How to Start Over: 'Parents Are Not All Good and All Bad'

How to Know What’s Real

Some families have the frictionless ease of unconditional love and understanding, but for many the stalemate of family tensions can be insurmountable.

In this episode of How to Start Over, we explore what can be done to evaluate the dynamics in lifelong family relationships, find ways to manage our emotional response when tensions boil over, and analyze what it means to change a parent-child relationship as an adult.

This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and is hosted by Olga Khazan. Editing by A.C. Valdez and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Matthew Simonson. Special thanks to Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of The Atlantic.

Be part of How to Start Over. Write to us at [e-mail]. To support this podcast, and get unlimited access to all of The Atlantic’s journalism, become a subscriber.

Music by FLYIN (“Being Nostalgic”), Mindme (“Anxiety [Instrumental Version]”), Sarah, the Illstrumentalist (“Building Character”), and Timothy Infinite (“Rapid Years”).

Click here to listen to more full-length episodes in The Atlantic’s How To series.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices