7 Books For Children Of Complicated Parents
Few relationships are more formative than the relationship between a parent and their child, a relationship that, when strained, can have a lasting impact on both your life and theirs. If you have a complicated or a less-than-ideal relationship with a parent, you are not alone. Each of the books below offers an example of a different shape that the parent-child relationship can take and the myriad of ways in which we understand and relate to our parents over time.
What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About
In this thoughtful book of essays, fifteen writers examine the relationships that they have (or don’t have) with their mothers. Authors whose relationships with their mothers are strained or estranged grapple with influences of intergenerational trauma, mental health, abuse, and judgment — provoking the origins of their fraught relationships and the experiences that create tension and distance in the earliest and often most formative bond of their life. Other authors take the opportunity to search for the women their mothers were before having children and how they benefited from or struggled with the shape that this intimacy took, for better or for worse. This book is a reminder that, no matter our singular experiences, we are not alone.
I’m Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy
You likely remember the actress Jennette McCurdy from her role as Sam Puckett on the Nickelodeon sitcom, soon after which she quit acting altogether. Her 2022 memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died explores the difficult relationship McCurdy had with her mother, who abused her throughout her childhood and young adulthood before passing away in 2013. In the book, McCurdy explores the impact her relationship with her mother had on her mental and physical health, body image, career, and relationships with the people around her. It’s an often heartbreaking, sometimes humorous reflection on her experiences and her journey to heal from them, shared with the public for the very first time.
Understanding the Borderline Mother, by Christine Ann Lawson
Borderline Personality Disorder is a disorder that affects regulation of mood and emotions, understood to be caused by both genetic and environmental factors and diagnosed three times as often in women as in men. The mood swings, impulsivity, and psychosis associated with BPD can put immense strain on the children of Borderline mothers, who often must reckon with the long-term impact their mother’s mental health has had on their physical and emotional wellbeing. Understanding the Borderline Mother is a comprehensive exploration on a rarely studied phenomena, painting a surprisingly portrait of the disorder as experienced by both mother and child. The book is a must-read for those who have navigated, and continue to navigate, these complicated relationships.
Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner
In the 2021 memoir Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zaunder (frontwoman of the band) Japanese Breakfast) reflects on her relationship with her late mother, Chongmi, whose death she grieved and processed by learning to cook Korean cuisine. Prior to her mother’s illness, she and Zauner shared a close yet complicated relationship, clashing over Chongmi’s strictness and Zauner’s youthful rebellion. But when Chongmi is diagnosed with cancer, Zauner rushes to her side, caring for her mother throughout her illness. The book is both an ode to Zauner’s mother and an exploration of the many ways we know and cannot know about our mothers. The result is a touching, introspective book on how to love, honor, connect with, grieve, and remember the women who raised us in the best and worst of times.
Are You My Mother?, by Allison Bechdel
Graphic novelist Alison Bechdel, a prominent cartoonist, is best known for her long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and her 2006 graphic novel Fun Home, a memoir exploring her complicated relationship she shared with her closeted father. In her second memoir, Are You My Mother?, Bechdel dissects her relationship with her mother, who gave up a career in acting to raise her children and the resulting distance this and her husband’s identity created between her and her family. The result is a touching exploration of how the things we don’t know about our parents are often the greatest forces in the relationships we have with them, and that it’s never too late to try and understand the shape of these bonds and the influence they may have had on our later lives.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a semi-autobiographical novel by Vietnamese-American writer and poet Ocean Vuong, taking the form of a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. In the novel, Vuong tells the story of both the boy, Little Dog, and his mother, whose life was shaped by warfare, poverty, and spousal abuse. These events have a tremendous impact on the narrator, who is gay and closeted and whose relationship with his mother is complex and often volatile. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a singular and vulnerable provocation of identity and intergenerational trauma, and of how the lived experiences of our mothers and their mothers so often and so strongly influence our own.
Everything I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng
For fiction readers, Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You tells the heart-wrenching story of a mixed-race Chinese-American family grappling with the unexpected death of their daughter, Lydia, in 1977. In the aftermath, parents James and Marilyn consider their own relationships to their parents, their identities, and their careers — particularly that of Marilyn, who sacrificed her pre-medical studies to raise her children. She lived vicariously through her late daughter, pushing her to pursue the opportunities she didn’t have and steering her away from the domestic life her own mother wanted for her, but that she never wanted for herself. Ng has written a deft examination of the intergenerational ties between women and the influence of identity, career, grief and also love on our romantic and familial relationships.