I want to ask you how I can stop snapping at my mum. To give you some context, my parents split up when I was young and I was raised by my mum (I’m a woman). I still see my dad and my relationship with him is good, we have fun, I never lose my temper with him. But my mum gets on my nerves and has done throughout my adult life. Recently we spent a weekend together and I was sharp with her several times a day. The strangest thing is I don’t really understand why. She is a fusser and a worrier, and she does nag me about stuff. But I know she would do anything for me and that she’s basically a good person.
I don’t snap around my partner or my friends. So why am I so rude to her? I truly love her so much and I hate making her upset. I’m worried I will never fix this, and one day it will be my biggest regret.
Ow, I’m so sorry this is weighing on you, but I think it is going to be okay. Firstly, rest assured you are not alone in being short-tempered with your mum. In fact, you are in good company: many of my gentlest, kindest female friends are bewildered by the person they can be around their mothers. Really, these are the kind of women who apologise to lamp-posts, and yet I’ve seen them put their mums down with the acerbity of Regina George. I have even - ahem - been known to snap at my own mum, despite generally seeing myself as an amenable person. It’s very strange. The worst part is that most of us want to be mothers ourselves. So we sit around ruefully, hoping that somehow we will be the generation that escapes our children barking at us down the telephone when we politely inquire after their health. Probably not, though.
There are plenty of bad things a mother can do, which can leave a child with residual anger later in life. For the sake of this response, I am going to take you at your word, and assume your mum is ‘basically a good person’; a fusser, sure, but not inherently more annoying than anyone else. So why does she bring out the beast in you?
I think Pride and Prejudice has the answer (as it so often does). Mini-recap: the book is about five sisters living in Regency England, particularly Elizabeth Bennett. The girls’ father is a distant, witty, intelligent man - a mixture of ‘quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice’. He generally stays in his study and rolls his eyes at all the goings-on. Mrs Bennett is an anxious, flighty woman with ‘little information and uncertain temper’ - ‘the business of her life was to get her daughters married: its solace was visiting and news’.
Many Pride and Prejudice readers go on a journey with this book. The first time you read it, as a teenager, you love Mr Bennett: he’s the character with all the zingers; the sage voice of reason around his (dare I say shrieking) female family. He sees through the absurdity of 18th century social customs - and he loves Lizzy best, so we love him for that too. Mrs Bennett, on the other hand, seems shallow and tiresome; her obsession with marriage, clothes and gossip marking her as gauche. I think the novel wants us to see her that way: look at the ironic ‘business’ metaphor in the line I quoted; how the word suggests her concerns exist in opposition to ‘real’ occupation.
But when we return to the book later in life, these two parent figures begin to appear in a new light. Mr Bennett has, in fact, abdicated responsibility as a father. Mrs Bennett, on the other hand, is furiously working to protect her daughters in the only way she knows how (the only way that existed at the time): ensuring they get married. You would get a bit flighty, wouldn’t you, if your partner refused to acknowledge the importance of leaving his children with any sort of financial provision. Mr Bennett enjoys the socially acceptable male privilege (if you see it as one) of removing himself from the burden of parenting. Mrs Bennett is forced into the role of fusser, worrier, and nagger.
Ok, it’s not as simple as this. Mrs Bennett does encourage her daughters to make some pretty bad decisions - but Mr Bennett does nothing to prevent them. The point I’m making is that the Bennett dynamic exists at the extreme end of a classic, still prevalent, heteronormative mould. In male/female relationships, oftentimes fathers are distant, away, working - in your own case, physically absent. And so the everyday ‘fussing’ of raising a child falls on the mother. Once you have told a child a hundred times a day for eighteen years to get their gloves, wipe their nose, and finish their juice, I imagine it becomes the habit of a lifetime. And as adults, when we desire independence, hearing our mothers fuss like this reminds us of being babies: it is ‘triggering’, in a way that the occasional dad-fuss is not. (I hope it is clear I am talking about gender roles that are socially constructed, rather than inherently masculine or feminine.)
I think my own parents tried to push against this dynamic, and I know I’m lucky to be able to say my dad was loving and affectionate and around as much as he could be. But the practicalities of being the breadwinner still means my mum did more everyday fussing. This remains the case in many hetero parenting relationships, even when the man and woman are trying to be modern and share the fuss-burden. And then there’s the other part, which is that if your dad is the breadwinner he probably ends up helping you with grown-up things, like work, whereas your mum helps you with core child needs, like listening to you weep down the phone. So your relationship with him ‘grows up’ in a way that’s easier to navigate as an adult. (Except, of course, we still do desperately want someone to cry down the phone to, don’t we?)
It sounds like in your childhood, the dynamic was closer to the Mr and Mrs Bennett end of the spectrum, in that the entirety of day-to-day parenting fell on your mum. In a way, I’m not surprised your relationship with your dad is more fun - he never had to stay up with you when you had a fever, remind you to brush your teeth, or ensure you got to bed on time. I have found that understanding my own mum’s occasional need to nag me about taking vitamins as the product of a dynamic ultimately created by patriarchy makes me more sympathetic toward it (you’ll have to ask her if it’s made me any less snappish). I wonder if internalising this truth would make you feel less irritated, too.
I know that I am essentially telling you to accept your mum as she is, which might not seem totally fair. The thing is, we both know she won’t change. You’ll make yourself crazy trying to make her. I think all you can do is attempt to see the fussing in a new light. Your mum’s nagging exists because she cared for you when there was no-one else around to do so. It reminds you of being a kid - but you are not a kid anymore. Her worrying does not actually materially threaten your adult identity in any way. When she tells you to get an early night, you can just mumble ‘mmm-hmm’ and stay up until four a.m. watching Love is Blind, if you want to.
So, deep breaths. Try to laugh when it happens, and after a while it might actually start to be funny. Take what you want from her advice and politely ignore the rest. And if you think it’s going to be hard to change (it is) you can have a conversation to acknowledge your sharpness. You can say ‘I know I snap at you, and I’m sorry. I love you so much and you’re important to me.’ You can even tell her you wrote into this column - she might feel validated knowing it’s on your mind. And you can also try to counterbalance your snapping with extra words of kindness whenever you are not in a heightened, irritable state.
Because here’s the thing. Being a mum is also really great, I hear. There are joys and privileges to the intimacy that belongs to the more-at-home parent, whatever their gender. There might even be privileges to knowing your child feels safe enough around you to lose their temper (maybe?). And your mum probably does know that you love her. So try not to be quite so hard on yourself: you don’t have to be perfect. It’s enough to keep taking small steps in the right direction, and to keep telling your mum you love her, as often as you can (love you, mum).
I do so agree that reading changes as we do. We start off rooting for the debutant and skip the parts where anyone older is featuring, and then you begin to understand where the older generations come from, simply because we can identify with them.
First you're a lover, then you're a mother, then you're invisible, that's how it works in theatre, (hopefully not in life, though there are parallels!)
Being a mum myself, and still having a sense of guilt over how I regarded my own mum when she tried to intervene, all I can advise anyone, including myself, is : your mother wouldn't want you to feel any lingering guilt. She loves, or loved (in my case) too much for that. It helps to see them as a person, not perfect, but that's all you've got.
Insightful