Do your adult kids owe you contact?

[Santee]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot amid the Beckham threads.

If you are a parent of adult children and you believe you have them a good, balanced upbringing and you were involved in their life, do you believe they owe you a relationship?

I’m NC with my Mum and that wasn’t a hard decision as she has been awful and abusive to me. However she would absolutely deny this until her last breath. I genuinely believe she believes she gave me the upbringing I listed above.

I don’t think I owe her anything due to her behaviour, however I don’t think I’d owe her anything regardless of this. But I’m not sure if my upbringing has warped my perception of an adult/parent relationship. So I was wondering if you think your children owe you a relationship because you raised them?

Is that posters who have toxic parents or posters saying their children don’t owe them anything? I don’t think my children ‘owe’ me but I did care for my mother.

I don't know if I'd want my kids to just keep in touch out of a sense of duty or 'owing' me something. I would hope they did it because they love me and want to see me!
That's why I keep in touch with my parents. It's why I would absolutely take care of them as much as I could when they're older - and like a previous poster I don't necessarily mean move them in but doing my best to make sure their care needs are met without destroying myself in the process.

DC don’t owe me anything (well OK technically DC1 does, but I wrote it off long ago). I don’t owe them anything either, including any inheritance.

People saying they don't want help from their DCs, just put me in a care home that's not the reality of it. There's a huge gulf between starting to need help with admin, housework, shopping and needing to go into a care home, Even if you can afford £1500+ a week for a couple of years someone has got to organise it all, if you leave it to SS to sort out you will be left at home till you can no longer stay safe with 4 carer visits a day and then end up in the cheapest, least luxurious home that can meet your essential needs regardless of what you can afford, in order to make your money last longer.

I agree that owe is the wrong word. Everyone's family is different, most are on good enough terms to pull together and help their parents in their time of need but the extent of that help is not something you can agree in advance. Even if you live 100s of miles away a lot of admin help can be dome remotely. But if you have good enough reasons to be NC that is your right too.

You are reading this thread wrong! It’s about whether you feel your kids owe you, not whether you owe your parents! Two entirely different things and you’ve got in a muddle. And what could I not articulate?

Children do not ask to be born. They cannot manage the sort of upbringing they get.
Owing suggests there is a debt that has to be paid. I am afraid there is not.
It is up to the individual how much contact, if any, they wish to keep and why.

I’ve come to the painful realisation that my son (my only child) only contacts me if he wants money. This has been going on for years now. He never just calls me for a chat or texts to check in on me. I text him to check in. Not obsessively, just a couple of times a week. I sent a message two days ago saying I wouldn’t be giving him any money this month and it’s been read and ignored. It makes me think that I was just seen as his personal cash machine. I’m gutted.

Why do you give him money at all? He doesn’t deserve it.

I used the word owe because that’s what I meant.

I was asking if people who believe they give their children a good upbringing think that the adult children then should give them a relationship in return for this. I meant it in a transactional way.

Obviously I know the majority of relationships aren’t like this but in the case your adult children were not visiting or contacting you. Do you think they owe it because they had a good upbringing?

No my child owes me nothing.

Id rather see him living his life than running back home because he feel he owes me.
He didn't send me an email to ask if I could give birth to him, I chose to to have him, I dont and would never pull the guilt card on him.

We keep in contact see each other when we can.
He has a life and so do I.

My mother thought that because she raised her kids we owed her the world, the guilt tripping was unbelievable.
We all went no contact with her in our 20s.

But do you not see that the consensus,
majority do not see this relationship as owed or transactional. It is mainly relational, isnt it?

Also have you not noticed that the majority of PPs that do have good relationships with their AC, say that they do not want them looking after them in old age. It is the AC, that choose to.

There was a thread a little while ago that did move towards discussing whether care for elderly parents was transactional because one poster said that because the OP, was not helped as much by her DM as she wished, OP had a right to not look after her DM in old age. She was very blasé about it, I thought!

I haven’t argued with that?

I asked a question in my OP. I then clarified the use of my word owe.

Then I’ve quietly read the thread.

@Santee sorry meant to say-

“was not helped financially as much, by her DM as she wished”

And, in light of your original question has this thread informed, affirmed, challenged or changed your way of thinking on this.

Not in order to affect the relationship with your DM, because that is relational, but just in general?

How do you now feel about the concept of owed relationships?

Yes unless extreme situations (obvs). I think adult children should stay in contact. My brother thinks differently.

I think our mother did the best she could. Is she perfect - no. Was our childhood immeasurably better than hers - yes. Do i want to strangle her daily - sometimes.

@Santee

Genuinely interested in what your mother did. I am no contact with mine as she is complicit in hiding child molestation - and other stuff but the CM is enough for me to feel ‘justified’ in not seeing her.

Brooklyn Beckham says his wife is his soulmate but doesn’t acknowledge that if his parents were stacking shelves in Aldi he would never have met her. Also, he can ‘afford’ to cut his parents off because of his in-laws money - and please don’t get me started on the privacy thing when he puts himself on the internet making pasta.

That’s sad to hear, especially as he is your only child.

I feel fortunate that so far my sons do keep in touch with me and I really hope that continues, although I realise there will be times when it will ebb and flow as their life responsibilities grow.

That only works if the parent is willing to talk instead of wanting to bury everything under the carpet, doesn't gaslight you into thinking what you know happened actually didn't and doesn't believe that they are the victim and not you.

I've cut off my mother because she did all of the above despite being given many chances to talk and resolve things.

If you are insisting on using the word "owe" then NO.

I do not believe children "owe" their parents visits or anything.

Acts of love cannot be forced and if they are then they will breed resentment and bitterness in the long term. If someone does not wish to spend time with their parents freely then why on earth would anyone want to guilt them into doing it by telling them they are owed it. That's appalling and coercive and I am telling you now that guilting people into spending time with you is not going to work out to be the happy family time that you think it is. Quite the contrary, it will be a path to misery.

Also, your use of the term "good upbringing" is highly subjective. Some parents may well view harsh physical punishment as a "good upbringing", doesn't mean it is from a developmental psychology point of view.

I am currently looking after my Dad, who is in his nineties and needs a lot of support. I also looked after my mum while she died from cancer a few years ago. It has been hard and involved sacrifices. Both parents have repeatedly thanked me, neither act as though I “owe” them anything. I care for them freely and would not dream of doing otherwise because I love them and all through my life they have cared for me. If love is given and our parents did their best (no parent is perfect, they are just people not saints) then I feel they deserve care back when they are vulnerable.

Like all relationships between adults, the parent/adult child relationship only really works where there is mutual respect. The fact that they are parent/child might mean people are willing to put more effort in to make things work and iron out misunderstandings etc but I don't think it ever works because one or both feel that they are 'owed' a relationship in the transactional sense that the OP has said she means. That doesn't mean people won't do things for our adult children/elderly parents that are not easy when they need it- but that the reason most do it is that we care and want to help rather than it being something we 'owe'.

Earlier in the thread there was a discussion about trying to sort out problems rather than go NC, and a suggestion that if that doesn't work the adult child should write to the parent explaining why. I am not NC with my parents but have one of those families that look close from the outside but is secretly dysfunctional in lots of ways. I tried many times to challenge the way I was treated but was always dismissed as attention seeking/trouble causing. Examples I gave of unpleasant behaviour were denied or twisted to give the other person an excuse and/or make them the victim. My family have asked why I keep my distance but they are not willing to actually listen or discuss it properly. If I give general reasons they say it's not true unless I can give specific examples. If I give examples they simply deny or excuse that specific event. They have no interest in actually changing anything. This would be exactly the same if I put the reasons in writing and I know that instead of reflecting they would look for minor inconsistencies/language open to interpretation etc to 'disprove' everything I said. (This is something they do when we speak eg. I said I did not wish to visit DM when a sibling was there because last time I did I was 'thrown out' of the house. Apparently a neighbour saw me let myself out so this proves that I am lying and attention seeking. This, of course ignores the fact that I didn't mean I was physically thrown out, but I was followed round the house by a fully grown man screaming at me and shouting 'get out, get out NOW and don't ever come back'. )

I totally empathise with what you are saying. This is my experience of my parents and the dynamic too. It’s totally disempowering.

I’d be devasted if my 2 young adult children cut me off but I can’t see any reason they would but I am low contact with my Mum but she wasn’t a great Mum but she can’t see it, moans about no one coming to see her etc etc, maybe have a reflection on that and then you’d see why being old doesn’t absolve you

It’s really interesting how often people talk about inheritance the moment “no contact” or “low contact” is mentioned. Like relationships are transactional. The expectation or even pressure for your child to give of their time or energy, and then they’ll get paid in material wealth. My children will inherit their portion, regardless of the condition of our relationship whilst I’m alive. If one of them wants nothing to do with me, that’s a reflection on me.

Really? I find that an odd attitude. A child who doesn’t want to see you, have a relationship with you or show any interest in you should inherit the same amount as your other children?
Do you really believe it’s always the parents fault if one of their children shuts them out of their life?