Why Some Parents Will Never Say They're Sorry

Little boy pensive, arm propped on a window sill. It's raining.

Source: Schlomaster/Pixabay

Some parents don’t apologize to their children for anything, not even after the children have become adults. This is a problem since parents may do things that damage the relationship with a child, and often, the only way to repair a relationship is for the party in the wrong to issue an apology.

I believe almost all parents, including the ones unwilling to apologize, want to be on good terms with their children. Why, then, don’t they take the necessary steps to mend ruptures?

Some children of people who never apologized to them describe their parents as narcissistic and not in the habit of apologizing to anyone for anything, but the problem with the unwillingness to seek the forgiveness of one’s children seems to me far too widespread in order for narcissism to be the likely explanation in any given case. What then?

The issue is probably not unrelated to that of the fraught intersection of morality and social hierarchy. Consider, for instance, the fact that if a rank-and-file employee is late for an appointment with a supervisor, the employee is expected to offer an apology, but if the supervisor is late, he or she may choose to say nothing. Perhaps, some parents believe that in a family, a parent has the equivalent of the supervisor role and maybe, the role of the CEO.

It is unclear that significantly inegalitarian norms in the workplace are justified, but more importantly, if and to the extent they are, they are justified by the goals of the organization. It may be important for the success of a company that some people focus almost exclusively on their tasks without letting relationships with co-workers take up too much of their own mental space. But a family does not have such goals. It is not an organization that exists in order to achieve some objective; not, at any rate, an objective beyond the well-being of its own members.

Perhaps, some parents think that they can purchase moral immunity by virtue of being the providers; buy their way out of ever having to ask for forgiveness. Franz Kafka, in his “Letter to My Father,” suggests that his father held something like this view. Kafka says:

To you it seemed like this: you had worked hard your whole life for your children, particularly me, as a result, I lived “like a lord”, had complete freedom to study whatever I wanted, knew where my next meal was coming from and therefore, had no reason to worry about anything…

However, a parent may show the utmost generosity to a child yet hurt the child as well. Sometimes, we owe gratitude to and are owed an apology by the same person. Moreover, benevolence itself can be tyrannical: it may seek to strip the other of the freedom to make choices not to the benefactor's liking. In general, one cannot buy one's way out of having to admit fault, either in the family or elsewhere.

Parents may also think, perhaps, that they have the sole authority to determine the rules in the household and that they can choose to make rules that simply do not apply to them. As it happens, Kafka suggests that this too was true in his father’s case. Kafka’s father, Kafka says, mandated table manners that he himself did not follow:

We were not allowed to crunch bones, you were. We were not allowed to slurp vinegar, you were. The main thing was for the bread to be cut up straight; but that you did so with a knife dripping with gravy was irrelevant. We had to take care not to let any scraps fall onto the floor, in the end, they lay mostly under your seat.

The problem with such double standards is obvious though unhealthy family dynamics or fear of direct confrontation may keep the issue from ever making its way into conversation.

Sometimes, however, parents know that they have acted wrongly and may even confess to someone, just not to the child they've wronged. A person I know, for instance, once admitted to me that she did things that likely traumatized her son when he was young. I know her and know that she deeply loved her son, yet when it came to admitting fault, she confessed to me—an external observer—instead of apologizing to her (then adult) child. It is a peculiar feature of human life that some people find it easier to do almost anything else for their children than to admit they've wronged them.

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Some children can largely overlook this pattern of behavior in a parent or chalk it up to personality or generational differences. It depends on what exactly happened, of course. Paying no heed to your parents' unwillingness to try to understand your pursuits may be easier than making peace with the fact that they instilled in you a sense of guilt for their own failure to achieve their professional goals, for instance, as though you decided to be born at an inopportune for them moment.

Other people carry the trauma. They don’t ask for an apology though they need it. They may talk to third parties, but the sympathy of others, while it may help one heal, does little to repair the parent-child relationship. The silence itself may be damaging as a person repeatedly abstains from airing past grievances. More importantly, pain can never be fully validated by third parties. The situation resembles that of crimes. When a convicted person maintains his or her innocence, no matter how compelling the evidence is, there is always a question mark next to the incident; likewise in ordinary life: if the person who hurt us insists on not having done anything wrong, there is always a question about whether we are owed an apology. Closure is difficult. A wrongdoer always has a final resource: deny guilt.

I wish to note before closing that the woman who admitted to me she’d mistreated her son passed away several years later. At one point, I told her son about the conversation I’d had with her years earlier. It was remarkable, I think, what effect my relating the conversation I'd had with his mother had on him. It was as though she’d left a letter for him to read after her demise.

She did not leave such a letter, yet I can’t help but think that she shared her story with me not simply in order to get it off her own chest but half-hoping that I would do on her behalf what she herself could not do: tell her son how she felt. I did, and the words seemed to act like a balm not only for his psychic wounds but for the rupture in his relationship with his mother.

This man’s mother truly wished she could undo some of her past actions. I am quite certain she would have acted differently had she gotten a second chance. She was a good woman. Here, then, we find a reason for hope. While some parents may believe they are infallible as parents and even as people, others know when and how they have hurt their own children. They simply cannot bring themselves to admit it. They may live with guilt that is eating them from the inside, in fact. Some parents who never say “I am sorry” quietly and truly are.

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