When Parents Love Too Much: What Happens When Parents Won't Let Go

Parents who ``overparent'' can be as destructive to their children as those who abuse or neglect them. In the view of the therapist-authors of this study, emotional overinvolvement by parents, often an effort to control their children's lives, is a powerful, painful capacity that cuts across all economic strata. Adult children of such parents can become preoccupied with self-image and with pleasing other people, to the detriment of their relationships. To examine this type of co-dependency or enabling behavior in its variety, the authors supply case histories that trace patterns of personal and familial dysfunction, e.g., perfectionism, pervasive guilt, and suggest how disabling behaviors can be changed. Addressed to parents and grandparents, as well as adults damaged as a result of often well-intentioned overindulgence, this is a helpful and informative view of an underrecognized problem. Author tour. (Apr.)