cover image Children of a Certain Age

Children of a Certain Age

Vivian E. Greenberg. Lexington Books, $22.95 (183pp) ISBN 978-0-02-912825-1

In a perceptive and realistic guide to later-life, parent-child relationships, social worker Greenberg ( Your Best Is Good Enough ) offers constructive advice to both sides, supported by anecdotes. Like it or not, the author stresses, even as adults, parents and their offspring remain a part of one another's lives, requiring children to accept their parents' imperfections and aging, while parents should not expect that children ""owe them"" in return for rearing. Reversal of roles, Greenberg warns middle-aged children, caught between their own family and professional duties and their obligations to care for often still domineering parents, should not mean ""that children become their parents' parents."" It is the ""being with"" she suggests, more than the ""doing for"" that parents want. Interdependence, the author concludes, is accentuated by today's multigenerational family structure of singles, divorced parents, stepchildren and others. (Feb.)