Many of you have made some really interesting points (Earlybird, Elizabeth) and echoed my feelings. It IS an interesting subject, so apologies for the essay that follows...
Might I suggest that you read the book, Sobernow, and see if it resonates with you? As a couple of people have said, if it doesn't then maybe your mother wasn't "toxic" (the term is really only a loose one invented my Susan Forward, it's not a diagnosis). Personally, for me, it was like reading my life story on almost every page, but in a way that supported my reality and truths at last, instead of my mother's version of reality.
If it makes you hate your parents then you are still dependently attached to your parents. If it raises uncomfortable feelings then maybe they are feelings that need to be addressed? A book can't MAKE you do anything. Everything I read is digested and the bits I agree with stay with me and the bits I don't don't!
Toxic Parents didn't make me hate my parents, but it did make me see my family for what it really is and for what I have always known in my heart that it really is, and it made me want to address this. Having your own truths endorsed my someone else is crucial to a healthy ego and self-esteem. I was a child without a voice at the time the abuse and neglect occurred and I swallowed the family myth that it wasn't that bad, and accepted the blame (like so many of you) for my mother's mistakes. That was a huge burden which I have carried all my life, and as my mother has't changed, she was still trying to force me to carry it (along with my siblings) up until a year or so ago.
What the book did for me (along with a ton of support from you mnetters!) was to make me love and accept myself, and see things as they really are instead of living in the mythical world created by my mother which denied anything whereby the truth reflected badly on her. It is true that we don't all remember things accurately and memory can indeed be unreliable but, as Alice Miller says, the feelings stored in the body usually ARE reliable and if you FEEL when you read the book that you have carried the burden, blame and shame for the rest of your family all your life then you probably have.
Sobernow, the fact that you are asking these questions (as someone said to me on an earlier thread!) is evidence that you are not a "toxic parent". Toxic Parents don't question themselves. They have an inbuilt sense of entitlement and infallibility and are never wrong. Every parent makes mistakes, the book is not written for parents or children of "average" families - it is for adult children of abusive or emotionally unavailable parents who (for whatever reason) have caused deep and lasting damage to their offspring. I doubt very much whether your children fall into this category, Sobernow!
As for the confrontation, actually Alice Miller DOES advocate this, she says in more than one of her books that it is not necessarily the actual abuse or neglect that causes the long-term damage, it is the inability of the child to tell the parent how they feel and have that acknolwedged and respected that causes the real damage. All parents make mistakes but we are not talking about the odd smack, shout or emotional absence that occurs against a backdrop of deep and enduring love for your child; "Toxic Parents" is for those of us who have been belittled,ignored or physically, sexually or verbally abused throughout our formative years when we should have been protected and cared for, or who have grown up in an emotional desert or who have been loved conditionally on very specific terms.
Susan Forward explains very clearly why she recommends a confrontation. Quite simply, because it works. Alice Miller is also agreed that what you don't hand back you hand on to the next generation. I am talking from experience when I tell you that confronting my mother is probably the most liberating and (for my children, I feel) important thing I have ever done. Years of banging cushions and screaming in therapy would never have achieved the same result. But you do have to be prepared for the reaction from your parents and siblings which is rarely a positive one.
A parent with a healthy ego will be able to listen to and hear their child's complaints and reinforce their child's truths and feelings without defensiveness or blame. An unhealthy parent and family system is unlikely to support you. I have been outcast from my family but I don't care. I feel free in a way I have never ever done in the whole of my life, and the future feels bright, and full of possibility. DH and all my close friends have noticed a hugh change in me, and my relationship with DH has transformed beyond belief because when he is cross, or just quiet, I no longer crumble and fall apart, my reactions to him are adult ones, not my child in crisis reactions to the the early threat of abuse or abandonment. Likewise, I don't claim to be a perfect parent but I do love my children constantly and deeply, no matter whether they are behaving well or badly. I believe they are aware of that at all times.
Sobernow, Susan Forward also discusses how to approach confrontation with an elderly or infirm parent. I do believe the example you gave is an exception, and while any 82 year old is likely to have health problems which will be affected by the shock of a confrontation, a healthy person will not die from being spoken to with your truths or even being verbally attacked. If that were the case I would have been dead a thousand times over as a child (often wished I was, but it never happened). However, the confrontation is a personal thing and I respect anyone who feels it is not for them. It is certainly something that needs much consideration and rehearsal and should not be done in haste.