The truth about adult kids who don’t visit their parents  

Many aging parents are left heartbroken as their adult children stop calling, rarely visit, and grow emotionally distant. While it may seem like life simply became busier, the real reasons sometimes run deeper – and far more painful – than most expect.

The decision of adult children to pull away from their parents isn’t always rooted in coldness – it can be the result of years of unresolved emotional pain, evolving roles, and a quiet, personal reckoning with the past.

Social psychologist and author Jane Adams, PhD, captures this dynamic well: “Somewhere on the continuum between present and absent, distant and close, even enmeshed and estranged, there is a point in family life when parents of adult children feel irrelevant,” she writes in Psychology Today. “In strictly transactional terms, [parents] want [adult kids] more than they want us.”

Shift in family rolesContinue reading…

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