Why you're still lying to mom

Sarah* is sitting in her living room sharing a glass of wine with me. Sniffing around our feet is a three-month-old golden retriever, a slobbery mess of fur and shiny eyes. Sarah decided to get him as a friend for her older dog, and as a pre-emptive strike against the loneliness she feels will set in when her son leaves for university this fall. Good idea, but this kind of purebred companionship doesn't come cheap.

Sarah isn't one to brag or speak crassly about money, but as with chat among friends, the conversation turns to cash in a roundabout way - housing prices and where they're going, the cost of car insurance and, yes, the fact that a purchase from a reputable breeder costs as much as a pair of Louboutin pumps ($1,000, give or take).

Lying to mom about the price

When Sarah's mom visited her yesterday, she got the same kind of wine but a revised version of the shopping spree: Sarah told her the dog cost $300. In fact, Sarah routinely tells her mom she takes advantage of sales that never happened. "If she compliments me on a shirt I'm wearing, I'll say, ‘Isn't it great? It was only $29.99' when really it was more like $70."

Sarah is 47 years old and owns her house. She pays for her son's music classes and swimming lessons, because Sarah's well-meaning ex usually can't come up with his child support. In short, my friend is a big-girl grown-up. So why, around her mother, does she behave like a preteen caught with dope in her pencil case? "I want my mom to think I'm a responsible person, a smart person who wouldn't spend a lot of money on a shirt. Or a dog."

We all keep secrets and tell lies, and that doesn't necessarily make us scoundrels and cheats. It may be reasonable to deflect the intrusion of an acquaintance who crosses a line (did you really just ask me how much I earn? Really?) or just to get out of a jam (I can't help with that fundraiser, my sister is visiting). But by the time a person is paying her own way, she's usually past puffing herself up to look like someone she's not - except, perhaps, when she's talking to her mom.

Mother-daughter relationships: It's complicated

"Daughters learn pretty early in life that they don't want to let Mom down; they want her to be proud of them, to think that they turned out well as adults," says Simon Fraser University sociology professor Barbara Mitchell, the author of The Boomerang Age.

"We don't want Mom to feel regret or to be embarrassed by us." That means presenting an "idealized version" of ourselves to our mothers.

Next page: More lies we tell, and more reasons why

Mitchell is adopted and her father remarried a handful of times, so "that means I have several mothers," she says, "and I present a different version of myself to each one of them." One of her stepmoms gets updates on Mitchell's professional accomplishments; "with another, I focus on what makes me happy personally, because that's what she values."

 

Keeping relationship issues from mom

For Francis*, an idealized version of herself is someone who never fights with her husband. Her parents have been together for nearly 50 years and never seem to have any really serious disagreements. "So as far as my mother is concerned, I've never had an argument with my husband of 10 years," says Francis, 41. "I'm still waiting for the boys to out me." She's referring to her sons, twins in middle school, who routinely hear their parents squawk and squabble over money, schedules and the domestic division of labour.

Francis and her mother are tight. They share a cup of tea a few times a week (since Francis's mom minds the boys after school), and they talk on the phone every day. So why the secrecy about PG-rated marital discord? "If I told my mom about the fights we have, she'd have no choice but to choose a side, and she'd never be able to retreat from that." Meaning, even if Francis forgave her husband, her mother would not.

Esther Kane, a registered clinical counsellor in Courtenay, B.C., says this is the most common secret she sees in her practice. "When clients tell me they're getting divorced, I always ask if they've told their mom yet." It's a litmus test: If they've disclosed to Mom, it means they've given the decision a lot of thought and are probably going to follow through with the divorce. And while Kane thinks it's best to be honest in general, she also believes "full disclosure is overrated. We've lost a lot of boundaries in all relationships, including the mother-daughter one."

Next page: And what about those boundaries?

But where do boundaries with one's mother come in?

If "boundaries" is a euphemism for "topics not to be discussed," I have only one with my mother, since she's my best friend. (Translation: She's the first person I reach out to with news; she comes to my defence and puts me on the defensive; she can be full of good advice and sometimes full of shit; she cracks me up and pisses me off.)

I reveal my failings - real and imagined - at work and at parenting. I confide in her about relationships and girlfriends, even if that means admitting to jealousy, pettiness and other character flaws. I told her about dropping $400 of my student loans on a pair of killer pumps (hand-stitched leather sole, three-inch stacked heel, sexy patent uppers...jeez, I miss those. I forgot them at an ex-boyfriend's house. Told Mom that detail too).

Talk about the bedroom with your mother?

But I would sooner stick sharp things in my eye than discuss sex with my mother. I don't play the born-again virgin with her, but I'd get shivers if the conversation veered toward physical preferences or details. Sex is a normal and legitimate topic of conversation, but it doesn't cross generational lines, no matter how old you are.

Not everyone agrees with me. From early on, Globe and Mail reporter Deirdre Kelly says she shared full details about her sex life with her mother. "I was allowed to have boyfriends sleep over in my late teens. In fact, we sometimes slept in her bed with her blessing." (Mom was never in the bed, but still, for my part, my skin's crawling. Skin. Is. Crawling.) Sounds like the making of a friendship, a mother-daughter union defined by shopping sprees and shared pants, whispered confessions and many inside jokes.

Not so much.

Kelly, 50, calls her 2009 book, Paris Times Eight, "an indirect love letter to my mom," but the memoir more than hints at a tense bond with periods of estrangement and strife. When her mother finished reading it, she called Kelly to say, "I knew you loved me, but I had no idea you hated me so much." Kelly doesn't see it that way; there's no hatred. The two are in touch irregularly, and they're not buddies. Her mom comes to visit on occasion for kids' birthdays and holidays.

"In the past, I would share my successes," she says, referring to her writing, accolades and invitations to be a guest speaker. "But in recent years, I've tended to withhold information because I'm less certain of my mother's support. It's self-preservation on my part."

Next page: A kinder, gentler reason for not sharing all

Unlike Kelly, other women have a kinder, gentler reason for not sharing all with their mothers. Just ask Karen Fingerman, head of the graduate program in child development and family studies at Purdue University and the author of Mothers and Their Adult Daughters, a compilation of interviews with 48 mother-daughter pairs (the moms were all over 70).

 

"Don't upset mom"

"When daughters reach a more mature and confident relationship with their mothers, they protect them from distressing and upsetting information. It's not that they are unable to be truthful with their mothers - it would be inappropriate and selfish to be truthful." (That's why the names and identifying details of many of the women in this article are secret. Their moms are all living, lovely and literate - at best they'd be disappointed, at worst broken hearted, if they recognized their daughters here. Since Deirdre Kelly's confessed all in her memoir, the damage is already done.)

 

Take the case of Christine*. At 44, she was the mother of two girls, ages five and five months, when she found out she was expecting again. Her husband was delighted. The baby wasn't planned, but they'd make it work. Christine feigned joy for family and friends; really, she was ambivalent. "Three babies would mean absolutely no time for my work, myself or my newborn," she says. Over the weeks, ambivalence turned to fear and then anxiety. She became short-tempered and withdrawn, checking out emotionally. Eventually, Christine said to her husband, "What if we didn't have this baby?" His reply? "Would I get you back?" She scheduled an abortion.

If you tell mom, do you have to tell dad?

Christine didn't need advice, but she needed a shoulder to lean on, a calm voice to tell her it would be okay, that she was okay. Besides a supportive partner, she needed her mom, her confidante - a woman who lives a few hours' drive away, but to whom she speaks frequently. Still, Christine couldn't share. "I didn't want to tell my father, and if I told my mom, I'd force her to keep a secret from Dad. She would have done it, and it would have killed her. No way could I do that to her." In the end, she told her mother that she miscarried.

Whether we're trying to make ourselves look better, or make our moms feel better, the temptation to cover up our darker truths isn't something we get past. As Karen Fingerman writes, "Years after daughters are grown, daughters feel guilty and ashamed when their mothers criticize them, and feel happy when their mothers are proud of them." And sometimes we feel guilty and ashamed even when our mothers don't criticize us.

It seems as if that's the case with Sarah and her sale-price pooch. Her mom probably wouldn't flinch over Sarah's purchases - she's an avid shopper herself. "She buys stuff all the time," says Sarah, noting that her mom never passes up a bargain.

But Sarah's mother, 79, arrived here from South America as a child. "It's the typical story of immigrants," Sarah says. "She struggled, and I feel guilty because I didn't. But I'm not going to tell her that I've become her." Is that because she doesn't feel worthy, that she doesn't deserve her mother's perks? Because, no doubt, her mom would have something to say about that. The thing is, Sarah won't know unless she tells her.

*Names changed by request

This article originally appeared in the May 2010 issue of More.

Share the whoppers you've told your mother in the comments, or tell us about your relationship with your mother!