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Key points
- Parents ask their children to call more as a way of communicating that they feel distant.
- Phone call frequency is a bad metric for measuring relationship closeness.
- If parents want a closer relationship with their adult children, they should inquire about the relationship more broadly.
When a client tells me that their parent has once again requested that they call more, I hear that parent's plea for closeness. I hear the parent’s hope that they will have a close bond with their adult child that includes sharing good news, tough problems, and life stories. I hear pain. I hear “I miss you.” I hear “I had expectations about what this relationship would look like and it’s not working out that way and that hurts.” But what comes out is, “You need to call home more often.”
This tug of war around how often to call home is so ubiquitous that it has become a stereotype across cultures, especially for mothers and adult children. In real relationships, this question can create cycles of discord between the generations without ever addressing that need for connection.
The Problem With the Question
Baked into the request for more calls home is the assumption that more frequent phone calls will lead to improved parent/child closeness. If the child calls home more, the thinking goes, the child is showing more commitment to the relationship and inviting their parent into more areas of their life. "More phone calls" becomes a proxy for relational closeness.
Except it doesn’t work that way.
Communication frequency does not indicate or guarantee quality. If an adult child dutifully but resentfully complies with their parent’s request to call more, those phone calls are unlikely to lead to additional closeness. Indeed, some clients tell me they call home each day to avoid having the argument about calling. Others recount calling but find that phone calls center on what the parent wants to discuss without ever considering their adult child's needs. Others describe intrusive questions that they deftly evade or ignore during the calls, making the prospect of additional calls exhausting. And still others report occasional wonderful conversations that get crowded out by the sheer volume of calls in which there is nothing new to say. They almost all tell me they feel dejected because it feels like they can never offer enough to satisfy their parents.
And it may be, even with more phone calls, that a parent feels unsatisfied because more frequent calls do not solve the problem of feeling disconnected from their child. Something still feels like it’s missing. And they’re right. Obligation-based connection ultimately feels empty.
What Should We Do Instead?
The request for more phone communication does make sense, especially when adult children live far away and in-person gatherings simply are not possible. So let’s add a step before the request. Before asking for more phone calls, parents may benefit from taking a step back and asking themselves why the phone calls aren’t happening already and check in about what their child wants from the parent/child relationship. They may bring questions to their child such as:
- How do our phone calls feel to you?
- What might make them feel better?
- What types of communication work for us?
- What makes you feel close to me?
- What makes us feel close to one another?
- What sorts of communication and communication frequency work for both of us?
- What would it look like, instead of asking for more phone calls, to find terms of the relationship that accommodate what we both want and need?
These questions get curious about what the relationship and phone calls feel like for their child. Getting curious about the child’s experience sends the message that not only does the parent want to satisfy their own need to hear from their child, but that they want the relationship to feel good for all involved parties. They create a framework for a mutually satisfying exchange that deepens the relationship.
The conversations around calling home are a plea for connection couched in a superficial metric. The request fails to ask the adult child what they want from the relationship. More often than not, the question leads the child to feel frustrated, like a failure, and even more distant from their parent. Compliance and obligation become the goal instead of relationship improvement. Phone call volume and frequency cannot do the heavy lifting in a relationship if there are legitimate reasons the adult child does not want to or cannot share more or more often with their parent. But when parents and children get curious about each other and actually discuss the relationship, progress can occur.
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