My folks are neither tiger mothers nor helicopter parents. They simply want the best for me. They worry about my safety. I remind myself of this every time I dial their telephone number nowadays, because our relationship is changing. The parental talks seem longer and more didactic now, and, to my parents, my decisions appear more radical. I’m a young adult living on my own 700 miles from home, but my parents are still my parents. For this reason, the gap year has been as much a growing pain for them as it has for me.
In 2012, the average cost to raise a child was a reported $241,080. This figure does not include violin lessons, summer camps or the cost of college tuition. With such a hefty price tag, I am the single most expensive investment my parents have made in their lives. It then makes sense that with this considerable economic and emotional down-payment, parents would continue to be protective.
At Duke, there were a number of decisions my parents initially questioned: a sociology degree, volunteering in Ecuador, taking a gap year. Much to my folks’ credit, they never said no—at least not outright to any decision I made. Looking back, I realize that Duke was often the deciding factor in their support.
In many ways, the University functioned as this pseudo co-parent, raising me to become a mature adult in this world. My mother and father trusted that if I traveled to foreign countries in Duke programs, the University would make sure I did not end up in dangerous locations. Duke would prepare me well to enter the professional market no matter my degree. Duke endorsed my decision to take a gap year before applying to medical school. As a post-graduate, there is no “safety-net parent” my folks can trust. They have to believe that I alone will make the right decisions for myself. At times, that has been a more difficult case to make.
This summer I shared with my father my plans to move into an apartment with three close friends who all happened to be male. “I forbid you from living there,” my father said over the phone. At that uncomfortable moment, I realized I was no longer legally or financially obligated to follow his instructions—there was no real forbidding that could be done. My initial reaction was, “Who are you to tell me what to do when I am a grown person?”
The answer, of course, is that they are my parents, the people who raised me, clothed me, sacrificed for me and have always looked out for me. They want to prevent me from making mistakes they see as harmful. But when parents employ the kind of hard-stop language and brinksmanship my father did, it shuts down the line of communication and can turn a discussion into a battle. In that particular situation, I ultimately chose not to live with my friends and made other arrangements. That episode, however, made me weary of discussing important life decisions with my parents in the future.
At present, part of me has decided that growing up right now means growing away from the people who taught me right from wrong. There are some parts of myself that I have chosen not to share with my parents at the moment—like volunteering at an organization that requires me to assume some risk. These lies of omission are complicated by the politics of love. Out of fear of fracturing our loving relationship, I am currently avoiding my parents.
I called my mother the other day, and she answered the phone by asking: “What do you need?” If my parents have been guilty of being too parental, I then have been guilty of neglecting them except in crises. In Washington, D.C., I have cultivated a network of people that I consider family, that I can rely on for guidance and advice, but that does not mean I should forget my family in Chicago.
There does not seem to be an easy answer to navigate this growing relationship with my parents.
The term “adult child” is inherently a paradox. What is an adult relationship with my parents supposed to look like? How am I supposed to invest in them in ways that respect and return the investmet they made in me? Will my folks and I ever develop a friendship based on mutual understanding or is the parent-child relationship inherently unique and imbalanced? These questions continue to persist in my mind, but as I prepare for another workday I do not have the time to develop a clear resolution. And yet, watching my relationship with my parents deteriorate to the point where my mother assumes I am only calling because I need something, I realize as an “adult child” I can begin to invest in my parents by making the time to pick up the telephone and dial home.
Kristen Lee, Trinity ’13, is a Truman-Albright Fellow at the federal office of rural health policy in Rockville, Md. This column is the eleventh installment in a semester-long series of weekly columns written on the gap year experience, as well as the diverse ways Duke graduates can pursue and engage with the field of medicine outside the classroom. Send the columnists a message on Twitter @MindTheGapDuke.
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