Godly Parenting and the Enmeshed Parenting Style
We are analyzing parenting from the standpoint of a parent’s focus on their child’s behavior, thoughts and feelings. We’re using a four-quadrant tool and each style we are describing is really a self-centered style of parenting. We have seen that the DICTATORIAL style focuses on the child’s behavior and ignores their thoughts and feelings. The ENMESHED style focuses on both the child’s behavior and their thoughts and feelings, but not in a healthy way. Here they are on the double axis.
This parent seeks to control both the child’s behavior and the child’s thoughts and feelings. He or she works to get the child to share everything going on in the child’s life (inner and outer life). This parent needs to have a sense of control over the child’s life in order to feel valuable and safe. This is their motivation: I am only valuable and safe when someone needs me. I will show my child that he or she cannot make it without me.
A biblical example of the enmeshed parenting style is Rebekah and Jacob:
Genesis 27
When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau his older son and said to him, “My son”; and he answered, “Here I am.” He said, “Behold, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and prepare for me delicious food, such as I love, and bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die.”
Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “I heard your father speak to your brother Esau, ‘Bring me game and prepare for me delicious food, that I may eat it and bless you before the LORD before I die.’ Now therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you. Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats, so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father, such as he loves. And you shall bring it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.” But Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, “Behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. Perhaps my father will feel me, and I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing.” His mother said to him, “Let your curse be on me, my son; only obey my voice, and go, bring them to me.”
So he went and took them and brought them to his mother, and his mother prepared delicious food, such as his father loved. Then Rebekah took the best garments of Esau her older son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob her younger son. And the skins of the young goats she put on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. And she put the delicious food and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob.
So he went in to his father and said, “My father.” And he said, “Here I am. Who are you, my son?” Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau your firstborn. (verses 1-19)
Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” But the words of Esau her older son were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called Jacob her younger son and said to him, “Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise, flee to Laban my brother in Haran and stay with him a while, until your brother’s fury turns away—until your brother’s anger turns away from you, and he forgets what you have done to him. Then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereft of you both in one day?”
Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I loathe my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?” (verses 41-46, ESV)
Jacob has “drunk the Kool-Aid.” He is emotionally attached to his mother and dependent upon her. It is her plan that he enacts to steal the blessing from his brother Esau. It is her solution he adopts to flee Canaan for Haran.
We may note that Isaac is acting the dictatorial parent to Esau. Esau performs for Isaac. Isaac rewards Esau’s performance. But Jacob is enmeshed with his mother Rebekah. Esau is Isaac’s son and Jacob is Rebekah’s son. We can see this as a form of parental triangulation. Rebekah doesn’t deal directly with her husband Isaac but through her surrogate, Jacob. She has made Jacob dependent on her.
Many children will resist enmeshment, creating a secret sense of self that they try to keep hidden from the enmeshing parent. They feel smothered. They are provoked to anger (Ephesians 6:4) by the enmeshing parent because it is obvious that what the parent calls love is really a selfish meeting of that parent’s need, not the child’s need to be brought up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
