.

This week's prompt: Notice one role you're currently asking your parent (or your adult child) to play that maybe isn't actually theirs to play. Then notice who else, if anyone, is in your village for that.

If you're working through questions like these and want a space that actually helps you process them, The Family Cyclebreakers Club is where we go deeper. It's where the tools, the scripts, and the support live. Join us inside.

I hope to see you in a group at Calling Home (Join The Family Cyclebreakers Club) soon.

Whitney Goodman, LMFT

Calling Home Founder

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