LINDA PERLMAN GORDON, LCSW-C, M.Ed
Linda is a clinical social worker with a private practice in the Washington, DC area focusing on individual, couples and family counseling. She was voted one of the best mental health professionals in the Washington, DC Metro area in the July 2009 issue of Washingtonian Magazine and is a member of the DC Academy of Collaborative Professionals. She is also a member of the Council of Contemporary Families, a non-profit consisting of noted family researchers and clinicians dedicated to enhancing the national conversation about issues important to today's families.
She is the co-author of Too Close for Comfort: Questioning the New Intimacy of today's New Mother-Daughter Relationship Mom, Can I Move Back in with You? A Survival Guide for Parents of Twentysomethings, Why Boys Don't Talk and Why It Matters: A Parent's Survival Guide to Connecting with Your Teen (and Why Girls Talk and What They Are Really Saying: A Parent's Survival Guide to Connecting with Your Teen".
As a result of this work, she has spoken to parent groups and educators nationally, and has been the subject of numerous interviews and articles in print, radio, and television in the United States and Canada. Selected media appearances and interviews include, CNN, MSNBC, ABC “World News Now,” Good Morning America, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Washington Post. She was invited to participate at the 2001 White House Conference on Teenagers.
SUSAN MORRIS SHAFFER
Susan is currently the Vice-President and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, Inc. a non-profit whose mission is to build the capacity of educational and community-based organizations to support low-income and culturally diverse children and their families. She serves as the Executive Director of the Maryland Parental Information and Resource Center (MD PIRC), a statewide organization that addresses issues of increasing family engagement to improve student achievement. She brings to this position more than thirty years of professional training, management, con`sultation, teaching, and materials development experience in family engagement, gender equity and multicultural education. Her most recent projects include an appointment to Maryland’s Superintendent’s Parent Involvement Advisory Council and serving on the board of directors of the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center and Harmony Through Education, an international NGO whose mission is to build schools in developing countries for children with disabilities.
Susan Shaffer is a member of the National Family, School, and Community Engagement Working Group and has been a member of the Montgomery County, Maryland Commission for Women. She was invited to participate in “The White House Conference on Teenagers, 2000,” hosted by President Clinton and First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the White House celebration of the 25th anniversary of Title IX, and the Congressional celebration of the 30th anniversary of Title IX. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including, under her leadership, the MD PIRC receiving “Certificates of Special Recognition” from Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski as well as from Rep. Steny Hoyer and MD state delegates and local county commissions, the American Educational Research Association Women’s Education Award for the most significant contribution to curricular materials on women, the County Executive of Montgomery County Service Award, and the Maryland State Department of Education Recognition of Service to Maryland Women’s History Award.
In addition to the books she has co-authored with Linda Gordon, Ms. Shaffer has authored and co-authored several publications related to equity, parenting, women’s history, disability, and multicultural education. These publications include, Safe Boys-Safe Schools in the WEEA Digests series; Women’s Journeys, Women’s Stories: In Search of our Multicultural Future; Beyond Title IX: Gender Equity Issues in Schools; “She Bakes and He Builds: Gender Bias in the Curriculum,” in Double Jeopardy: Addressing Gender Issues in Special Education Services; and “Race, Gender, Class and Identity,” in Improving Schools for African American Students: A Reader for Educational Leaders.
Source: www.ParentingRoadMaps.com
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Empowered Mommies (EM): Ms Gordon and Ms Shaffer, thank you again for giving us the opportunity to sit down with you. You both have such a fascinating backgrounds. Ms Gordon- you as a clinical social worker, family therapist and mediator in private practice and you Ms Shaffer as an educator and gender equity specialist for more than 35 years; now serving as the Executive Director for the Maryland State Parental Information and Resource Center. Can you share with us how you both began your careers and what made you decide to focus on parenting education?
Linda Perlman Gordon (LPG): I’m a clinical social worker by training and have my own psychotherapy practice where I work with families and focus on individual, couples and family counseling. Parenting education really evolved out of my work and collaboration with Susan in the books we can co-written together. You could say we got to thinking about these topics in particular as mothers of teenage sons. We both struggled to communicate with our sons as closely as we did with our daughters and this led us to want to explore the subject and see why it was that there was such a difference.
Susan Morris Shaffer (SMS): That’s right. That challenge with our teenage sons at the time was eventually the inspiration for our first book, “Why Boys Don’t Talk and Why it Matters. ” Similar to Linda, my interest in parent education was the result of my day-to-day work especially in the area of family engagement, gender equity and multicultural education.
LPG: Our skills and experience really complement each other and we have since then founded a website, www.ParentingRoadMaps.com where we strive to reach out to parents and educators on different topics that affecting how children are raised.
EM: As a highly respected authors, you have both co-written and published several books including, “Why Boys Don’t Talk, Why Girls Talk” and “Mom, Can I Move Back In With You”? most recently "Too Close For Comfort? –Questioning the Intimacy of Today’s Mother-Daughter Relationship”. Can you share with us how each book came into being and what motivated you to write the latest one?
LPG: As we mentioned above, the first book was very close to our heart due to our experience with our teenage sons. We interviewed families and focused on discussing the pressures that teenage boys face today and we especially wanted to highlight suggestions for improving and maintaining emotional bond with teenage sons. The second book, “Mom, Can I Move Back In With You” was very topical given the increasing rate of young adults moving back with their parents after graduating college. This delay in “launching” had become a national phenomenon so we were looking to explore it more in depth.
SMS: Yes, we humorously called that book a “Survival Guide For Parents of TwentySomethings” and our goal was to provide parents advice and constructive suggestions for parenting to help their young adult children achieve their goals through this period of transition. And in our most recent book, “Too Close For Comfort,” we wanted to explore the ever complicated relationship between mothers and their adult daughters in given some of the current trends where adult daughters are delaying marriage and child birth until later on in life. We wanted to answer the question whether mothers and daughters can be “best” friends.
LPG: That’s right. In “Too Close For Comfort”, we’re really asking, when is it too much. What are some of the biggest challenges and what can mothers and daughters do to ensure that this bond remains positive and healthy for both parties.
EM: Personally find the subject of your latest book, “Too Close For Comfort?” fascinating. Mother-daughter relationships especially as daughters become adults are so complex and can be quite challenging at times. In your experience, what are some of the biggest issues and challenges mothers and daughters face today when it comes to maintaining a healthy relationship?
LPG: That’s a great question and without a doubt there are different types of relationships out there. Everyone’s experience is different, but based on the interviews, focus groups and research we conducted during the process of writing this book, I would have to say that Control, Boundaries and Connection seem to be the biggest areas where challenges usually arise. Control is related to the style and approach that a mother takes in wanting to control their daughter’s decisions. Boundaries refers to the challenge of maintaining healthy distance where necessary on both sides and Connection is the challenge of developing this close bound while remaining cognizant of boundaries and desire for control sometimes.
SMS: We saw many different challenges but at the end of the day, most of them fall into the broad categories that Linda described. In the book we give really specific examples through discussions and feedback from mothers and their adult daughters. We also describe challenges depending on the life stage of the adult daughter (post-college, marriage, child birth and even divorce). On page 123 of the book we specifically list the most prevalent challenges which are: (miscommunication, entitlement, self-absorption, not really knowing each other, lack of appreciation, lack of emotional support, distance and unavailability, control, judgment, lack of boundaries, shaming and idealization of childhood).
EM: In the book you describe basic Mother Archetypes. How Did You Come Up With Those?
LPG: We started first by looking at characteristics that our focus group members shared. Based on these commonalities we were able to organize them into specific themes and the archetypes were born from those themes. It goes without saying that it’s possible for someone to overlap between several archetypes but for the most part we feel comfortable that we have captured most of them in our model. These archetypes can create challenges for both the mother and the adult daughter. (We discuss these in great detail in Chapter 6 of our book. The archetypes we discovered were:
a. Guardian Angel: Tries to protect her daughter from any failure or disappointment and defines her child’s happiness in terms of her own needs and perceptions. She believes that by fixing everything for her daughter, her daughter will be happy and have all opportunities there for her. This is sometimes to the detriment of the daughter who may become overly depending and reliant on her mother.
b. Alpha Mother: Is fault finding. She can be disapproving, controlling and/or hypercritical and judgmental and finds ample opportunities to be disappointed in her daughter. She wields her power through guilt and shame. As a result the daughter is seldom able to express her true feelings and hides part of herself for fear her mother will find fault with her.
c. Long-Distance Mother: May attend to all of her daughter’s custodial needs, including food, school, shelter but not her emotional needs. She may be disconnected from her own feeling and/or lack emotional intelligence. Has a hard time showing physical attention and warmth. The daughter may interpret this as lack of love and indifference.
d. Shadow Mother: Is Self-denying, and feels powerless to stand up for herself and unworthy of expressing her needs. She denies her own validity and thus the daughter may see her as dependent, depressed and childlike with the daughter becoming the mother’s mother.
e. Mini-Me Mother: Similar to the Alpha Mother, this type is controlling, but uses this control to replicate herself. She uses her influence to mold a daughter into her own image and/or type of daughter she thinks her daughter should be without considering her daughter’s separate identity and needs. The daughter in terms may not be able to discern where her mother ends and where she begins.
f. Chameleon Mother: Her inconsistency is evident and she appears unreliable most of the time. She may lead the daughter unable to know what to expect and distrusting of relationships.
g. Transcultural Mother: If the other was born abroad and the daughter was born locally, challenges may exist around reconciling the need to maintain a recognition of original culture and values with the adoption of the new home country. A clear example are the values and beliefs of mothers who are immigrants or first-generation Americans may conflict with mainstream American culture. We’ve had some daughters express that their mothers have told them they have become too “Americanized” which can make them feel like they've betrayed their mothers.
SMS: The model archetype that we recommend is being happy with the idea of the “Perfectly Imperfect Mother.” This mother meets all of her daughter’s needs when she is a baby, and as she grows up, slowly frustrates some of her daughter’s needs to give her the ability to deal with failure. She gives her daughter the message that she wants her to be moral and responsible, to have the strength to make her own choices and appreciate her own abilities and talents. This type realizes that it is her role to help her daughter adjust, cope and persevere without striving for perfection because perfection creates an impossible ideal. At the end of the book we discuss the suggestions that, if implemented, can get one closer to this model.
EM: You also discuss some wonderful and helpful tips and advice for mothers and daughters. How did you come up with these? Was it based on years of research and real life examples you observed?
LPG: Again, these were based on the archetypes we developed and numerous interviews, focus groups and research. What’s neat is that these are real life examples straight from the mouths of mothers and their adult daughters. This makes the advice practical and realistic. Some of our examples are:
For Mothers:
* Develop a positive and nurturing new way to parent her. What worked with her as child or teen won't do! The relationship should be more equal now even if you're still the parent.
* Address your adult daughter in a manner that encourages effective communication and mutual respect avoiding labels and generalizations especialy those that may be outdated or rehashing the past.
* Be open to the choices your adult daughter makes, even when those choices may not be the ones you would make.
* Be an active listener and avoid being judgmental.
* Give advice only when asked and have it be constructive when possible.
* Develop and maintain appropriate boundaries.
* Accept your daughter for who she is and what she values.
* Accept being a perfectly imperfect mother. Share with your adult daughters stories of when you felt tired, overwhelmed, insecure. Empathize. No one can nor should live in the shadow of the seemingly "perfect" mother (she doesn't exist!).
* Treat your daughter as an adult.
* Step back when necessary, but don't disengage completely when things don't go your way.
* Respect your daughter's new family.
* Be the Grandmother, not the Mother.
* Don't personalize your daughter's disappointments.
* Avoid being overly critical as it relates to your daughter's career, parenting, lifestyle and physicality.
* Have fun together. Humor and a light-hearted attitude (even in the middle of an argument) goes a long way.
SMS: Similarly, this isn’t one sided. We came up with suggestions for daughters too.
For Daughters:
* Your mother wants to feel loved, needed and appreciated. She wants you to call and sincerely say, "Mom, how was your day?
* Your mother wants to be included in your life. Make an effort to have her be part of it.
* Realize it's difficult for some mothers to stop seeing their adult daughters as younger daughters or children. Your past will always be there and proving you've changed or evolved into a different person may be challenging for your mom to accept.
* Try to understand your mother's life circumstances, the choices she made and continues to make, and the challenges she faces, especially when you're both engaged in minor conflicts.
* Learn to live with the consequences of your conduct and be prepared for your mother's disapproval when you make a decision with which she disagrees.
* Be clear in your intentions; you want to be talked to as an adult. Continue the dialogue in a calm, rational way even when the going gets tough.
* Avoid stepping back into old family patterns and habits. People change and evolve and so should you as you relate to your parents
EM: If you had to look forward a decade, how do you hope your work and latest book will have influenced mothers and daughters everywhere?
LPG: Awareness if the first step towards changing or improving anything. We hope that with this book we can at least get the dialogue going between mothers and their adult daughters. We use real life examples, humor and candidness to help mothers and daughters foster and grow this special bond.
SMS: That’s right. Being cognizant of what you’re presently doing or your parenting style is key to making positive improvements! No one is perfect and that is ok. Self-awareness and reflection are instrumental in helping parents and children understand each other better.
EM: Thank you both for your time!
LPG & SMS: Thank you Ivanna for the opportunity!