‘Parents Are Not All Good and All Bad’
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Some families have the frictionless ease of unconditional love and understanding, but for many the stalemate of family tensions can be insurmountable.
In this episode of How to Start Over, we explore how to understand the dynamics in lifelong family relationships, find ways to manage our emotional response when tensions boil over, and analyze what it means to change a parent-child relationship as an adult.
This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and is hosted by Olga Khazan. Editing by A.C. Valdez and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Matthew Simonson. Special thanks to Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of The Atlantic.
Be part of How to Start Over. Write to us at howtopodcast@theatlantic.com. To support this podcast, and get unlimited access to all of The Atlantic’s journalism, become a subscriber.
Music by FLYIN (“Being Nostalgic”), Mindme (“Anxiety [Instrumental Version]”), Sarah, the Illstrumentalist (“Building Character”), and Timothy Infinite (“Rapid Years”).
Click here to listen to more full-length episodes in The Atlantic’s How To series.
Olga Khazan: Hi, I’m Olga Khazan, staff writer at The Atlantic.
Rebecca Rashid: And I’m Rebecca Rashid, a producer at The Atlantic.
Khazan: This is How to Start Over. Today, we want to analyze why conflicts with the people who raised us can often reach a stalemate—and how to navigate family tensions when you have deep disagreements with your family.
In the past few years, I’ve heard so many stories from adults who were forced to move back in with their parents or go back to wherever they grew up due to the pandemic. I think one of the unexpected harsh realities of spending time with the people who raised you, as an adult, is that some family tensions
