""The lack of communication regarding important family health events has not only increased their anxiety now because they don't trust that you'll tell them, but it's resulted in a fracture in your relationship or a breach of trust. And then even when the adult child communicates that this is not the type of communication that they want withheld, it usually continues again in the future. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and it's upsetting a lot of my clients,""
""These are adults, and they can make their own decisions. And they come into my office, and they're like, 'WTF? Like, I'm angry, I'm sad, I feel betrayed, I feel like I can't trust my parents to share really important health information about immediate family members with me. I don't understand this.'""
""I would like to understand the rationale behind this, because I understand protecting your children from information that may not be developmentally appropriate when it comes to illness with family members, whatever, but these are adult children now," she said."
Many Boomer parents keep medical issues private, often citing a desire to spare adult children from worry. Adult children commonly learn about biopsies, diagnoses, test results, or surgeries only after outcomes are known, leaving them baffled and hurt. Discoveries provoke anger, sadness, betrayal, and a diminished ability to trust parental communication. Withholding medical information aimed at reducing immediate worry frequently increases long-term anxiety and fractures relationships. Requests for future transparency are often unmet, perpetuating secrecy. The pattern raises questions about intergenerational assumptions regarding emotional protection and adult children's capacity to participate in health-related decisions.
Read at Scary Mommy
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