Rory O’Donovan
Did you have sex last week? Did you take any drugs? Did you drink so much that you vomited? Did you smoke too many cigarettes? Did you spend your rent money? Because of any of these things, did you miss a lecture? A tutorial? Imagine you did any or all of these things. Imagine your mum calls you, or your dad. They ask what you’ve been up to recently.
Some, I have discovered, would tell nothing of the above to their parents. Some would lie if they were pressed. Some would happily tell them about some things, whilst never tell them about others. Some would tell them, quite frankly, about nearly all of them. How do we decide what we can and can’t tell our parents? Do we have different rules for our mum, or our dad? Do we tell them more, or less, now we’re older and at college? Do we lie to them or hide things from them because we are scared, or ashamed? Or do we do it to protect them, to avoid confrontation? Over the last few weeks, I have endeavoured to find out just how much we tell our parents, and why we hide things from them.
Mark* tells his parents very little about his life at Trinity. ‘I smoke, my parents certainly don’t know about that. I drink a lot more than I’d ever let on. I would never tell them about the drugs I have tried. Anything to do with girls I certainly wouldn’t bring up with my mum or dad. And yeah, as far as they’re concerned, I’ve never missed a lecture.’ To be honest, I had thought this might be the typical response to my prying. I would consider myself to be fairly honest with my parents about most things and, from experience with friends’ parents I had always found they share less with their parents than I do with mine. But, as I soon came to realise, it’s not that we share less or more with our parents than others do, it’s that we are all open and honest about very different combinations of things. ‘I’m fairly sure my dad wouldn’t be able to handle anything to do with sex or drugs,’ Mark concluded, ‘and I certainly couldn’t talk to my mum about sex. I’d tell them ‘”I’m going for a few beers” rather than “I’m going out on the piss”. Without a doubt, I tone things down. Mainly because I haven’t a clue how they would react if confronted with the truth.’
Having thought that Mark’s approach was that of the majority, I was corrected substantially by the many whom I talked to who tell their parents about far more than I ever would. Sarah* tells me she would tell her parents pretty much everything: ‘I wouldn’t wake up the day after a bender and walk into the kitchen and be like ‘Mum, Dad, I took these drugs last night and had sex with this guy’, but they know I take drugs, they know I have sex.’ I asked Sarah about how she thought her parents felt about this, she replied with a smile, ‘well, obviously I think sex-talk makes my dad pretty uncomfortable, but my mum always says it’s good for him. I have talked about using condoms or the pill; I have talked about friends having threesomes and the like. Drugs are kind of different. I’m not sure my folks really understand drugs too much; they find my drug-taking fascinating, as it’s something they never experienced. I wouldn’t tell them how much or how often I take things, but I think they know a lot of the drugs I have tried.’ Did she think this was a ‘strange’ relationship to have, I asked her, ‘well no, not for me,’ she replied, ‘but obviously from meeting friends’ parents I understand it maybe isn’t typical. It’s just what I’m used to, I’ve always been brutally honest and my parents either like that, or have learnt to put up with it’.
Talking to parents frankly about drug-use is something I find particularly fascinating. Surely, unlike spending too much money, or having sex, which could at least be forgiven as fairly natural, most parents wouldn’t condone drug use, would they? Isabelle* tells me that she had never told her parents about taking drugs until recently, when she thought she had been smoking cannabis too regularly. She had a candid conversation with her mum, telling her about all of the drugs she had taken and asking her if she would be prepared to test her regularly for cannabis use using home-tests. ‘I had to explain to mum about all of the drugs and what they meant. It was awkward I suppose, saying things like “well, that’s horse tranquiliser mum”, but to be fair, she was really cool about it.’ I talked to Ed*, who told me that he had also opened up to his parents about drugs, having told his dad about everything he had taken. My conversation with Ed though took an interesting turn when he told me that ‘Dad would be fairly clued up about how much I smoke, drink and take drugs, but I’d never tell him if I missed a lecture.’
I was quite astounded by this. Here was a student who would tell his dad about girls he had sex with, drugs he had taken, fights he had been in, but would never tell him that he missed some college work. It was at this point that I realised that the interesting thing about what we all do and don’t tell our parents is that for every single one of us, there exists a very unique and very complicated set of rules by which we all deem what is appropriate for our parents. I met students who would tell their parents everything apart from the fact that they smoked, others whose parents knew all of their misdemeanours but whose mothers would never be told if they were eating badly, and some who could be frank with their dad about anything other than how poorly they were handling their finances.
‘I think it depends on the parents really,’ said Sam*, another Trinity student who censors what he tells his parents regarding the life he leads at Trinity. ‘For example, some might have had a grandparent who died because of smoking, so they wouldn’t tell their parents they smoked. Or some might have had a cousin who died because of an overdose, or have a family member who had a serious drinking problem; obviously, this would affect what they do and don’t tell their parents.’ Surely, I replied to Sam, we are all old enough now to be honest with our parents about how we lead our lives? ‘I don’t think it’s as simple as that,’ he countered, ‘I think some people have very liberal parents, or even very ‘modern’ parents who know what young people get up to these days. But some don’t. Imagine telling your grandparents you have sex all the time, with different people, or that you regularly take drugs? They would be hugely upset; they’d think you were an addict or a whore. For some people it’s like that with their parents, they’re of a different generation, with completely different cultural – or even religious – standards which they live by.’
It is impossible to find even one broad explanation to summarise our hugely varying reasons for what we do and don’t tell our parents. But one student, when I asked her the following question, came pretty close: Does it mean that we are not as close to our parents because we keep things from them? ‘No,’ says Claire*, ‘I think I am very close to my parents. But if I ever have a daughter in lots of ways I would love her to experience all of the stupid things I have done, because they teach you a lot. But as her mum, if I ever knew, I would have to stop her, I would have to intervene. Yes, I think we’d all judge our friendships on how much we can honestly share with a person, but parental relationships are completely different. A friend is there for you, whereas a parent is not just there for you, they’re responsible for you as well.’
*Interviewees’ names have been changed to protect their identities
