It is a truism that carries a lot of baggage for those of us who came of age in the era of professional motherhood, when their report card might as well have been our report card. When we were only as happy as our most unhappy child.
Now those children are young adults, and those hyper-involved chickens have come home to roost, especially in the always-fraught relationship between mothers and daughters.
In the new book "Too Close for Comfort?" authors Linda Perlman Gordon and Susan Morris Shaffer make the case for a healthy disengagement. And it is the mothers (isn't it always the mothers?) who need to leave the room.
"There are consequences to being your daughter's personal concierge," Shaffer said.
And it isn't just that she won't learn how to make her own airline reservations. Mothers who continue to be the fixer and the rescuer deny their daughters the chance to become independent, to become competent.
Gordon is a family therapist in Washington and has learned much from her patients. Shaffer is executive director of the Maryland State Parental Information Resource Center. Both have adult daughters in their 30s, and they know this territory well.
The boundaries between mothers and daughters have shifted, they say. At no time in recent history has one generation had so much in common with the next. College educations, workplace experience. You can probably add music, fashion, politics and multiple sex partners, too.
We think we can guide our daughters through these thickets, if only they would listen to us. We are probably right, but Shaffer and Gordon argue that they need to find their own way.
"We don't want to give up our mother-daughter relationships with our adult daughters because they are such a source of comfort," said Shaffer.
Dinner out, a movie, shoe shopping, cooking together or traveling. BFFs.
"But at some point you want them to start giving back. To ask how your day was, to stop expecting to be the center of the universe," said Shaffer. "And that requires a different kind of parenting."
A kind of parenting that will produce its own kind of friction. It is possible our daughters will not like it when we withdraw the safety net, if we are not at their beck and call.
"They will define themselves by bumping up against us," said Gordon.
Their book defines a variety of mother-daughter relationship types. And there is a kind of work sheet that will help women think about their role as mother. Plus some strategies that will help mothers establish healthy boundaries and ground rules with daughters who have reaped the rewards, as well as the handicaps, of our kind of mothering.
This isn't likely to be a problem with our sons, the authors allow. Boys do not see their mothers as anything but mothers -- never as friends or as role models or as their future selves.
Our daughters, on the other hand, are waiting longer to marry and commit to a family of their own, and that means they are spending more time as our daughters. The poor economy and stagnant wages don't help them move toward independence, either.
"We didn't have that time to cultivate a relationship with our own mothers," said Shaffer. "We have time to work on this one."
Just because we are not screaming at each other over the pill or Nixon doesn't mean we are at the same stage in life. Just because we both like ballet flats doesn't mean we are equals. Just because we can hang out for an afternoon without someone storming out and slamming a door doesn't mean that we are friends.
So, what are we?
"We are all living longer," said Gordon. "You might have 50 healthy years together. You better figure it out."
Susan Reimer is a columnist for the Baltimore Sun. Her e-mail address is susan.reimer@baltsun.com.
