The truth about adult kids who don’t visit their parents
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 roles
One of the clearest – and often overlooked – factors behind this growing distance is the natural shift in generational roles. As children grow into adulthood, their psychological and emotional needs change, while their parents transition from being authority figures to becoming elders.
“Parents don’t realize that as their kids move from the adolescent phase of their life into the adult phase, the parents are also moving out of the adult phase into the elder phase. Different phases of life come with vastly different roles.”
Harris goes onto explain that elders are no longer the center of their children’s lives, especially when, as adults, they marry, start families, and focus on demanding careers.
