I had a controlling mother. She felt entitled to control what I wore, how I did my hair, whether or not I plucked my eyebrows or shaved my legs, what I ate and how much, which teachers were responsible for me at school, which extracurricular activities I participated in, and who I hung out with. She controlled what influenced me (no pop music, only Christian music), no TV other than Little House On The Prairie, and no movies.
When I wanted to be a Girl Scout, she became a Scout leader so she could control me there. When I wanted to join the church youth choir, she became the youth choir director. She volunteered in every classroom I studied in until I was in junior high so that I couldn’t get away from her control, even at school.
She controlled my sex life (or lack thereof) and demanded I go to church sex camp to make sure I kept my virginity until I got married. (Of course, I kept it a secret that I slept with my college boyfriend before we got engaged.) She controlled who I could and could not be friends with, as well as my curfew (which was far earlier than that of my friends). She insisted I believe what she believed about her version of religion, which I had to pretend to agree with, even though I did not and even though I left the church the minute I could- at 18.
She controlled how often I went to church (3X per week, against my will.) She controlled what I was allowed to think and say. She felt entitled to pass on her homophobia and judgments against anyone not Protestant (but the indoctrination failed to stick because I knew Jesus was a Civil Rights activist and would have stood up for queer folks and religious freedom.
Not surprisingly, I wound up with an eating disorder, in a ballet company where all the girls had eating disorders and nobody talked about it. The one thing she couldn’t do is force me to eat or make me stop working out six hours per day. I finally started eating once I left home and went to college, where I didn’t have her breathing down my neck 24/7. But even then, she controlled the geography of where I was allowed to apply to college- nothing West of the Mississippi or north of the Mason-Dixon line I wanted to go to Stanford but didn’t realize you could apply to a college without your parent’s consent and that you could emancipate yourself if need be to qualify for financial aid if your parents made too much money but refused to help you pay for school.
My mother tried to control whether I would do abortions as a 28-year-old OB/GYN resident at Northwestern and threatened to disown me and never speak to me again if I ever did an abortion. I rebelled, did abortions because I am pro-choice, and proved that her threats were empty. She didn’t abandon me. She just refused to ever discuss abortion with me again.
My mother never thought any of these things were wrong, even though she studied childhood development and early childhood education in college and worked as a schoolteacher until I was born. I pleaded with my father, a physician, begging him to get her off my case. But he looked the other way and blew me off with comments like “Your mother’s in charge.” Nobody I went to for help was willing to get in her way, so, as the firstborn, I got the worst of her controlling behavior.
She never would verify my hunch, but my suspicion is that my mother was sexually abused in childhood. Her brother is spending his life in jail for molesting all the little girls in the neighborhood. And she wound up raising her much younger sister as my older sister, I suspect to spare her whatever my mother went through.
I suspect she couldn’t control what happened in the house where her father refused to work and her mother tried to pay the bills for six kids with Welfare and odd jobs. So she controlled me like I was her China doll, rather than an independent being with agency and autonomy.
Aside from choosing to do abortions as part of my activism, I didn’t really start to break up with my mother or get out from under her control until I was 40. Untangling that enmeshment didn’t fully happen until she died. Even on her deathbed, she was criticizing my eyebrows as too bushy for her taste. I cried bitter tears when I realized I would never be good enough for her. I had sold out my authenticity for the first half of my life- for what? Even now, I sometimes hear her voice in my head when I know she’d disapprove of something I was doing.
My mother was fun and playful and loved children- because they’re easier to control than adults. When I got older, she started taking under her wing the vulnerable kids with parents who neglected or abused them. She made them wear promise rings and bought their allegiance with presents and promises to pay for college, which she often did. When those kids rebelled against her control, she called them ungrateful. When they broke their purity promise, she shook her head and complained to me about how all her minions were going to hell for being little harlots.
The thing is that my mother had no idea how traumatic her controlling behaviors were or how they’d mark my life. I think she honestly thought that’s what good mothers do. She was affectionate as long as I was doing what she expected me to do. She was the penultimate party-thrower. Holidays were a blast, as long as she was in control.
But when she dressed us all up- three generations of Rankins- in matching pajamas for the requisite Christmas photos- and any of the kids started crying or didn’t want to wear the pajamas or interfered with her agenda to make us look like the perfect family- Evil Mom would come out. At some point, I think even she realized she needed to back off, and as I got older, she softened a bit.
But I’ll never forget overhearing my mother tell a friend over tea what a disappointment all three of her children were. No matter what we did, we were never exactly what she expected us to be.
Right before the pandemic, I was in New York City and had the extreme privilege of seeing The Prom on Broadway. It’s the story of a lesbian teenager Emma from Indiana who falls in love with a girl with a mother like I had named Alyssa Greene. When I heard Alyssa Greene sing about her controlling mother- and how she sold out to please her mother, I sobbed so hard that the two lesbian women on either side of me reached out to hold me until I calmed down. (You can listen to her song Alyssa Greene here.)
I’ve done a lot of IFS work, healing my Alyssa Greene part since that Broadway show meltdown. But part of what that part needs from me is to speak out to mothers, so we know it’s not okay to control our kids that way, even if we think we’re helping them, protecting them, or making sure they get into heaven.
To honor that part’s need, I’m joining forces with pediatrician and trauma expert Rachel Gilgoff, MD to teach a class for mother-identifying people about the impact of relational trauma on kids and adults, with regard to their mental and physical health, as well as their relationships in adulthood. It’s called Mothering As Medicine, and it’s an IFS-informed healing course focused on helping young moms avoid relationally traumatizing their kids and helping older moms heal ourselves and show up to heal any damage we may have caused before we realized that what we might have been doing was hurtful to our kids and their developing personalities.
Of course, people who control their kids were often controlled themselves. Or things were out of control in their childhoods and they exercise control over those with less power than them to try to feel safer in a world that can feel out of control at times. After all, hurt people hurt people.
Learn more and register for Mothering As Medicine here.
You don’t have the right to control your kids, but you absolutely have the right to have boundaries and set limts. Boundaries can be controlling, but when used ethically, they protect autonomy and agency, rather than the other way around. Unless you’re trying to keep a child who’s still a minor safe from legitimate danger, or unless you’re aiming to protect an adult who isn’t able to properly care for themselves (like a parent with dementia), you do not have the right to exert control and pull a “power over” move and dress it up as “boundaries.” To do so would be a boundary violation, and to quote wise parents everywhere, two wrongs never make a right.
As much as some people with control freak parts might not like this, you only have the right to control yourself. Of course, you are responsible to your loved ones, so your care of them is part of what love demands. But you are not responsible for your loved ones, unless they are legitimate dependents, such as minors or mentally disabled adults. Even if they’re minors, you are not responsible for the consequences of their choices, especially if they’re making irresponsible choices. I am responsible for my irresponsible behaviors. You are responsible for your irresponsible behavior. We need to keep such things separate so we don’t meander into enmeshment territory.
For example, let’s say your teenage son is intelligent, talented, good-looking, and full of potential. You think he should be playing varsity ball, dating a cheerleader, making straight A’s, going to the homecoming dance, applying for college, and thriving in his senior year. But he’s not. He’s holed up in his room, playing video games, hacking into websites, skipping school, making poor grades, smoking pot, watching porn, perusing chat sites, and generally being anti-social. As his parent, you have a right to set a boundary against your son’s choice to break the law and smoke pot when he’s below the legal age to make that choice. You have a right to limit screen time if you think it’s causing him harm. Depending on his age, you have a right to expect him to attend school, aligned with the truancy laws of your state. As his parent, you have a duty to make sure you keep him safe and relatively law-abiding.
If he refuses to respect your boundaries, you have a right to withhold privileges or assign consequences to his choice to violate boundaries. You can take away the computer, assign reasonable household chores to keep him more occupied or take away his pot. You have the right to suggest he attend a rehab facility. If your teen is old enough and he goes way off the rails, such that you can’t get him to comply with going to school, if he won’t stop using pot, or if he keeps running away or refusing to go to school, you may even have the right to kick him out of the house if he’s old enough to make the choice to drop out of school legally. But only if you know he has a way to get a job, find himself an apartment or another place to live, and get his basic needs met. (Laws vary by state, but unless you have given up your child as a ward of the state, many states have laws that could get you arrested for child endangerment if you aren’t attending to a minor’s basic needs for shelter, food, and protection.)
What you don’t have the right to do is try to coerce him to go to college, bully him into doing what you want him to do, shame him for not trying out for the varsity team, pressure him to get a girlfriend, punish him for not being the teen you hoped he’d be, or get him kidnapped in the middle of the night to take him to the school for troubled teens you want him to go to. Even though there are schools for minors that do such things, those children usually wind up very traumatized by the experience of being controlled- because being kidnapped in the middle of the night and taken by bounty hunters against your will is a boundary violation.
Your job as a parent is to love your child unconditionally. You can put limits on what your kids can expect from you, like a free place to live if your kids are adults. You have a right to your feelings too. If you’re disappointed that your child is not meeting your expectations, you can vent to your best friend or take your disappointment to your therapist and get help feeling those painful emotions.
But don’t forget- your son or daughter is a separate human being, so he or she has a right to make their own choices- and experience the consequences of those choices. Any coercion, manipulation, threat of the conditionality of your love, or withholding of privileges that would be considered basic survival needs (such as food or shelter) for someone too young to take care of themself would be a “power over” move and abuse of power, and it’s not okay.
You do have a right to have house rules and shared responsibilities and you have a right to take away privileges if they won’t cooperate. You have the right to guide your child and teach them what you think it’s important for them to know. You have the right to influence your child ethically, to teach them about your values or warn them about things you’re scared of, like cult education or the red flags of narcissism. You’re welcome to express your desires and your fears, to guide them in their career choices or parenting decisions. Your child will benefit from your ethical influence, as long as your kids know they’re free to ignore your feedback and do something different than you might do. As long as they know nothing bad will happen to their attachment to you if they override your preferences with their own, influencing your child is just fine.
It’s just a fine line between ethical influence and undue influence or coercive control.
We’ll be discussing childhood developmental needs, boundaries, controlling behaviors, and other issues about trauma-informed parenting- in Mothering As Medicine. We’ll be as gentle as possible tiptoeing into sensitive territory, so you can feel safe knowing that we won’t be shaming anyone; just educating with compassionate hearts and a desire to reduce suffering in the world. If you know anyone who might benefit from this class, please spread the word!
Join us for Mothering As Medicine
