When Grandma Tries to Be Mama

I polled 514 mothers on my Instagram account and 89% reported feeling like their mother or mother-in-law overstepped boundaries and tried to nurture a relationship with their child that was more maternal than grandmotherly. Here are some of the stories I've heard:

• Multiple moms stated that their mothers or mothers-in-law insisted on being referred to as “Mom” or “Mommy”, not “Grandma”

• Multiple moms stated that their mothers or mothers-in-law protested their plan to exclusively breast-feed because they wanted to have the opportunity to “bond with the baby”

• Multiple women stated that their mothers or mothers-in-law directly contradicted their rules with their children

• Multiple women stated that their mothers or mothers-in-law would not give their baby back to them when the baby was crying

• Multiple women stated that their mothers or mothers-in-law demanded unlimited visits or overnight visits in the postpartum period

Anyone else triggered?

In this article, I’m going to explore these questions through the lens of attachment theory, trauma theory, and family systems theory. And if you don’t know me, but somehow wound up on this page, my name is Sarah, and I am a therapist, author, mother, and doula who helps mothers, couples, and families break cycles of trauma and heal with the next generation in mind. Let’s dive into this topic and name all of the nuances that coalesce here.

A mother carries parental authority with her children that a grandparent does not possess. This authority is psychological, developmental, and legal. She makes decisions for her children’s well-being, provides for their basic and emotional needs, and assumes responsibility for them. Grandmothers don’t carry this authority. They can support a parent’s parenting decisions or try to influence them, but they aren’t tasked with enacting them.

Mom Mom Maria, owner of the popular Instagram account @mommom.maria, defines this role difference as follows:

“A mother is responsible for raising the child and making important decisions for them. A grandmother is an extended family member whose role is to love, support, and respect those decisions. Many grandmothers get this wrong because they confuse being important in a child’s life with being entitled to authority over it.”

Dee Dee Moore, founder of the popular Instagram account @morethangrand, says this about the difference:

“As a mother, your role is twofold: to meet your children's basic human needs and to provide a strong foundation so they can navigate life's challenges. When you become a grandmother, you provide support so your adult children can do those things for their children. You don't stop being a mother, but mothering now means letting them lead instead of actively guiding them.”

Both of these definitions come from grandmothers who help other grandmothers navigate healthy relationships with their adult children. I find their definitions interesting because they both talk about how being a grandparent requires you stepping back from the parental role of active guidance, leadership, and authority. But as Maria states, many grandparents get confused about this role difference. Why does this happen so often? Let’s dive into the reasons now.

For some grandmothers, the arrival of a grandchild signals an opportunity to fulfill unmet emotional and ego needs. On an unconscious level, many grandmothers crave the identity and authority that being a parent offered. They miss making important decisions for their children, being respected by the community for their parenting, and feeling a sense of stability in the role of mother.

As a family therapist, I know that transitions into various life stages are not always easy and family members don’t always make them with grace. Dee Dee Moore talks about this struggle on her Instagram page, explaining that becoming a grandmother often involves loss as the grandmother adjusts to a peripheral role rather than the leadership role she’s accustomed to embodying.

This loss is intensified when the grandmother didn’t have much meaning in her life beyond being a mother. If her marriage was emotionally empty and she relied on her children to meet her needs for connection, or if she didn’t have a career or personal interests and poured into her children to meet her needs for purpose, it makes sense that she would try to remake this experience with her grandchildren, even if it causes tension with her daughter or daughter-in-law, and feel disappointed when her vision for getting these needs met doesn’t go according to plan.

In the attachment world, we have this concept of primary and secondary attachment. When a baby is born, he or she is wired to form a primary attachment with the mother. The baby recognizes his or her mother’s voice, smell, and heartbeat and he or she is wired to seek proximity with the mother. This need to be held and near the mother is so strong that biological infant sleep expert Dr. James McKenna says the new mother’s body is equivalent to the womb for the newborn.

When this primary attachment is secure, the baby learns to develop secondary attachments around nine months of age. Secondary attachments are where the baby learns the world is safe, and the felt sense of comfort he receives from his mother can be distributed to other people in the village, such as grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Not every baby or family follows this clear-cut model of attachment; some grandmothers are more involved in the baby’s life in those early months if that is the mother’s preference, and this bond deepens if the mother supports opportunities for bonding such as offering bottle-feeds or more skin-to-skin contact.

But it’s also incredibly normal for a newborn to only want their mother, especially if that baby is a breast-fed baby. This maternal preference can feel rejecting to some grandmothers who have visions of being able to soothe the baby without the mother’s help or having a more hands-on role with their grandchild. As mentioned previously, becoming a grandmother also involves loss, not just of identity as a mother, but also as keeper of the primary attachment relationship. Adult children form deeper attachments with their spouses and children as they grow up. This can feel destabilizing and threatening to the grandmother as she copes with the loss of closeness with her adult child who now becomes a parent.

The more I observe this phenomenon of tension between the grandmother and mother after a baby is the more I can’t help but see the impact of generational differences. For starters, the average age of becoming a mother is older than previous generations. The average age of first birth in 1970 was 24.6 years, while today it is 27.5 years. The average age of marriage in 1970 was 23 years, while today it is 30.5 years. What does this tell us about generational expectations?

In her book You, Your Husband, and His Mother, Dr. Tracy Dalgleish observes that tension between mothers and daughters-in-law often arises due to this precise difference in age and maturity. New moms today are more educated, financially stable, and mature than their mothers or mothers-in-law were when they became mothers. For a younger mom, I imagine there is a desire to look toward a maternal figure for guidance. But for an older mom, say in my example, being in my mid thirties, I feel clearer in my preferences and vision as a parent. And not only that, but being told how to parent after living on my own for 15 years, owning my own home, and being accomplished in my career, feels jarring and infantilizing.

Mothers and mothers-in-law may be completely unaware that offering unsolicited advice, undermining or criticizing a parenting decision, or exercising parental authority in place of the parent, such as by disciplining the children or soothing a baby who only wants their mother, is inappropriate because this is what their mother or mother-in-law did to them. They never questioned it because they were younger and more easily influenced.

But moms today are more sure of who they are and what they want as mothers. The self-assuredness also comes from cultural shifts in mental health. Moms today are more educated on boundaries and self-advocacy than moms of previous generations; therapy is more accessible and more women have made use of this resource. This makes us more conscious of our needs and feelings and less likely to let someone push our boundaries, especially with our kids.

Additionally, moms today are more aware of parenting research than mothers of previous generations. Parenting experts like Dr. Becky Goodman, author of Good Inside, offer free tips on social media platforms, and if getting our daily dose of parenting advice through Instagram-scrolling isn’t enough, we can order a parenting book through Amazon that will be on our doorstep the next morning.

Our mothers and mothers-in-law simply cannot relate to what it is like to parent with this much access to expert advice. Most of them have not invested in their inner work the way that we have, leading to clashes between unconscious expectations around parenting roles.

We’ve named the tension, but now what?

Differences in expectations point to the need for clear communication. Dee Dee Moore says that having conversations before the baby arrives can reduce hurt feelings and resentments. Parenting expert Dr Becky offers several boundary scripts for talking to your mother or mother-in-law when you feel like they are undermining your parenting. These scripts usually involve three tactics, which are:

• Emphasizing appreciation for the grandparent

• Emphasizing importance of being aligned

• Clearly and briefly communicating the behavior you want and the impact of the behavior they’re engaging in

Here’s a few examples:

• When your mom calls your child “my baby” or asks your children to call her “mom", you can say something like, “I appreciate how much you love my child but teaching her to call you mom creates confusion for her and upsets me. Let’s stick to Grandma. It’s important to me that we are on the same page with this.”

• When your MIL insists on soothing your baby when your baby is crying for you, you can say something like, “I would appreciate you giving my baby back as soon as she starts crying. My priority in that moment is her regulation and as her mother I feel comfortable soothing her in those moments.”

• When your mother interjects with you setting a boundary with your child, you can say something like, “It’s important to me that we are aligned on rules and boundaries with the kids. Please do not interject again when I am setting a boundary. If you have an issue you can pull me to the side privately to discuss.”

Grandmothers are allowed to get triggered. We can let them have their reactions without taking these reactions on.

The protectiveness you feel with your child is instinctual and biological. This protectiveness intensifies in the early months of postpartum when your baby is most vulnerable and your brain is heightened with hormones that fuel bonding, caretaking, and protecting. But even when your baby grows into a child, this protectiveness is deeply woven into the attachment relationship. When someone tries to get in the way of your relationship with your child, it feels violating. And it is violating.

It is violating to tell a mother how to parent.

It is violating to contradict a mother’s established rules and boundaries with her children.

It is violating to ask a mother to have her children call you mother when you’re not her mother.

It is violating to ask a mother to bottle-feed her baby when she plans to breast-feed, or to insist on soothing her baby when that baby is crying for her.

It is violating to criticize a mother’s parenting decisions.

Not disrespectful. Not upsetting. Violating.

And it doesn’t feel good to coach the person who violated you on how to respect you as a parent, especially when you expected that person to act more supportive and understanding on your parenting journey. Dr. Tracy D says that some relationships with mothers-in-law take work and do work because both the daughter-in-law and mother-in-law ultimately value the relationship and see it as an overall positive. In considering your mother or mother-in-law’s relationship to your child, you might be willing to have these annoying boundary conversations because you value their relationship with your child as their grandmother. But if your mother or mother-in-law is not willing to stay in their lane as the grandmother, and repetitively oversteps into the role of mother, tough conversations and misunderstandings start to feel like a pattern, one that you can’t afford for your children’s well-being or your own.

Only you can make the call of what boundaries to set. Give yourself grace as you learn and give yourself room to explore what a nourishing relationship with your mother or mother-in-law feels like in this season of life as a parent.

And you’re not alone. Over 500 women -- and counting -- are in your shoes.

Believing in your matrescence journey, always

~S

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