Revenge of the Parents : Families: You can run but you can’t hide. After a period of rebellion in the late teens, the inevitable occurs. You become just like Mom and Dad.
Mary Ann Goebel remembers the recent moment when the realization floored her: Somehow, some way, she had metamorphosed into the once unthinkable. She had turned into . . . her mother.
“I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, I am just like my mom” says the 32-year-old Goebel. “I never would’ve believed it. I never wanted to be like that.”
It’s not that Goebel’s mother, Noreen Millbauer, is an ax murderer--or hunts spotted owls. It’s just that 15 years ago, Mary Ann decided--like many children in their late teens--to adopt alternative attitudes, do her own thing, go her own way.
By the time she was a junior in high school, her single-mindedness was such that when her mom zigged, she zagged.
“My mom drove me nuts,” says Goebel, now a bank vice president in Seattle. “She’d tell me how to dress, how to act, how to talk, always giving me and everyone else advice. She was very Catholic, very Democrat, and etiquette was very important to her.
“When I turned 18, I’d be damned if I was going to vote for a Democrat. A year later, I would visit every other church I could think of and then call my mom and tell her those churches were better than the Catholic Church. I did everything I could to be the opposite of her. I’d even wear white shoes in the winter.”
White shoes in the winter? In the prim-and-proper Millbauer home, this was anarchy.
Call it Momma’s Revenge, or whatever, but Goebel had reformed without even realizing it. Now, Goebel’s seven brothers and sisters call her “Little Noreen,” because, as one sister puts it, “She’s so much like Mom, it’s unbelievable.”
The failed rebel confesses: She gives advice freely, her two sons have been baptized as Catholics, appropriate decorum is all-important--and she never wears white out of season.
“I even look like my mom,” Goebel says. “I’m Little Noreen. . . . It’s just the way it is.”
And that’s the way it is in many cases, according to social scientists who agree that--for better or worse--parents wield the greatest influence by far in their children’s lives over the long haul. More than pop culture, more than peers, more than that inner quest for independence.
It’s not uncommon for adults to experience a sort of “coming home” period during which they fall in line with at least some beliefs and attitudes of their parents.
“Research going back to the ‘60s shows that, except for a few teen-age years, children follow the patterns set by their parents,” says Larry Langlois, a sociologist and family therapist in San Gabriel. “They may rebel but, in later years, they settle down and follow their parents.”
Myron Dembo, a professor of educational psychology at USC, says children “tape record” experiences with parents and then play them back in their minds. Those tapes eventually affect their behavior.
“We become scripted,” he says. “Scripts become a part of us. Whether we like our parents or not, we are influenced by what they’ve done. Whether they are 3,000 miles away or dead, they continue to influence us.”
Basic values, according to Dembo, are characteristics that most often are transmitted from parents to children. “Kids probably would go to their peers on things like dress, food, movies, music, specific likes and dislikes,” he says. “But on core values, they are more like their parents.”
Vern Bengtson, a professor of gerontology and sociology at USC who has headed a 20-year study of intergenerational transmission, says parental influence is practically boundless.
“It’s much broader than people realize,” he says. “It affects (children’s) definitions of what’s good and beautiful, their tastes and interests in art, music, the weather.”
Everything from personal philosophy to choice of after-shave.
Janet Arribas, 39, of Pasadena laughs in amazement that she has fallen so in line with her parents in two areas after a whirlwind hiatus during her college years.
Her parents were devoutly religious, but she didn’t see the relevance of institutionalized religion.
Her mother was a teacher; she hated school. Says Arribas: “I had a lot of Bart Simpson in me.”
“I loved my parents. I just didn’t want to be like them.”
I thought they had been duped in a lot of ways.”
Sixteen years later, Arribas attends church every week, even teaches a Sunday School class and donates 10% of her income.
Her profession? Schoolteacher.
“I’ve come back to my roots in a lot of ways,” she says.
Arribas’ sister, Laura Pendorf, 41, experienced a similar rebellion and homecoming. After apostatizing, she now attends church each Sunday and is--you guessed it--a teacher.
“I also use some of the same expressions my parents used from the ‘40s,” Pendorf says. “ ‘For crying in the bucket,’ ‘Geez, Louise,’ and ‘Jeminy Christmas.’
“I like to listen to the same classical music my dad used to play, and I have even started to garden. My parents always enjoyed that.”
The realm of political philosophy is what lured attorney Randy Linehan, 42, of Long Beach, away from his parents’ more reasoned ways of thinking during the mid-1960s. The Linehans, political moderates, were a little puzzled, Randy says, when he abruptly became a radical conservative as a teen-ager.
“I was absorbed in the righteousness of (presidential candidate Barry) Goldwater’s cause,” he says.
“I had strong positions on political ideas during those years.”
As a youngster, Linehan went to Goldwater rallies and handed out pamphlets. His long-suffering parents wanted him to cool it, to look more closely at the realities of politics, to get a grip on himself.
Subsequently, Linehan snapped out of his Goldwater discipleship and moved closer to his parents’ stances. Looking back 28 years, Linehan chuckles about his departure from his family’s political base. Of his short-lived, simplistic political adventure, he says, “If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have the hat on, yelling ‘Go with Goldwater.’ ”
Score another one for the parents.
Mike Moore, 28, an account executive for AT&T; in Monterey Park, has repeatedly tried to break from the gravitational pull of his parents’ influence, with only limited success.
For years his dad has preached the importance of being punctual. Through his teen-age years, and even now, Moore actually tries to be late whenever possible. Problem is, he can’t.
It isn’t in his script.
“I went to a party for co-workers last week at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey,” he says. “It started at 2 p.m. I wanted to be late, but I got there at 1:45. I figured I’d read in my car, but it was valet parking. No one else got there until 2:30. I felt pretty stupid.”
Other influences: His father always bought in bulk. “By the truckload,” Moore says. “It used to really bug me.”
Last month, Moore went to a Price Club store in Azusa and picked up industrial-sized shipments of such important staples as frozen mini-pizzas and 25 pounds of chocolate-chip cookies.
“My wife tells me I’m the spitting image of my dad--and my mom (gossiping, being restless), too. I guess I am. There’s no fighting it, and that really scares me.”
Experts say it is possible to break free from parental influence, but altering well-established behavior patterns is difficult.
, according to Irene Goldenberg, a family psychologist at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.
“It takes enormous effort to find a new way of behaving,” Goldenberg says. “That’s not to say (children) can’t break away. It just takes work.”
Bryce Nadeau, 19, has been trying to break away or get closer--he’s not really sure--to his parents for most of his life. Both are master sergeants in the U.S. Army and have been divorced since Nadeau was 3. Over the next 13 years, he bounced back and forth between them--until he bolted, landing on the streets of Los Angeles two years ago.
Nadeau says his parents are very authoritative and into responsibility. His dad “forced” him in early adolescent years to go scuba diving, parachuting and mountain climbing.
“I didn’t like it at the time,” he says. “I wanted freedom. Having the choice.”
Now that he has the choice, he likes spending time in the mountains. Even his parents’ lectures on responsibility apparently have taken hold.
Six months ago, Nadeau organized a group of 10 homeless young people who cleaned up an abandoned building to live in, sent each out to collect food at various youth centers and met with them to “make decisions and solve problems.”
“It surprised me because I’d never done anything like that before,” Nadeau says. “I’m starting to be responsible, kind of like my parents. I’m finding a lot of things that are similar. As things go on, I’m making more of the decisions they would. I see myself becoming more like them.”
Nadeau now lives in a Hollywood apartment and works as a day laborer through a program at the L.A. Free Clinic.
“Kids’ behavior is established by the way they see others do things,” says Goldenberg. “That’s what they learn. Most likely, what parents say and do will carry through to children. That combination is powerful.
“If parents instill some good information, good values, the kids will come back to it. They’ll evaluate it and use what’s good.”