There are parents - very much the minority I think and hope - who do feel they love their children less once they start looking like adults. Some of them articulate this to their adult children with absolute clarity. Some of them complain repeatedly to the adult/ adolescent child that they "look horrible" now and go on and on about how sad it makes them that their child is no longer a "sweet little golden haired.." Maybe AF had overheard one of these - or known one, maybe a friend of a friends parent or something similar and hence wondered what Nicola would think if she had heard it - more use of public transport means more enforced over-hearing perhaps? Perhaps Nicola is also articulating a fear - that as she and Lawrie stop being children her parents might care less about them? Or perhaps that they already care less about Rowan? As an adult daughter, I was well aware I still mattered to my parents, but that is because they had in their own quiet and undemonstrative way made it clear to me, and not because society in general had done so.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Mrs Clavering
Date: 2014-11-29 11:34 am (UTC)Maybe AF had overheard one of these - or known one, maybe a friend of a friends parent or something similar and hence wondered what Nicola would think if she had heard it - more use of public transport means more enforced over-hearing perhaps? Perhaps Nicola is also articulating a fear - that as she and Lawrie stop being children her parents might care less about them? Or perhaps that they already care less about Rowan?
As an adult daughter, I was well aware I still mattered to my parents, but that is because they had in their own quiet and undemonstrative way made it clear to me, and not because society in general had done so.