I see you.
I’m proud of you.
I’m grateful for who you are.
Imagine these words being spoken directly to you by your mom, with no ulterior motive or hidden agenda.
What is that like for you?
What emotions does it stir up?
Is it hard for you to imagine your mom speaking words of love over you? If so, you’re not alone. It’s the experience of many women.
Being a mom is an incredible gift. It also comes with great challenges, great power, and great responsibility. Moms are an incredible force for good – not only in a child’s life, but in the world. And, they can also do great harm. If you noticed sadness or resentment as you thought about those statements in relationship to your own mother, please know that the goal is not to lay blame. Instead, the goal is to help clarify healthy mother-child relationships, so that you can heal.
Are you supposed to meet your mother’s needs? The short answer is “No.” Here’s why.
What a healthy mother needs from you is for you to become the wholehearted, beautiful woman God made.
What your mother wants from you might be very different from that. Don’t confuse the two.
The unique blessing and responsibility of being a mother is that it is primarily a one-way relationship. It was your mom’s job to:
- teach you how to care for your body
- help you understand your worth and potential
- encourage you to develop healthy relationships with other people
- guide you into mature responsibility
- launch you into the world equipped to meet various challenges
The items on this list are the job of the mother, not the child. This list does not go two-ways.
It’s not about perfection. The best of moms will make plenty of mistakes—big ones. They also know how to admit when they do. Above all they get that their job is primarily to care for you.
Here’s the paradox: if your mother understood that her job was not to need you, you will want to join her in a two-way relationship as you become an adult yourself. That will be a choice that you make.
However, not every mother-child relationship goes that way. My emails and comments are filled with questions like the following:
- My mom never really cared about me. Now that she’s older she’s lonely and wants to be close. But, it’s always about her. Am I terrible person that I don’t want that kind of relationship with her?
- I can never please my mom. No matter how hard I try, she is always upset.
- My mom calls me when she is anxious, drunk, or depressed. I feel so guilty, but it’s all I can do to keep it together to parent my own kids. How can I get her the help that she needs?
- It’s all about her. She has no clue what I think. Why does that hurt so much?
Underneath many of these questions is a deeper root issue. Psychologists call it “parentification.” It’s when your mother raised you to feel responsible for her vs. the other way around. Instead of caring for you, your mother:
- Relied on you to make her feel good about herself.
- Tried to get you to live the life she didn’t
- Criticized you because you never measured up to what she wanted
- Used you in order to gain standing in her community.
- Disrupted your God-given need to leave her and forge a life of your own
The list could go on.
Let me be clear: it was never your job to be your mother’s caregiver. It wasn’t then. And, it is not now.
That being said, here are 3 different ways to think about the question of meeting your mother’s needs:
Healthy Mother-Child Relationships
In this case, the question of meeting your mother’s needs is irrelevant. Your mother didn’t think you should meet her needs, and you never felt it was your job to do that. If this is your situation, you’re lucky. Thank your mother and give thanks to God for this gift. Instead of worrying and feeling guilt, you can focus on what you want a two-way relationship with your mother to look like as an adult. For example you might:
- Visit or call her as you would anyone whose company you enjoy
- Turn to her for support and parenting advice
- Enjoy hobbies and activities together
- Share meals, holidays, or family outings by choice
Ambivalent Mother-Child Relationships
Many mother-child relationships are complicated. There are some good elements, and there are some really challenging elements. Maybe your mother struggled in some areas, but excelled at others. For example, your mother may have cared for you by clothing and feeding you and giving you some opportunities. On the other hand, she might have been caught up in her own problems. Maybe she envied you or never found work, friends, or a community that fully challenged and supported her. As a result, she leaned on you to meet needs in ways she should not have.
Remember it’s not your job to meet her needs. She is an adult. Instead, think about how you CAN be in relationship with her, and focus on that. For example:
- What activities bring up conflict or pain? (For example, talking on the phone for long periods of time or discussing certain topics, such as politics or parenting.)
- What boundaries can you put in place to minimize the painful activities? (For example, limiting time alone together or making certain topics off limits.)
- What activities can you do with or for your mom that leave you feeling OK? (For example, grocery shopping, playing cards, or visiting in person once a month).
Toxic Mother-Child Relationships
In toxic mother-child relationships, you mother did more harm than good. She may have abused, neglected, or manipulated you consistently. She might have made you feel terrible if you did not center your world around her.
No matter what pain your mother experienced, it is never OK for her to take that out on her own child. Her wounds are not your fault. Her wounds are not your responsibility to heal.
This is one of the hardest truths for daughters to wrap their head around. We are hard-wired to want our mothers to be well.
It’s painful as a child to realize you cannot fix your mom. However, staying tangled up emotionally with a toxic mom is not good for anyone. In fact, Jesus addresses such entanglements in Luke 14:15-27, when he describes the cost of discipleship. It’s your job to choose him first and foremost, to choose the new life he has for you. That might mean severing ties with a toxic parent.
If you are in this situation, ask yourself this question:
What is the distance I need from my mom in order for me to say “Yes” to the life God is calling me to?
Your mom had her turn. Now, it’s time for you to take yours. The best way for you to truly meet your mom’s needs, is to work every day to become a woman who knows how to care for herself.
Remember: You can love your mother and set healthy boundaries with her.
You can honor her and maintain healthy distance.
You can respect her role in bringing you life and refuse to meet “needs” that are not your responsibility.
For Further Reading:
To learn more about setting healthy boundaries with your mom, please check out my 1-hour video training, “How to Set Boundaries With a Guilt-Tripping Mom” as part of my Claim Your Yes New Year’s bundle.
Join the conversation. Leave a comment below:
Do you struggle with your mother? Which of the categories listed above describes your relationship?
My 90 year old Mother has always blamed me for her problems. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t made to feel guilty. I am 66 now and despite trying to ( yet again) create boundaries with my (very alert in mind) elderly Mother,she wouldn’t allow this.
So in order to protect myself I made the decision to create distance between us. Immediately she started another dose of her silent treatment. Basically if I don’t move in with her and leave my own life and needs then she doesn’t want me to come near her at all!
She ignores all my communications, has told me she will ring the police if we ( my husband and I ) come near her! She will and had done it before!
Part of me feels really concerned for her growing frailty and the other part of me feels relief that I’m away from her constant nasty blame game.
At 66 she is still making my life miserable . I wish I could remove her from my mind but unlike her I can’t do that!
Thank you for writing, Lizzie, and I’m so sorry for your experience. It’s so important to address our own inner healing in conjunction with the boundaries that we set. I have listed many affordable counseling and support resources on my website here: https://www.dralisoncook.com/resources/. I pray for healing and freedom from the inside out.
Thank you for this, Alison. It really acknowledges the problems I have experienced all my life (I am now 65) with my mother.
My earliest memories are of being told I should have died at birth, I am ugly, I will never achieve what she has achieved or ever be good enough. She forced me to perform at the age of 7 on my cello in public and then told me I did badly in front of people – I was shamed and humiliated, and to this day feel deep within my self an anxiety that I can’t do anything right. She is so jealous of my life that she destroyed my childhood friendships, telling me I will never have any friends, tried to muscle in on my adult relationships, flirted with my husband, and even my daughter’s husband. She has tried to split apart family relationships with lies. The list goes on.
Only on becoming a child of God 28 years ago, did I realise that the way she treated me was wrong, and just how much she had damaged me. The trauma that came upon me was overwhelming. Only within myself in my intimate relationship with my Father have I experienced the deep healing I need. Church, far from helping, did further damage.
Now I do not and cannot have a relationship with my mother, I have put boundaries on topics of conversation, time spent with her – it is easy to do this as she lives 120 miles away. I feel a deep sense of grief that I never had a mother who cared for and encouraged me. I thank God that he helped me to be a better mother to my two beautiful talented daughters whose lives mean everything to me.
Thank you for writing, Sue. I’m so sorry for what you experienced. And, I’m grateful you found yourself as Beloved in the arms of your heavenly Father and stopped the legacy of abuse when it came to parenting your own daughters. I pray you hear God’s words over you: “I see you. I’m proud of you. I’m so grateful for who you are.”
This went right to my heart–and to the pit of my stomach, too. My mom is in the ambivalent-mom category and I’ve have learned what I can and can’t do with her – ie., i can’t ask her for emotional support or validation for many of the things I value, I can do simple tasks with her such as work with her on her computer or have lunch with the grandchildren. But what i hadn’t realized was I was still hoping to get that love and validation–and so I even these simple tasks were opportunities for me to feel hurt or angry. I have to remember that I’m doing these things as a way for me to respect her and spend time with her that is safe–and not get confused that these things will bring me into a two-way, mutually supportive emotional connection. It’s a tricky thing to remember, but even just having you explain that it’s normal and that I am, at least setting the good boundaries, is really helpful.
Hi Carol. Thank you for writing. I appreciate the work you have done to clarify what you can do and why you are doing it. You are so right – it does not take away all of the pain of longing, but it is a giant step toward your own health and healing.
This reading brings much sadness to me– not as a daughter but as a mother. Because I thought that making their narcissist father (my ex-husband) happy would cause the whole family to be happy, I neglected the needs of my daughters who are now adults. And yes, we are all paying the price. Thank you for showing me what it looks like from their end. I have offered to do family counseling with them but they are not willing to do so. I have prayed and do pray for their emotional healing.
I hear you, Thomasina, and I am so sorry for this painful situation. Thank you for writing. I pray with you for Christ’s healing to restore each and every one of you.
Hi! I appreciated your article and I would like to share it, but I can’t make sense of the scripture reference “ Luke 14:24-17”. I tried flipping around the numbers, but I don’t think I hit upon you reference. Can you please let me know what verses you were referring to? Thank you.
Thank you for commenting, Lora. I have corrected the reference in the blog post. It’s Luke 14:15-17, where Jesus talks about the cost of discipleship.
This single post did more for me than years of reading books. Thank you Alison, God Bless you!
I am 51 years old and have finally figured out why my mother resented me. Last year I did ancestry DNA just for fun like most people do. I knew my mom had to get married because she got pregnant with me. My father’s family were wonderful loving people. I loved my paternal grandmother way more than I ever cared for my mother. My mom told me over and over again throughout the years that I ruined her life by being born. I never quite understood that. I was a successful person both as a child in everything I did and as an adult. I just never could make her happy. When the results came back, I was in shock to find a family of whom I had never heard . The father who reared me passed many years ago and so had the rest of his family, so I asked my mom for help in figuring out who these people may be. It was then that she told me the story of a man who claimed I was his child. She thought (or so she said) I was her boyfriend’s baby but she had spent a night with an old flame prior to finding out about being pregnant. This man saw me days after I was born and knew in his heart I was his. Over the years he would call her to ask about me although she still maintained her claim that I was not his. He never gave up! She gave me his name but asked me not to contact him. Of course I did it anyway and it has been the greatest blessing of my life. I now understand the “why” behind all the resentment and hate she poured out onto me. It truly wasn’t about me, it was all about what she couldn’t have. You see, the truth came out that she had been madly in love with my biological father but he left for college and she started dating someone else. She was angry that he continued to care about me over the years but not her. It is a mess. When I called him he said, “my darling Ashley, I have waited 50 years for this call and to say I love you!”
I am learning to set boundaries with my mother and it is hard. As a daughter, I feel responsible for her as she ages (72) but she is way too toxic for me to be around regularly. Unbelievably, she thinks she should one day be able to live with me and my husband. That is how crazy she is! I don’t think she will ever understand the damage she has done and the pain she has caused. I appreciate your blog post. It really is food for my healing heart.
Only hours before I read your email with a link to this article, I came to the realization that I am neither the cause of, nor the solution to, my mother’s problems. The boundary I tend to cross is the one where I take responsibility for things that others should own. I even seem to step on God’s toes in this regard. When I read the title, “Are You Supposed to Meet Your Mother’s Needs?” I broke into tears. The Holy Spirit timed this message very well! Thank you for sharing your gifts.
I’m 63 years old and have never been able to articulate my feelings about the relationship I had with my mother. When my mother died 11 years ago, I didn’t grieve. Instead, I was relieved that I no longer had to try to meet her needs. You have given me the words and validation I’ve been longing for. Thank you!
Definitely the toxic mom. I am at the stage of realizing I must put more distance between us, so I broke at this part. It has been clear for years, but I still had hope that someday she would love me and value me.
I am so grateful for this post as well. I’ve struggled my whole life as a parentified child and am doing the hard work of getting healthy. God help us all.
This has really hit home with me. I feel guilty constantly that I don’t have a close relationship with my Mom. She is very controlling and manipulating. Years ago we had a big blow up and we didn’t talk for a year. She said then and still does that we need to honor our Father and Mother. I’ve been in counseling, and this has helped, but she believes she has done nothing wrong. I have boundary troubles in all relationships because of this being how I was raised. Makes my heart very sad!
I was guilted by my mother who I got along with poorly since my pre-teen years, never got from her any emotional support or encouragement of my life goals, into moving in with her when my dad died. I was led to believe this would be a short-term arrangement as my husband and I happened to be between places to live. She was having health problems and I thought we could be of help temporarily while she was grieving and facing surgery. I thought this could be a chance to repair our relationship by relating to each other as mature adult women (I was 56 at the time) . Well, the very day I moved in she brought up issues we had 45 years before, and we quickly reverted to our roles as overbearing mother and defensive, autonomy-seeking teenage daughter. Well, she knew better than the doctors and her health never really improved as she would take no one’s advice about her health, especially mine. (I worked security in a big city ER and learned a lot about what health is). She enlisted my husband with her fake charm and victimhood into enabling her (he’s a sucker with mommy issues for damsels in distress), and she taught him how to push my buttons. It became increasingly clear that she could not any longer live by herself, and 6 months turned into 10 years of indentured servitude keeping someone alive who hated living! I must be a glutton for punishment. God forgive me, but my prayers were answered when she finally died. He must have been watching over me so I didn’t murder the both of them, and my faith in His Word and the love of good friends kept me going. Miraculously, I survived and my marriage survived the ordeal. I have not and never will subject my children to what I endured, and I will never again allow anyone manipulate and take advantage of my God-given helpful nature. Respect yourselves–It’s all about boundaries, Ladies!!!
I struggle with my relationship with my mother. She is often guilt-tripping or posting manipulative things on Facebook about how I (and my siblings) wound her, and don’t treat her “fairly”. I don’t remember ever having a good relationship with her, but the problem I’m facing is that I can’t recall a specific event or events as the reason why. This makes me feel more guilty because maybe she wasn’t a “bad” mom growing up. And maybe I take what she does as manipulative, but they aren’t really intended to be. I don’t know.
Rachel, any mother who posts in a public forum repeatedly that her children wound her or treat her unfairly is being manipulative.
My mom was a fantastic mother when I was young. Things devolved in my teens and has been a mess ever since due to substance abuse and mental instability.
2 years ago she dropped a pain pill on my floor sitting next to my one year old son. My husband told her that night she was no longer welcome in our home since she had become unsafe for our children.
Since then, I have grieved the loss of what I had always hoped our relationship could be in this season of parenting for me. I have grieved and grieved.
But I have benefited from the peace in my home without her here. I take the kids to visit her and when it’s not a good day, we leave. It’s hard.
Thank you for the clarity you provided on the ambivalent relationships and finding the right level of engagement. I am learning every day.
Thank you for this. It really hits home. My relationship with my mother fell into the “ambivalent” category. I always knew she loved me to the best of her ability, but she suffered a lot of trauma in her life and treated me more as a therapist than as a daughter. If I had a grain of rice for every time my mother cried to me, I could feed a football team. A few years ago I finally got some counseling to work on my resentment and setting healthy boundaries. And I’m SO glad I did. My mother suffered a massive stroke three months ago that left her barely able to communicate and catapulted me into the position of caretaker and decision maker. Two months later she had a second stroke and died a few days later. It’s been an awful journey, but it would have been even harder without that counseling. I somehow found the grace to remind myself that I didn’t cause her problems (not her trauma, not her stroke), and I couldn’t fix them. And resting in that space made it easier to face the difficult decisions I needed to make for the benefit of both of us.
I am so greatful for this topic. It is one that I still struggle with. The pain from childhood still lives in adulthood. And she still makes me feel very guilty when trying to set healthy boundaries with her or when I try to make adult decisions for myself; yup my decisions are always stupid. Ugh. I still trying to learn that maybe this comes from her not knowing how to love because maybe she was hurt in her childhood.
My relationship falls into the ambivalent category. It can be confusing because I know how much my mom loves me(it can be even smothering), but there’s guilt and obligation there to make her happy that I’ve always felt. Right now, I’m actually struggling with this because I’m in a long distance relationship and if we marry, I will move towards him because of his job. She has already made some comments about how she doesn’t like this and I am growing anxious about this decision. I know logically I can’t live my life to make her happy, but emotionally I can feel obligated to choose her and do what makes her happy. This post was really helpful to think through this and put up some boundaries.