Is it up to the parent or the child to make contact?

[InterestedInOpinions]

After a recent contretemps in the family, I am interested in people's opinions.

My mum thinks that it is up to the children (or grandchildren) to contact the parents regularly. My daughter thinks it is up to the parent to contact the children first.

YABU - it is up to the children to put in the main effort

YANBU - it is up to the parent to put in the main effort

Thank you!

Obviously the children are adults

Don't you just contact each other when you have something to say? I don't think we have a clear consensus here, if I feel I've not chatted to mum in a while I'll call her and vice versa.

It's a 2 way street. One side shouldn't be the only one making an effort.

Parents and children should both be putting effort in. My mum would definitely think the same as your mum as does my grandma, shes retired, with loads of free, lives alone in a home which she has made very unwelcoming for children yet will not pop to mine or make any effort while I'm juggling kids/work/family. Phones work both ways

My phone works both ways.

I thought you were asking about children as in under 18s, in which case it is the parent's responsibility. Although 6 month olds do get your attention when they need to.

Tell them both to ring you if they want, they know when you aren't at work. My mum went through a phase of "I didn't want to call you in case you were busy" - I said you'll know if I'm busy, I won't answer the phone!

It should be a two way street once the children are fully fledged adults. But that's on the basis that it was the parents that put the legwork in when the kids were kids. If you didn't bother with quality time when the kids were young or when they'd just moved out ir were in uni then you cant expect them to prioritise time with you now that they have other things to do.

Agree, both ways. My mum will get in touch with me if she hasn't heard from me for a few days and vice versa.

With grandparents, I actually think its nice for the grandchildren to get in touch. My grandparents were always worried they were interrupting my busy life and didn't want to be an inconvenience. Grandparents tend to be less aware of whats going on so I think benefit from adult grandchildren reaching out.

Not sure what I should pick tbh I have an elderly mum who expects me to contact her regularly but she will contact me if anything crops up for her in the meantime between calls. My children are adults so with them I am also the one who maintains regular contact, one of them does not feel the need for any more contact than me phoning once a week but the other one of them does contact me fairly regularly for a chat and he and my grandchild (age 4) will FaceTime and he will also phone his grandma. So I am both the mum and the child who is maintaining contact and my own youngest child does contact both me and his grandparent. So no hard and fast rules in our family.

It should be a two-way street, but IME, some parents expect their children to do all the running and then get offended if they don’t hear from them frequently enough. It’s happened in my family and to various friends- as a PP said, phones work both ways!

It’s daft and Ii don’t plan to behave that way when my DC are grown-up. Texting makes things so much easier anyway, you can check in to see they’re OK and find out when they’ll have time to chat.

Yes, I know it should be a 2 way thing, but that is in normal land. Not a place my family know very well.

I am in the middle - expected to make all the effort up the chain and down the chain.

Got to the stage where I feel I should just leave them all to contact me if they are bothered

It's a shared responsibility

Up to the age of about 25 then I think its reasonable to expect the parent to make more effort but beyond that it needs to be a 2 way street

My parents are definitely of the opinion that it should be me who contacts them. I have come to this conclusion because if I don't contact them each week they will call and say 'havent spoken to you for a while' in an accusatory tone. If I said this to my mother though she would deny it. I suspect that this contact regime is for me only, my brother's will almost certainly be different with my parents making the calls.

As regards me and my children, it's a 2 way thing. Why wouldn't it be, we are all adults afterall.

With my DM it's pretty even, we ring each other a lot There's a definite sulky 'you never ring me so why should I ring you' pattern between DH and PIL's though, they moved 200 miles away just before we got married and have always seemed to think it's on DH to keep up contact with them. He also gets annoyed if they don't ring him though so I think it runs in the family! Generally though I'd say if everyone concerned is an adult it's equally on both parties to keep in touch with each other.

Agree with everyone else, relationships are a two way street

OP, I feel your pain. My DM expects me to make 100% of the telephoning effort.

I have mulled over all the possibilities:

a) it is cultural in our family: this could be the case as she is expected to make the effort for her own mother. But my DM is a rational logical woman who has been content to break with family culture if it is sensible to do so. So.

b) She doesn't actually enjoy phone calls with me. However, when I do initiate a call, we are often chatting for 45 minutes.

c) I am overseas and she holds an out-of-date notion that it's expensive to place international trunk calls - though I have pointed out to her that this is no longer true. She could also use Facetime is $ were an obstacle.

d) my DM actually does have a particularly inert, passive nature which means she is not much of an initiator - in any context. It could be this.

It is quite hurtful. For my birthday, as expected, I received a 'birthday email'. Since I moved overseas 9 years ago, she has telephoned me ONCE.

With me and my daughter its more me she is 20 and "busy" at university but she is quite happy to be spoken too

Me and my mom its about even we meme at each other via WhatsApp a lot no real "phonecalls"

My two are adults but don't contact their father. If he can't be bothered to speak to them ( he lives abroad and it's expensive for them to phone- he works for the state telecommunications department and its free for him!) why should they bother?

Works both ways I think. I message my Mum, she messages me. Don’t really think too much about it.

Works both ways. My grandparents are guilty of complaining I never phone them, and I'll say well my phone works the other way too, you can phone me any time.

I do phone them, but time sometimes runs away with me and before I know it, it's been longer than I think :(.

Well it depends really, you are all adults, do you even like eachother ?

My nan wouldn't really ring me as she doesn't like to "bother" so i make sure I check in on her

We have a close family (not as close as I was to my mum, I spoke to her everyday, she was one of my best fiends as well as my mum) but we (father, brother and SIL) keep in touch a few times a week over zoom, but it's a mutual thing. Before this we had a meal every week or every other week out together.

I don't feel any responsibility to contact my father as he is capable of looking after himself, if he wasn't I would of course look after him. He rings when he wants a chat and I do the same.