Can We Ever Be Independent of Our Parents?
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This year, I spent nearly three months seeing my mom almost every day. She came to Ottawa from South Korea to help my sister with a newborn, and during that time she often stayed with me until she left a few days ago. It was the most time we had spent together in 17 years.
I had missed her, and being with her again confirmed that. But it also surfaced something I did not expect: a strong need for independence, both emotional and physical. Without it, I could feel myself slipping back into an older version of myself, returning to who I was then.
This brought me to a broader realization about parental influence. That is difficult to resolve in simple terms, even as a fully grown adult. Love and frustration. Attachment and resistance. The presence of a parent can activate both simultaneously.
This raises a set of questions I am still trying to think through. What does it actually mean to be independent from one’s parents in adulthood? Is independence best understood as separation, or as a more ongoing negotiation with influence that cannot be fully removed? To what extent are we ever outside the psychological and emotional structures formed in early relationships? And if children are meant to leave, to yearn for independence, and to be unavailable when you want them around - like when you are old and sick - what is the point of being a parent, of making all those years of sacrifice? Or can they actually truly leave and become fully be independent?
More broadly, what is the nature of the parent–child relationship in different stages of life? It is often described as foundational, even defining, but it is also unstable and evolving. It can remain a source of care and attachment, while also becoming a site of friction and difference.
Where does the parental influence leave, and when can you escape it fully, and should we?
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.