Our usual waitress is in the hospital having her baby. The talk got to the subject of the relative difficulties of parenting a girl or a boy. There seemed to be some agreement that little boys are often more active, more daring and more trouble while teen girls are more upsetting to older, mature parents than teen boys tend to be. We asked our stand-in waitress if she had children and she has two boys but she maintained that teen girls can be trouble. We asked what was an example of very bad speech or behavior she had exhibited in her teens. She said with passion that she simply could not tell us. She excused her reticence, saying she didn't want us to think she was a terrible person.
I have not been in tune with the trials and tests mothers, daughters and daughters-in-law give each other. The Robert A. Johnson book, "She", opened my eyes to the tension that can open between the son's betrothed and his mother. What? That green wisp thinks she is going to take him away from me, after I bore him and raised him and love him and adore him? No bloody way!!
The movie "Uncle Buck" depicts a mother who needs to give her sassy teen daughter a spanking, a time-out and other punishments. Then, Mom has to take a business trip and teen daughter gets put in the care of Uncle Buck. Uncle is not stupid and he is not uncaring but is very different from Mom.
