If You Had Controlling Parents

by Dan Neuharth

  By the college interview, I’d had years to get used to my father’s withering criticism. But you never get used to it; it always hurts. I was able to cope, even perform during the interview—children of controlling parents learn this well—and I was admitted to that college. That was all that mattered to my father. But to me, his behavior was cruel and confusing. I remember being puzzled, one of countless times I was puzzled in my youth. What had I done wrong? Why was he so upset? I was the one being interviewed, not him. More than anything, I wanted to hear my father say what children of Perfectionistic parents most yearn for but rarely hear: “Just do your best. I’ll be proud of you no matter what.”

  Like many Perfectionistic parents, my father launched into tirades to discharge his anxiety about my performance. His behavior also reflected his lack of thought as to what I needed or wanted. Perfectionistic parents intermingle their own dreams with their children’s lives and lack the perspective to acknowledge the difference.

  Status Worship

  Many Perfectionistic parents worship beauty, status, power, or money to the point where the coveted item takes on a near religious quality, revered beyond reason.

  Brenda, now a fifty-four-year-old homemaker, is a frizzy redhead who grew up in Los Angeles, where her father had a small shop for which her mother kept the books. She recalls being aware even at age ten that her “Barbie-doll parents” were obsessed with the “look of Hollywood.” But Brenda was born looking completely different from her second-generation Italian-immigrant parents: “I came out looking very Irish. Though some of the relatives lauded my red hair, pug nose, and freckled face, and endearingly call me ‘Brick Top’ or ‘Rusty,’ I felt ugly and worthless in my parents’ eyes.”

  Brenda remembers having a hearty guffaw until her father said disgustedly, “Don’t you have a different kind of laugh?”

  One of the most costly traits of Perfectionistic families is that they dictate that not only their children’s appearance and performance, but also their emotions, must be “perfect.” “Imperfect” feelings like sadness, doubt, grief, anger, or fear are not tolerated. Perfectionistic households are grimly serious; Brenda cannot recall a time when her Perfectionistic, Depriving parents laughed. Today Brenda finds it hard to relax, laugh, or be spontaneous: “When someone takes away your laugh, they take away your soul.”

  Brenda’s father frequently called her a “whore” and “damaged goods.” At sixteen, as she waited outside a movie for her father to pick her up, a group of boys began sexually harassing her. She ran inside the lobby to escape, so her father drove past several times before Brenda saw him. He was furious at the delay and after she told him what had happened, he slapped her face and yelled, “You know why, don’t you? You look like a little slut. I don’t even want to look at you.”

  Disdain for “Flaws”

  Sometimes a parent’s silent disapproval of a child’s “imperfections” can be as painful as scathing criticism.

  Chip, twenty-nine, is finishing his junior college degree. His wealthy parents, mainstays of the Boston philanthropic scene, adopted him when they were physically unable to have children. But when Chip was diagnosed with learning and physical disabilities at age six, his father pulled away.

  Each time Chip’s accomplishments fell short of other children’s, he felt like damaged goods. To this day, he wonders whether his parents’ inability to have a child, compounded by adopting one who turned out to be “flawed,” wounded his father’s ego.

  Because Chip felt as though his Perfectionistic father never believed in him, he has found it hard to believe in himself. At age twenty-nine, Chip is finishing a junior college degree. His ten-year path to get his degree has been studded with dozens of menial jobs, aimless travel, and drug use.

  In recent months Chip has tried to make up for lost time. When he told his parents he hoped to go to a top-notch university and major in anthropology, both parents tried to dissuade him: “My dad told me, ‘You’re just setting yourself up for disappointment.’” But in our interview, Chip proudly told me of the letter of acceptance to the University of Michigan he’d received a few days earlier.

  Obsessions

  Many Perfectionistic parents seem obsessed with order and cleanliness.

  Deirdre is a thirty-six-year-old office manager. When she was eleven, she and her brother went to live with her father and stepmother in Arkansas. Her stepmom immediately set down the rules. Clothes on hangers had to face the same way, buttons buttoned, zippers zipped. The pockets on Deirdre’s clothes were sewn shut so they wouldn’t get dirty or torn. Drawers were labeled, their contents organized by size. On the TV lay a pair of white gloves that the children had to use when they changed channels so they didn’t get the TV dirty.

  Deirdre recalls seeing her stepmom break down in tears when finding a single hair in a sink. Deirdre also remembers waking up at three A.M. more than once to the sound of her stepmother vacuuming, often following a marital spat.

  Deirdre’s father, a preacher, could not tolerate “downtime” among the children: “Dad would walk through the living room when we were watching TV and grumble, ‘What are you going to do, watch that all day?’ It got so when we heard him come home we’d turn off the TV and scramble to start housecleaning.”

  A certain amount of order is necessary in any home, but Perfectionistic parents, particularly those who also have Cultlike tendencies like Deirdre’s stepmom’s, have routines for eating, sleeping, cleaning, and talking that children disrupt at their peril. These parents seem panicked or enraged when something isn’t where they expect it to be. They cannot bend with the innate disorderliness of children and life. By demanding excessive order, controlling parents act as if their children are furniture—which needs to be cleaned occasionally, but which doesn’t make trouble and is always exactly where you left it. Controlling parents don’t like their children to be too bubbly or rambunctious.

  Deirdre still struggles with her own compulsive neatness: “Last week I found myself walking around after my boyfriend, straightening up each time he touched something.”

  Self-critical parents who see their children as extensions of themselves can’t help but judge their children harshly. Perfectionistic parents may focus on children’s failures and “flaws” as an excuse to withhold love. In so doing, they sidestep the vulnerabilities inherent in loving another. Yet because perfectionists find fault with everyone, they are always disappointed. They try to be perfect so others will love them, yet they can never succeed. They try to make their children perfect so they can love their children more, but both they and their children are destined to fail.

  Self-Assessment

  My parent(s):

  Pressured me to perform

  Demanded unrealistically high standards

  Did not tolerate flaws or mistakes

  Seemed obsessed with cleanliness and organization

  Seemed fixated with status, appearance, or prestige

  Next: Cultlike Parenting

  In their quest to escape flaws by demanding the best, Perfectionistic parents share similarities with the next style, Cultlike parents. Cultlike parents seek to escape uncertainty by always having to be “right” and “in the know.”

  5

  CULTLIKE PARENTING Obedience with a Missionary Zeal

  The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

  —SIR WILLIAM OSLER

  Key Characteristics of Cultlike Parents:

  Control through ironclad adherence to rituals and beliefs

  Terrified of doubt and uncertainty

  Fear questions, dissent, or new ideas

  Seek security from organizations or philosophies

  Potential Consequences of a Cultlike Upbringing:

  Reduced initiative

  Heightened distrust or gullibility

  Social isolation

  Distorted intellectual development

  Complicated spiritual life

  Now a forty-four-year-old artist, Shirley
remembers herself at seven, her honey-colored hair in prim pigtails, spending every day after school as a captive audience in the family garage. She dared not look bored, as her mother, a born-again Christian, lured neighborhood kids with lollipops so they would sit through her proselytizing at her “Good News Club” impromptu Bible classes. Eventually a school principal sent a flyer warning parents to keep their children away from Shirley’s mom: “My mother had a way of frightening children with her constant praying, threats of hellfire, and sudden outbursts of ‘Jesus help me, I am a worthless sinner!’”

  Starting at age four, Shirley had to memorize a dozen Bible verses weekly and attend church meetings four nights a week. Christmas presents were forbidden after her mother realized that the word “Santa” had the same letters as “Satan.” Shirley and her brother could never eat devil’s food cake. Shirley remembers sometimes waking in the middle of the night to find her mother “bending over me with a Bible, praying, muttering and whispering to herself.”

  Her mother carried to extremes a central trait of Cultlike parents: the need to feel certain. Cultlike parents have to know “the truth” or belong to a group that is “in the know.” I use the term “Cultlike” because these families mimic destructive cults in several ways:

  Leaders act larger than life and receive special treatment.

  Members’ rights are subjugated for the “good” of the group or leader.

  Prejudices rigidly separate members from outsiders.

  Behavior is tightly regimented.

  Feelings are devalued, minimized, and manipulated.

  Questioning and dissent are not tolerated.

  “My mother always told me that Jesus came first in her life,” Shirley said. Yet her mother’s devotion to Jesus left Shirley feeling considerably less than a priority. As Shirley grew older, her mother viewed her daughter’s innocent questions about religion as blasphemy. Once, while in her teens, Shirley brought home library books on witchcraft. Her mother immediately summoned church friends for an emergency exorcism: “I had to kneel for four hours. They were shouting, ‘Do you love Jesus?’ ‘Are you washed in the love of Jesus?’ Finally I fainted because of no food or water and they said, ‘Praise God! The demons have left her. This child has healed.’”

  While her mother inundated Shirley with zealotry, her alcoholic, Abusing father cowed Shirley with threats and violence. Once, during a slumber party with two girlfriends, she and her guests were awakened at two A.M. by shouting from her parents’ bedroom: “My mother was quoting Bible verses and screaming, ‘Satan, get thee behind me.’ My father was throwing change at her, yelling, ‘Do I have to pay for it?’ Then he put his fist through the wall. I never asked friends over after that.”

  Today Shirley struggles with the lasting effects of her upbringing: depression, distrust of others, and sensitivity to criticism: “When people criticize or get angry with me, I melt down. Sometimes I’ll believe them and buy whatever they say. Other times I’ll just go off and cry.

  “I feel like a concentration camp survivor,” Shirley adds. “I was at my parents’ mercy and they didn’t have any.”

  Military Families

  While some Cultlike parents use religion to know the “truth,” others find certainty in institutions that allow them to know the “rules.” The military, with its authoritarian structure and regulations, can attract Cultlike parents searching for a way in which to order their lives.

  Caitlin, a forty-one-year-old teacher, recalls that as kids she and her six siblings were rousted out of bed on Saturdays at six A.M. by her father, a navy officer. The sleepy-eyed children were trotted to the kitchen and shown the “watch bill” of chores for the week. Military-style standards prevailed. Beds had to have hospital corners and bounce a dime. Garbage-can liners were to be folded and creased square at the corners. Silverware was organized in the dishwasher by implement. Milk was stored in a pitcher, never in the milk carton; butter on a plate, never in the carton.

  Caitlin’s Cultlike, Perfectionistic mother would answer her children only if addressed by the words, “Mom, may I speak?” Her father would ignore any statement lacking the prefaces “Father,” “Dad,” or “Sir.”

  Cultlike parents zealously adhere to rigid behaviors because they are troubled by the gray areas of existence. Knowing the rules allows them to view life in right-or-wrong, all-or-nothing terms. Furthermore, many controlling parents are not adept at communicating about personal issues and feelings. “In our family we never said, ‘Let’s talk things out,’” one woman told me. “‘I don’t understand’ and ‘Why?’ were not a part of our vocabulary.”

  Among those I interviewed from Cultlike families, tension and the impending threat of physical or emotional violence pervaded their lives. “Our home was like the lid on a boiling pot,” says Caitlin. But in true military fashion, the children were supposed to be stoic when punished: “You were the scourge of the earth if you cried. Crying was a sign of weakness.”

  Many controlling parents, not just Cultlike parents, interpret children’s questions or lack of instant compliance as a deliberate challenge to their authority. They cannot see that in many cases their children are simply afraid, unsure, or preoccupied. When they feel deliberately challenged, some parents respond with violence.

  This is not to say that children in controlling families don’t seek out ways in which to keep alive the flame of their individuality. The day Caitlin graduated from high school she packed her suitcases. That summer, she slept next to her packed bags, counting the days until she could leave for college.

  Her on-edge childhood has left Caitlin struggling with workaholic and perfectionistic tendencies. She has lived much of her life with a low-lying sense of fear and foreboding. Recently, trying to conquer her fears, she sought out the scariest challenge she could imagine and began taking sky-diving lessons. When interviewed, she had recently completed her first solo free-fall dive.

  Fundamentalist Military Families

  Jonathan, a thirty-five-year-old financial planner, grew up with a Cultlike double whammy: a zealous military father and a strict Catholic mother.

  One bright Saturday morning when Jonathan was twelve, he dutifully spread newspapers on the kitchen floor and set out his father’s scissors and razor. His father, an army officer, marched in and, as he did every other Saturday, cut Jonathan’s hair in a half-inch butch cut.

  The ritual devastated the boy, who hated his hair so short and, in addition, was forced to assemble the implements and clean up the results. As his father finished his haircut, his mother came in and asked Jonathan, “How does it look?” Near tears, Jonathan didn’t answer. His father immediately shaved Jonathan’s hair half again as short. “That’s for not responding to your mother’s question,” he told his son.

  Before dinner, Jonathan’s father would shout, “Inspection: hands!” Jonathan and his brothers were to thrust their hands forward to show they’d been washed. “My father had a military model for how cadets were treated, and he applied it to us,” Jonathan comments.

  Jonathan’s mother, a devout Catholic, blended military discipline with religion. On wash day his mother hovered as her children methodically folded linens three times, crisply, repeating “the Father,” “the Son,” and “the Holy Ghost” with each respective fold.

  In junior high, Jonathan realized that he was gay. He felt that he could never tell his parents: “I was a people pleaser, always trying to smile, hungry for approval. It was hard for me to say what I thought.” It wasn’t until he was twenty-four that he came out to his parents. To his surprise, his father had little reaction, but his mother collapsed into the arms of a church friend and sobbed off and on for three days. Finally she said, “Jonathan, I know you think you’re a homosexual…” Jonathan recollects that, “It went downhill from there. It epitomized her cookie-cutter mentality. Here was my mother thinking she knew more about her grown son’s sexuality than he did.”

  Whenever Jonathan brought up his sexual orientation,
his mother would quote from the Bible and try to talk him out of being gay. For a time, he stopped speaking with her. “That was hard because I knew family was so important to her,” he admits. “But what hurt me more was that nothing I could do or say could change her mind. She was willing to lose her relationship with her son to keep her religious belief system.”

  After several months of little contact, relations slowly warmed as Jonathan and his mother agreed that discussions of his sexual orientation were off limits. Since then, he has spoken with his mother about how she failed to protect him from his father’s abuse and how unhappy their “code of silence” about his being gay was making him. His mother apologized: “What she did say was from the heart. Now it’s a relationship I can deal with. I used to cringe when I thought of talking with her.”

  As for his father, Jonathan struggles to make a connection. In a letter that he has yet to send, Jonathan writes, “Like a logger clear-cutting his way through a national treasure, you trampled me. That not being enough, it seems you’ve now discarded me.”

  Prominent Families

  Some families prominent in social, political, or corporate circles also share a Cultlike style. Doing anything that would embarrass a prominent parent or hurt a parent’s chances for corporate or political advancement is viewed as a mortal sin. These parents see their children’s needs as secondary to the needs of the social circle or corporation. Children in these families can end up feeling like props.