One bright and beautiful Indian summer day in late September 2011, I'd just finished work on my latest TV documentary and was feeling good.
The recent shock of a newly empty nest, my son and daughter having flown for the moment, and the discovery that I was home alone with their father, a man I'd met at a party in the late Eighties and been with ever since, had subsided and left me feeling unfettered and oddly free.
My phone rang; it was my daughter, Francesca, then 18 and settling in at college.
Her voice was tearful and as she recounted her misery - she felt she'd made the wrong decision, she was lonely, she wanted to come home - I felt my chest tighten and my throat constrict as it always does when one of my children is unhappy.
Olivia Lichtensten is pictured with her daughter Francesca, then aged three, and son Oscar, seven, in 1996
The umbilical cord, it transpires, far from being severed at birth, continues the flow of emotions from mother to child and back again, in perpetuity.
Philip Larkin's famous poem 'This be the verse' (you know, the rude one about your mum and dad) has become the slogan of a self-analytical age where childhood and our parents' effect on us are seen as the root of all our adult woes.
However, there's a less-discussed parent-child relationship worth considering, the effect of our children on us.
RELATED ARTICLES
- 'Your child eats what you eat': Shocking ads see babies... How much would YOU spend to look amazing on your child's big... Rise of the modern witch: They're educated, have good jobs -... Mother slams discount retailer Marshalls after she was...
Share this article
Share 986 sharesFor the truth is that we are so inextricably bound one to the other, that, as a parent, it's manifest that you are destined to be 'only as happy as your least happy child'.
The thing we most wish for our children is for them to be happy and to have a sense of fulfilment.
Their suffering, however unavoidable it may be in life, is unbearable.
Becoming a mother was, for me, a defining moment (two moments actually) and raising my son and daughter has been the most rewarding thing I've ever done, not to mention at times, the most challenging. Undoubtedly it's also been the source both of fear and of great joy.
Siblings Francesca, now aged 22, and Oscar, 26, laugh and hold hands in a photo captured in June this year
Olivia is pictured with her husband, Simon - whom she met at a party in the late 80s - and children in 1996
I remember my astonishment, when, after the birth of my first child, Oscar, now 27, I was allowed to take this newly minted creature home without any prior training.
He was so small, and it was so hard to get his tiny arms into the sleeves of his clothes.
When I bathed him, he was so slippery that I thought he might shoot out of my hands. I felt overwhelmed with responsibility and the realisation that my life had changed irrevocably.
When he cried, my anxiety for his well-being made me ache physically. What I didn't realise then, was that the way he and my daughter felt would continue down the years to affect how I felt, too.
Nor did I realise this was the easy part, for when they're babies, our children's unhappiness can be soothed with a cuddle, a song, a story or a few spoons of mashed banana.
The umbilical cord, it transpires, far from being severed at birth, continues the flow of emotions from mother to child and back again, in perpetuityIt's as they grow older and their emotions inevitably become more complex and wide-ranging that the troubles really begin because we don't always know the right answers or possess the tools to make them feel better.
The effect of their emotions on us as parents is as visceral as it ever was and we feel impotent and at fault: if they're happy, it's because we raised them well; if they're not, it's because we did something wrong.
Their difficult times flicker like flares of misery along the paths of their young lives: the times they were bullied at school, their thwarted hopes, quarrels with friends, wrong-doings, injustices, bad behaviour; in short, the usual cut and thrust of daily life.
It's challenging when it happens to us and even harder when we see it happening to them. It's clear I'm not alone in feeling this. The other evening, I was at an anniversary dinner with a group of old friends and our respective children.
My friend Joanna's daughter, Kate, 18, who's going through a difficult time, unsure both of herself and her future, was due to join us. She didn't appear and Joanna spent much of the evening on her mobile phone trying to cajole her daughter into coming.
This week, Francesca (pictured, right, in a family snap in 2014) revealed to her mother that her brother (left) has a 'great new venture' that he is 'really excited about'. This, Olivia writes, made her 'whole mood lighten'
Olivia and her husband are pictured in their London home in 2007
She failed and spent her evening looking - and feeling - acutely miserable and anxious.
The fact that we parents mirror the emotions of our children and find it hard to differentiate ourselves from them, is borne out by a recent study.
Karen Fingerman, Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Texas, set out to assess how the well-being of middle-aged parents may be tied to the successes and failures of their adult children.
She found that parents tend to view their offspring as extensions of themselves, even after their children are grown up.
Not surprisingly, the study incontrovertibly proved the truth of the maxim that 'we are only as happy as our least happy child' because 'negative emotions are more intense and exert greater influence on well-being than positive emotions'.
When Francesca (pictured) first went off to college, she told her mother she had made the wrong decision and wanted to come home
So it's no good if one of your children is happy and the other isn't - they both have to be happy for you to be.
Successful children give parents 'bragging rights' and my children have frequently given me great cause for pride and boasting.
However, as one knows only too well, success does not guarantee happiness and many of the most successful people are woefully discontented.
For many of us, there's a low-level anxiety and sadness when our child is miserable. Often, once they've unloaded their woes on to you, they feel much better, leaving you feeling much worse.
My daughter was once very miserable about falling out with a close friend. I called her from work to check on her.
'I'm fine, Mum, I'm a bit busy right now.' 'But earlier you said…' 'Oh that, yeah, it's all sorted now.'
She was breezy, if anything, a little irritated that I'd brought it up and was circling above her, helicopter parent-style. I resolved to try to have a few more boundaries - to listen to my children's concerns without always having to absorb them. It's a work in progress.
The parent-child relationship is, perhaps inevitably, a co-dependent one.
As the child of a volatile mother, I used to tentatively sniff the atmosphere arriving home from school to get a sense of how the emotional land lay; now as a mother, I tiptoe around the fragile earth of my own children's emotional landscape.
I send them anxious messages asking how they are and then, all too often, I'm upset when they tell me. So accustomed have my children become to offloading their miseries onto me, that they sometimes forget to tell me their good news. My son, who is back living at home because he can't afford not to, has been having something of a late-20s crisis over where his life is going.
Our most recent conversation found him rather low.
This week, however, my daughter breezily asked me whether I'd heard his 'great news?'
'Er…no,' I said.
'He's got this great new venture he's really excited about.'
Olivia is pictured cuddling Oscar, then aged eight, and a beaming Francesca, four, on a set of steps in 1997
Despite the fact he'd neglected to tell me himself, I felt my whole mood lighten.
Perhaps our children face bigger problems than we did at their age.
They live in a time of fierce academic competition, a highly competitive job market, the ubiquity of drugs, the threat of violence and the problems of unaffordable housing.
They're often still living at home at a time when we'd long since been in a position to leave and set up our own households.
We know far too much about our children's lives and, thanks to technology, are constantly in touch with them. We witness their relationship make-ups and break-ups and it's hard not to be affected by them.
I wondered whether men are only as happy as their least happy child. My husband, Simon, said he's been too infected by my reactions to be objective, but he thinks the whole generation is unhappy.
It's as they grow older and their emotions inevitably become more complex and wide-ranging that the troubles really begin because we don't always know the right answersI asked our friend, Richard, who has three grown-up children whether his happiness was dependent on them. 'No,' he said philosophically, 'I mean, who's happy in their 20s?'
Not that this attitude is gender- specific. I overheard another friend, Lizzie, talking to her 24-year-old daughter Scarlett the other night. Scarlett was upset because her car had broken down on the motorway and she was waiting for roadside assistance.
'What do you expect me to do about it?' Lizzie said coolly. 'It's late and they'll be there soon. Just phone me when you get home.'
I'd have been mounting a rescue operation or keeping my daughter on the telephone until help arrived.
The truth, however difficult, is it's important to remind oneself not to be ruled by emotions; it's not simply a question of happiness or sadness, but more one about the importance of learning life lessons.
That way we can help children become adults who can trust themselves and their decisions.
Meanwhile, I still really want my two children to be as happy as they can possibly be.
Preferably, both at the same time.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pa3IpbCmmZmhe6S7ja6iaJ6Voq6quI6aqa2hk6Gybn%2BRbG1qbmFkpKnFjKamraCVp3qzscClo7JlmJa9scWMoZipqKlisKm1y51kkKqZqbKzedGerZ6ZnKh6uLXSoWStr59isKm1y52pnqZdna6xvNhmnaKmlKh6tMHFn5yroZ6cera6wZ6Yq5mSobJvtNOmow%3D%3D