Emily, you wrote yesterday about the tricky feeling of watching your son outperform you, and finding it discomfiting. But kids can be just as uncomfortable in the surpassing role as the parents are about being bested. My all-girls basketball team used to gather every Sunday afternoon to scrimmage our parents. It was mostly dads who took the bait. One girl’s father was notoriously rough on defense; another had gangly arms no 12-year-old girl could possibly outreach. It was meant to be a fun practice, and our fathers typically let us stay in the game enough to keep our confidence high, while still asserting their ultimate dominance on the score board.

I still remember the day we won. Watching these men bent over during water breaks, out of breath, sweaty, injured—it was devastating. They were our fathers: strong, athletic, unbeatable. But they looked, suddenly, like tired, middle-aged men. It was hard to watch.

You said, Emily, that what you’re supposed to feel when your kid outdoes you is pride. But even that is a complex emotion. Isn’t pride just a way of taking ownership of your kid’s success? My mother seems to think so—she hates the idea of parents telling their children they’re proud of them, or, more specifically, of her own mother saying she's proud of her. Although I think my mother takes her anti-parental-pride agenda a bit far—often snorting in disgust during the climactic, choked-up line in many a parent/child drama: “I’m so proud of you”—I do understand her basic point that to take pride is to take credit. You wouldn’t say you were proud of some child prodigy you had no part in raising, right? But you think you get to be proud of Eli—his powerful throw, his keen Scrabble mind—because you created him; his achievements are yours to take pride in. But isn't it possible that what you call pride is really stifled envy—a way of turning that uncomfortable sense of competition into feeling better about yourself?

For my part, I’ll gladly welcome my parents' pride. But what I really want is for my dad to forever dominate on the basketball court.

Tags: parenting

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I got a bunch of responses to my call for examples of parent-child envy across gender lines, from mother to son and father to daughter. An on-point example: Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate (or Meryl Streep in the remake). Jeff Ryan writes in that these mothers "desparately, basely, (Clintonishly?) want their progeny's political power for their own." Other ideas that bring in more varieties of dysfunction: Medea (she kills her children to get revenge on her husband). The mother in Ordinary People (she is weirdly tied up with her teenage son, but isn't it more about compensating for the problems in her marriage than about feeling competitive?). Psycho (deeply screwed up mother-son connection in every way). A great father-son example, from another reader, Robert: Searching for Bobby Fischer, the line where the father says that his 8-year-old prodigy son is now better at chess than he himself has been at anything in his whole life.

And a personal example of father-daughter envy, from a third reader, Albert: "My five-year-old little girl comes in from her summer camp and we're talking. All of a sudden, I'm an out of touch old man. She rolls her eyes and flicks her head and is running down a path of social interaction that is second nature to girls and women. I'm the amateur." Not second nature to many of us. But I can see him standing by, slightly awestruck.

Photograph by Getty Images.

Tags: manchurian candidate, medea, ordinary people, parental envy, psycho, searching for bobby fischer

Emily, if you’re still collecting anecdotes from parents who are envious of their children, and children who outshine their folks, I can add to your list. My daughter, born when I was only 22, somehow absorbed the energy I thought was my own birthright and left me with a fraction to use by serving her. I didn’t mind. It was more satisfying to watch her run and twirl than have the ability to stay awake after her bedtime. Then, as my youth faded, my little girl became ever lovelier. I gave up my looking glass and only gazed at her happy face. Next, she became a professional woman and, sooner than I expected, exceeded my achievements.  Again, there was only applause from me. Now she is thinking she might have a child herself. A little girl, perhaps, in whose hair she will weave colored ribbons. Some small person my daughter can listen to and laugh over and cheer on—even the times that her child goes to bed sticky or wakes up cross. Someone that my daughter can trade her energy, youth, and ambition for, who will adore her mommy and smell deliciously like new adventures, soggy bathing suits and coco puffs. Now, I’m jealous.

Tags: parental envy, parenting