How to Make Your Mom Happier

This is a special newsletter from our friend Arthur Brooks - a Harvard Professor dedicated to the science of happiness. He had some great thoughts about mothers this week in his newsletter, The Art and Science of Happiness that you can sign up for here.

What the science says

The relationship between motherhood and happiness is not straightforward. You can see this in one statistic: Surveys that ask mothers what they most want for Mother’s Day is not breakfast in bed. It’s time alone. 

As regular readers know, I like to define happiness as a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. When kids are little, childcare generally creates a tradeoff here: less enjoyment, but more meaning. 

But even as kids grow up, there remains some motherly ambivalence. Researchers studying mothers have found that almost 54 percent said their relationship with their adult child or children was ‘‘intimate but also restrictive,” that they had “mixed feelings” about the relationship. The strongest predictor of ambivalence toward an adult child was whether their mother continued to financially support them. And the biggest predictor of interpersonal stress between adult child and mother was her affirmative answer to the following question: ‘‘Do you feel that you give more than you receive in this relationship?’

What I think

Every mother-child relationship is unique, but many people, even young adults, have a somewhat one-way relationship with their moms: She gives, the kids take. This occurs because it has to be that way when children are small, but it doesn’t mature as the kids grow up. This isn’t necessarily anyone’s fault—just inertia. 

This might be a great year to start rebalancing the relationship.

What you can do

Get off the family plan. At the most obvious level, adult children can lower their mother’s resentment and stress by decreasing their financial dependence, which has been repeatedly found to be a significant source of family conflict. If nothing else is feasible, start with a small gesture, like taking your cellphone off the family plan. At the very least, don’t let Mom’s financial support go unacknowledged.

Host a holiday at your place. Plenty of people happily assume that their mothers delight in acting as unpaid logisticians, organizing every get-together only to field the complaints when things aren’t perfect. But Mom might not be so pleased with that arrangement. This year, you might volunteer to plan and execute Thanksgiving at your place.

Ask about her day.  For your mother’s well-being, emotional support should be a two-way street as well. One way to start to develop reciprocity is to listen more to your mother, the way you would to a friend.

Advice from Happier:  We all have those moments, right? Especially with family, where it’s easy to react on autopilot. Mindfulness gives you that beat to pause. Instead of just reacting, you can actually choose how you want to show up – with more heart and understanding. It’s about shifting those old patterns, one thoughtful response at a time.

You can almost certainly improve your relationship and your Mom’s happiness by taking the advice above: Don’t take her for granted, and treat her with the attentive love she deserves.