5 Fights You'll Have With Your Parents In Your 20s

I found my childhood diary recently. In it, every other page recapped a fight I had with my parents. An entire chapter was dedicated to a fight I had with my mother over the fact that I called her a "witch with a B" and asked if she was on her period. To really drive the point home, I drew a picture of her with a long witch's nose, wart and all. In another entry, I circled tear splotches on the page. "Diary, these are the tears that I've cried because my dad is a mean man. He won't let me go to a girl/boy sleepover party because of 'hormones' and 'lack of parental supervision'. I hate him now and forever."

The kinds of fights you have with your parents when you're a kid are usually centered around the fact that you're a dummy and think you can do anything and are entitled to have everything, and your parents need to remind you that you're a tiny half-human who's not fully formed. The kind of fights you have with your parents in your teen years tend to be more about money, direction, and the future. Parents become anxiously aware of the fact that their reign of influence has a closing window and they try their best to fit whatever parenting in that they can.

The kinds of fights you have with your parents in your late 20s are a bit more complicated. You're no longer legally or ethically obligated to do what your parents ask of you. Instead, a new obstacle is presented: you actually want to have a good relationship with your parents. You want to be financially independent, you want them to be proud of you and you want them to be happy. These changes really affect that kinds of conversations you have with them. These are some of the things you start fighting with your parents about in your late 20s:

Physical Health

As you get older, your parents will become more worried about the way you live your life. You're no longer the resilient kid who can eat whatever they want and go nights without sleep and drink for a week straight. There are consequences to the ways you punish your body in your late 20s. Your parents will worry that you're not taking good enough care of yourself and you'll be frustrated that your parents don't give you the credit to be an adult and know what's good for you. You don't need to be told what to do, you need the space to do it.

Projected Happiness

At times, you won't see eye-to-eye with your parents about priorities. Your parents will have trouble separating the things that make them happy with the things that make you happy. You'll fight about what's important to you and you'll find yourself defending your choices more than you'd like to. You want your parents to back off, relax, and worry about their own happiness. You got this.

Healthy Relationships

While your parents might have turned a blind eye to your ill-fitted relationships in your teen years, you better believe they're going to pipe up and insert their opinion about your relationships in your late 20s. Now that the person you're dating might be someone they have to welcome into the family, they're going to have a lot of opinions and they're not always going to be in line with yours. You'll struggle between valuing and respecting their ideas, and staying true to your own.

Ambitions

As you move into your late 20s, your ambitions might shift. While you might be doing really well with your blossoming career and while your parents might be very proud of you — you might also be realizing that it doesn't make you happy and you want to try something totally different. Your parents will be worried by these big changes and ideas and you'll definitely butt heads about leaving a stable situation to take a chance on a new one. But this is the time to listen to your heart and tune out your parents, no matter how much it upsets them.

Foundations

Your parents worry enough about your future for the two of you. They will worry about the choices you make and how that will affect your future adult life, and you will wish they trusted you to make your own mistakes. You'll get into many arguments over whether or not you're "doing it right" and you'll both offend each other's judgement more than once. You'll figure out the balance between listening to each other and making your own choices in your own time. But you'll definitely get into a few fights along the road.

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