"Parents in my generation were sold a particular narrative: if you do it right, if you sacrifice enough, if you show up for every game and recital and school function, your adult children will want to be around you. They'll call. They'll remember your birthday. They'll treat you like you matter. That was the premise, the bargain."
"What strikes me now isn't the distance itself. It's the shame machinery I've been running for decades to explain it away. The need to perform closeness. The anxiety that whispers I must have failed at fatherhood because my adult children and I don't text daily. The pressure to maintain an illusion of intimacy that neither of us naturally gravitates toward."
"We live in the first era of human history where parents genuinely expect their adult children to remain emotionally enmeshed with them. For most of history, and in most cultures, parent-child bonds loosened significantly after children reached adulthood. This was normal. Often, it was healthy. Young people needed to build their own identities, establish their own family units, and create psychological distance from the people who raised them."
Emotional distance between parents and adult children is common and often normal rather than a failure of parenting. Modern parents uniquely expect lifelong emotional enmeshment with adult children, creating unrealistic expectations. Cultural narratives promised that parental sacrifice guarantees sustained closeness, producing long-running guilt and shame when contact wanes. Historically and cross-culturally, parent-child bonds loosen after adulthood to allow identity formation and new family units. The pressure to perform closeness and interpret limited communication as personal failure fuels anxiety. Accepting distance as typical can relieve self-blame and recalibrate expectations about adult relationships with parents.
Read at Silicon Canals
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