To ask how you got along with your mums when you were teenagers

[MsBagelLady]

I had a dreadful relationship with my mother, she was an 18 year old art student when she 'had to' get married because she was pregnant in the 1960s, she says she tried to abort me but it didn't work [gads and eww woman, why tell me that] anyhoo once I hit my teens things were dreadful and we have had NC for approaching 30 yrs, we moved from a dreadful relationship to an horrific one and then back to a dreadful one. I have adult kids and will never behave in the same way, we're family and love and support each other through all of it, good and bloody difficult and that's that! AIBU is probably the wrong place to ask but it's busy so how did/do you get along with your mums? PS my mum has great grandchildren that she does not even know exist, I don't ever want to be in that situation.

Gosh, it's so sad some of these stories. I wonder if this level of abuse is still going on, or whether, overall, teenagers get on better with their mothers now. (I appreciate abuse still happens in some families, but it does seem like back 20/30 years ago, it was more widespread).

My relationship with my mother was awful once I became a teenager. She was deeply controlling and had a host of mental health problems nursed with alcohol. I do love her but I also hate her. She is now old and needs my help. I fight a continual battle with myself to provide care for a person who didn't care for me. She remains deeply selfish and volatile - which is still effecting my mental health.

I feel that the way she treated me when I was a child has cast a long, long shadow over my adult life. It has certainly driven the choices I have made and in some part contributed to what I see as my unfulfilled potential. But I am also an adult who has to move forward and stop looking back.

I try to not repeat the mistakes my own mother made when I parent my own children.

I had a great relationshiop with my mum in my teens, and still do. In fact, we are going away together next week. I'm the youngest of 3 and she had me in her mid 30s. She always did her best for the 3 of us and is the most patient person I know. She had a tough upbringing herself and her own mum was quite controlling so she made a conscious decision never to be the same with her own children. She is now 86 and I would do anything for her.

I was never a child she could boast about and I never felt she was proud of me though. Once my sister left home for uni we became closer but I am still second best. We get on well now but she has to accept me for what I am and not what she would like me to be. I stop her if she tries to criticise me and she doesn’t like that but that is how I maintain civility 😀