Albanian Moms: It’s Not Always Your Fault

When Your Son’s Choices Are No Longer Yours to Carry

I want to start this conversation by saying something that may surprise people, especially considering how openly I talk about family patterns, enmeshment, parenting, boundaries and intergenerational trauma: sometimes a mother is not the reason her adult son is struggling.

I know. In today's mental-health world, that almost sounds controversial.

We have become very good at looking backward. A man has difficulty in relationships, so we examine his attachment to his mother. He avoids accountability, so we examine how he was parented. He has anger problems, so we look at what happened in the home. He struggles with women, commitment, boundaries or emotional regulation, and eventually somebody starts talking about Mom.

Sometimes we absolutely should.

But sometimes we have become so focused on understanding childhood that we unintentionally remove the adult from his own story.

And I don't believe that is healthy either.

Parenting matters enormously. Mothers matter. Fathers matter. Childhood experiences matter. Trauma matters. Attachment matters. But none of those things exist in isolation. Human beings are shaped by temperament, genetics, personality development, siblings, peers, school experiences, culture, relationships, rejection, success, failure, trauma, opportunity, substance use, mental-health challenges, the people they surround themselves with and eventually the decisions they repeatedly make for themselves.

So when I hear an Albanian mother say, “Where did I go wrong?”, sometimes my answer would genuinely be: Maybe you didn't go wrong in the way you think you did.

We Put an Enormous Amount of Responsibility on Mothers

There is something interesting about the way we talk about problematic men. A 38-year-old man cheats on his wife, and eventually somebody wants to know what his childhood was like. A 42-year-old man cannot control his anger, and somebody asks whether his mother spoiled him. A grown man refuses to work consistently, expects everyone to rescue him and blames everyone around him, and eventually we hear some version of, “His mother did everything for him.”

Maybe she did.

But I want to ask a question that we don't ask nearly enough:

Where is he in this conversation?

At what age does a man's behavior become his behavior?

This is not an argument against understanding childhood. I spend a tremendous amount of time helping people understand where their patterns came from because you cannot change something you don't understand. But understanding the origin of a behavior is supposed to help you change it. It isn't supposed to become a permanent explanation for continuing it.

Your mother may have overprotected you. Your father may have been emotionally unavailable. You may have grown up in a home where men didn't talk about feelings. Maybe nobody taught you how to communicate during conflict. Maybe you were spoiled. Maybe you were criticized. Maybe you were expected to be the strong one. Maybe your mother did too much for you.

All of that may be true.

But if you are now 35, 45 or 55 years old, at some point another question has to enter the room:

What have you done with what happened to you?

Otherwise, we aren't using psychology to create growth. We're using psychology to create better explanations for why adults shouldn't have to change.

Two Sons Can Grow Up in the Same House and Become Very Different Men

This is something we don't talk about enough.

Imagine an Albanian mother who raises two sons in the same home. She emphasizes family, education, hard work and respect. She cooks for both of them. She worries about both of them. She probably does too much for both of them at times. She makes parenting mistakes with both of them because she is human.

One son grows into a responsible adult. He works, maintains relationships, makes mistakes, apologizes, learns and becomes increasingly independent.

The other son struggles everywhere.

Every employer is unfair. Every girlfriend is crazy. Every relationship ends because somebody else did something to him. He borrows money and doesn't repay it. He gets angry when challenged. He makes impulsive decisions and then expects his family to help clean up the consequences.

And Mom sits there thinking:

“They grew up in the same house. What did I do to him?”

Maybe the more important question is: Why are we assuming you did something to him?

Children raised in the same home do not experience that home identically. They have different temperaments, different sensitivities, different relationships with each parent, different friendships, different experiences outside the home and different ways of interpreting what happens to them. And as they become adults, they make different choices.

This doesn't mean parenting becomes irrelevant. It means parenting is one part of a much larger developmental story.

That distinction matters.

Sometimes Mom Really Did Contribute — But That Still Isn't the Whole Story

Now I'm going to make some mothers uncomfortable because I don't want this article turned into, Thank God, Maria says none of this is my fault.

That's not what I'm saying.

Sometimes Mom absolutely contributed.

Maybe you protected him too much. Maybe every time the school called, you defended him before you even heard what happened. Maybe when he was disrespectful, you minimized it because he's a boy. Maybe his sisters had responsibilities around the house while somebody continued picking up his socks at 25. Maybe you confused doing everything for your son with loving your son.

Maybe you tolerated behaviors that should have been challenged.

Own that.

But owning your contribution is very different from assuming total responsibility for another human being's adult personality and choices.

Parents can influence a child profoundly without controlling the final outcome.

And I think mothers need to understand that because guilt can become its own form of dysfunction. A mother becomes so convinced that she somehow caused her son's problems that she spends the rest of her life trying to compensate for them.

She gives him money.

She fixes another problem.

She explains his behavior to the family.

She worries constantly.

She loses sleep.

She calls his wife.

She calls his employer.

She tries to keep him from failing because somewhere underneath all of it is the belief:

“If I caused this, I have to fix it.”

But what if you didn't cause all of it?

And more importantly, what if fixing everything is now preventing him from having to fix anything?

That's a different conversation, and we're going to have it in Part Two.

Albanian Mothers Carry Another Layer of This

Within our culture, motherhood can become deeply connected to identity. Children are not simply people we raise and eventually release into adulthood. Family remains deeply connected throughout life. There is tremendous beauty in that. Albanian families can be fiercely loyal, generous and protective. Parents sacrifice enormously for their children, and many mothers have built their entire adult lives around keeping their families together.

But there can be a cost when a son's struggles become interpreted as evidence of a mother's failure.

Sometimes Mom isn't only thinking, Is my son okay?

She's thinking:

What will people think?

What did I do wrong?

Why isn't he like other people's sons?

Did I fail him?

Was I too strict?

Was I too easy?

Did I work too much?

Did I do too much for him?

Did I not do enough?

And if you search long enough through anybody's childhood, you will eventually find evidence that the parents made mistakes.

Of course you will.

There are no perfect parents.

The goal of examining childhood should not be to conduct a lifelong investigation into who ruined whom. The goal is to understand how we became who we are so that we can decide what we want to do differently.

That applies to mothers.

And it applies to sons.

Your Childhood Is an Explanation. It Cannot Become Your Permanent Excuse.

This is where I want to challenge adult men too.

There is a point where constantly explaining yourself through your childhood becomes another way of avoiding yourself.

“My mother was controlling.”

Okay.

What are you doing about your inability to make decisions now?

“My parents never communicated.”

Okay.

What are you doing to learn how to communicate with your wife?

“My father had anger problems.”

Okay.

What are you doing when you notice yourself becoming the same kind of father?

“My mother did everything for me.”

Okay.

Who is stopping you from learning how to take care of yourself now?

You don't have to be responsible for what happened to you as a child to become responsible for what you do with it as an adult.

Those are two completely different things.

And I think we do people a disservice when we confuse them.

Maybe the Question Isn't “Whose Fault Is This?”

Families love finding the person responsible for the problem.

Mom blames Dad.

Dad blames Mom.

The wife blames the mother-in-law.

The mother blames the wife.

The adult son blames his childhood.

Everyone becomes very busy explaining everyone else.

And nobody changes.

I would rather ask something much harder:

What belongs to me?

Maybe Mom needs to acknowledge that she overprotected her son.

Maybe Dad needs to acknowledge that he modeled anger, emotional distance or entitlement.

Maybe the family needs to recognize that boys and girls were held to completely different standards.

Maybe culture reinforced some of it.

And maybe the adult son needs to acknowledge that he has spent years knowing exactly what his problems are while doing very little to change them.

Several things can be true at the same time.

That is what mature accountability looks like.

Maria's Challenge

If you are an Albanian mother who has spent years asking yourself, “What did I do wrong?”, I want you to stop searching for one simple answer.

Instead, separate influence from responsibility.

Ask yourself honestly: What did I contribute to? What would I parent differently if I could go back? Did I protect my son too much? Did I excuse things I shouldn't have excused? Did I hold him accountable? Did I allow him to fail? Did I expect the same level of responsibility from my sons that I expected from my daughters?

Don't run from those answers.

But don't stop there.

Now ask yourself something mothers often have a much harder time asking:

What belongs to him?

What decisions has your adult son made despite knowing better? What opportunities has he had to change? What consequences has he avoided? What help has he rejected? What behavior does he continue even though he knows exactly how it affects other people?

And then ask yourself the question that may be the hardest one:

Am I still blaming myself because blaming myself gives me the illusion that I can somehow fix him?

Because if everything is your fault, then maybe somewhere inside you believe everything is still within your power to repair.

It isn't.

You can apologize for your mistakes.

You can change the way you relate to your son.

You can stop enabling.

You can learn.

You can become healthier.

You can repair what is repairable.

But you cannot do another adult's emotional work for him.

And sons, eventually you have to stop asking only, “What did my mother do to me?” and start asking, “What am I doing with my life now that I understand what happened?”

That isn't blame.

That's adulthood.

-Maria Shkreli, LMHC

Albanian Mental Wellness Hub

Where Culture and Mental Wellness Come Together.