CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Can Adults Abandon Their Parents?

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Over 22,000 of you answered my poll questions about abandonment and estrangement. In this episode, I review your responses and discuss what "abandonment" means in the context of adult-child and parent relationships. As always, thank you so much for contributing to this episode. I love it when we collaborate like this. Let me know your thoughts! Join The Family Cyclebreakers Club: www.callinghome.co/join Have a question for Whitney? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at 866-225-5466. Follow Whitney on Instagram: www.instagram.com/sitwithwhit Subscribe to Whitney's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@whitneygoodmanlmft Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. Hello and welcome back to the calling on podcast. I am your host, Whitney Goodman. I am so excited to dive into this episode. This is going to be the episode about abandonment when it comes to adult children and their parents. About a week ago, I put up a set of two polls on my Instagram story. where I asked people about abandonment in these relationships.

I also posted videos on Instagram and TikTok about this asking for your feedback. And this was something that we discussed in depth in our estranged adult child's group that I run inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. So before we dive into this, I just want to thank all of you for participating in the creation of these episodes. I think that it is so incredibly helpful when I am able to hear back from all of you and hear your opinions, your thoughts, the situations that you're involved in. And I always want to give credit or credit is due because these episodes are not possible without you. These are not

all like my original thoughts that I came up with. They are the themes and perspectives of so many of you, especially those of you that I get to meet inside of our groups at Calling Home who share your stories with me every week and share them with one another. And you are so vulnerable and reflective and honest about what you've been going through. And I just really appreciate how much I am able to learn from our members. And these episodes truly are a reflection of me taking the information that I learned from you, the feedback, the stories, the nuance, the understanding, and trying to create something that is helpful and useful in your life and that helps you feel seen and understood. So again, thank you so much for all of you

that helped with this episode. All right, so let's go ahead and dive into those polls and let me get my necessary disclaimer because I know I'm going to hear this from some of you. These are Instagram polls. They are not scientific research. They are a way to assess a trend or a phenomenon among the people that follow me, which for context are primarily women. 90% are women between the ages of 25 and 45. And these are all people who are following me on Instagram, where I have over half a million followers. In the case, of this question, I received about 22,000 responses to each of these polls. Okay? And of course, there is a margin of error here that some people could have selected the wrong response

on purpose, on accident. They may have just hit it while they were going through, but we can look at these as just a talking point and something to help get the discussion start in it. all right so the first question that i asked was would you consider a parent ending a relationship with their child in adulthood to be abandonment and i put abandonment in quotes 38% of people about 8500 said yes 24% about 5500 people said no and 38% said i'm not sure the second the second question question that I asked was if an adult ends the relationship with their parents in adulthood, would you consider that abandonment? And again, I put abandonment in quotes and people were offered the same options to this question. 9% said yes. 72% said no. 19% said, I'm not sure. So let's look

back at this again. The overwhelming majority of people who took this poll, 72% said that they do not believe that an adult child cutting off their parent is considered abandonment. We only had about 1,700 people who said, yes, that is abandonment. And again, about 19% being unsure. And we can compare that to you know, are we considering a parent ending their relationship with their child to be abandonment in adulthood? And we have 38% here saying yes. So this is very different. I think that this issue is very polarizing. And a lot of people are actually, you know, the same amount, 30% are not sure whether they would call that abandonment, which I found really interesting. Let's talk about the definition of abandonment. So I went on, you know, to the dictionary and looked of the definition of abandonment to try to get some context into how different people might be defining this word, right? So a couple of different definitions of abandonment that I think are being thought of here. The first one is to give up with the intent.

of never again claiming a right or interest in. That's fascinating if we apply that to the parent relationships with their children. To withdraw from often in the face of danger or encroachment. Okay. To withdraw protection, support, or help from. To give oneself over restrainedly. I don't know that that one applies very much here. To cease from maintaining, practicing, or using.

Interesting. to cease intending or attempting to perform. So let's talk about some of these definitions. I think to give up the intent or to give up the intent of never again claiming a right or interest in is interesting, right? So someone might abandon the relationship with their child. Let's say when they are a child, they're going to give up perhaps. rental rights. They are going to not pay child support, not be involved in the child's life.

This could be a form of abandonment where someone is saying, I am no longer claiming a right to that child. I am relinquishing my rights. And that could certainly be perceived as a form of abandonment and could be a type of abandonment wound, right? To withdraw from often in the face of danger or encroachment. So I think that this one is certainly something that we talk about in the estrangement community, right? That if I feel that I am in danger in this relationship, you have been abusive towards me, you have harmed me, you continue to harm me with no accountability or apology, then I am going to withdraw myself from that relationship. And the example that they give in the dictionary is like about, you know, soldiers being forced to abandon their

position because it's dangerous. Now, the tricky thing about this one is that I think someone who is being abused could say, I'm going to abandon that position as your daughter, as your sibling, whatever. And the other person, if we're talking about this relationally, could still feel abandoned even though you were doing that as a form of self-protection. And I'm going to talk more about the feeling of abandonment versus the reality of being abandoned later in this episode. The other one, and this was interesting, that this is the definition where the dictionary referred to the family, is to withdraw protection, support, or help from. And the sentence that they used was, he abandoned his family.

I thought that was funny, that this was the one that they chose, right? So if you are saying, I am going to withdraw, receiving any support or help or protection from you, that is certainly something that happens within estrangement, right? And if we have to leave our family members, we might be giving up all of those things. And some of you might be saying, well, I'm leaving because I never got any protection, support, or help. And so I was actually abandoned because I did not receive any of those things. There's also to cease from maintaining, practicing, or using, which I think can apply to the family, right? That if I am no longer going to maintain these relationships, we could also use the word abandon.

Okay. But I think that there's something very specific happening when the word abandoned is being used in this context and in the context. and in the context of a family relationships, particularly by parents, okay? And this is a comment that I got on one of my posts about this. That someone said, as the parent that has had their child ghost them for four years, ghost, yes, I'm abandoned. And I think that when we use that word as a parent, we are trying to create a very specific set of facts that creates this picture, right? And so if a

parent says, my child abandoned me, then we get to move into the position of victim, right? And the child is the perpetrator. And if I'm the victim, I would like to probably use that to evoke sympathy, to create alliances, to be able to share a story that is devoid of any type of accountability, where I can say they just abandoned me, they left me in the dust, they don't care about me. And in that case, I really have nothing to apologize for or be accountable for or be sorry for because I was just left. And this is where it gets really tricky for me because there are very few cases where I can clearly state

that I think that that power differential could exist between adult child and parent, and I'm going to go deeper into that. When a child is abandoned by their parents, there is a perpetrator and there is a very clear victim. And that is the child's. This is a fixed reality in my mind. I can't think of any situation. And I'm rarely this black and white about things. You all know this from listening to me. I cannot think of a situation where there is a child that could do something to their parent that really absolves the parent of having

any responsibility to step in and try to help mitigate that situation. I've also talked about a lot of the data out there on children who abuse their parents. They are consistently and routinely in most of these cases being exposed to violence within in the home and in their community watching those types of victim perpetrator dynamics play out between their parents. A lot of the time, one of their parents is engaging in domestic violence. Their parents have used violence with them. There are a lot of studies out there on this that clearly indicate that, well, of course, there are fringe instances and situations that a lot of children who are initiating violence against their parents have been exposed to violence in

other ways and have been groomed in some way to engage in that type of behavior because of the situations that they have endured as children. If we're talking about nature versus nurture here, I would say that it is an extremely, extremely low probability that there is going to be a child who has never been exposed to any violence, has parents who are emotionally attuned, who are getting the child resources, who are setting a good example and creating boundaries that are then having a child that is inflicting violence on them without something else going on. Now, of course, there are things like undiagnosed and untreated mental illness among children that can cause them to behave in ways that mimic interpersonal violence, but that is not

a child's being bad or wrong. And it is still the parent's responsibility to learn how to help that child and to get them the resources. And this is something that I've said time and time again that I firmly stand behind is that it is the parent's job to feel. figure out how to be a better parent to that child. And yes, that is extremely hard and it is difficult and it requires you to do so many things in the face of incredible challenges. But it is not the child's job to learn how to be a good child to that parent. That's not how this is set up. Okay. And so when a parent, for whatever reason, abandons their child, whether it is on purpose or because of external factors,

the parent bears the responsibility of repairing that wound and making sure that the child knows that it is not their fault that the parent had to make the choice that they had to make. Okay. Now, this is where it gets kind of tricky. Is I think that there are people out there that would argue that at some point when you are, both adults, and I've heard this rebuttal, and I'm totally willing to entertain it, that

there is a day where you become adults, and on that day, the footing between parent and child becomes more equal. And suddenly, the adult child is supposed to now have this relationship between equals and the phone works both ways, and they need to carry the weight of the relationship. And, like, the problem I have with that rhetoric is that no one can really. give me an answer on like, when does this day happen? Is it when you turn 18 that suddenly you wake up in the morning and you and your parent are equals? And in a lot of these cases where parents are saying that, well, you're an adult, we're equal, the parent is actually not treating the child as an equal in any way, shape, or form. The adult child is still expected

to abide by the parents' rules, follow the rules of the family, take the parents' input on every subject, no matter what it is, do exactly with their life, what the parent wants. And so if you are simultaneously saying, I get to tell you what to do and you're an autonomous adult that's responsible for yourself, that does not work. It cannot exist. If you want to be on more equal footing with your child in adulthood, you have to say, I cease to control your life. You are an autonomous individual and you are an adult. You are in control of of your life. And so now we can be on more equal footing and have a more equal relationship where we are both responsible for the ways that we show up in the relationship. And that is something that I also always preach is that as

adults, we are in charge of how we show up in relationships, including in the relationship with our parents and you have to be proud of and cognizance of the way that you are showing up and feel like that is in line with your values. So I don't think you can ever erase that power imbalance that we were talking about. I don't think that there is this magical day where you wake up and you are suddenly equal because those 18 years, sometimes more, depending on the situation of the child, they never get erased. And those moments in childhood with a parent are part of your developmental maturation. And so it is, it has way bigger of an impact. It sticks with you for a very long time. It's harder to heal. Those years really matter. And we don't just like reset the

clock when we get older. And that is why a lot of you feel like little kids when you're around your parents because those memories are still being held in your body. They're being activated by present day behavior. And to have this belief that the second you turn 18, you walk into your parents' house and you're like, now we are both adults. The past is gone. We reset our relationship is just not accurate. I don't see any world where that is possible. Can you work and grow into a new relationship as adults with a mutual understanding that we are both our own individual people and in control of our lives and can we heal the past? Absolutely. I've seen it happen all the time. But that doesn't happen by pretending that we are now these equal adults

and the relationship has reset. So this brings me next to the question of what do parents owe their children and what do children owe their parents, particularly in adulthood? And I think that this depends on your cultural beliefs and assumptions around parenting. I certainly come from the belief that parents are the ones who are making the commitment to be a parent. They are the ones that are able to give consent to that commitment, right? So if I choose to have a child, and to bring a child into this world, I am making a commitment to that child to be there for them. What I would feel like is for life.

Now, some people would say, nope, in my culture, it's till you're 18 and then you're out and you're on your own. That is not my belief. My belief system doesn't have to be your belief system. But I think it's worth asking yourself, when I became a parent or when I become a parent, how do I see this title? Is it limited? Is there a time when it ends? Do I see myself as being a parent to this person for eternity? And of course, that shifts and changes. But a child cannot consent to being born or being in this relationship with their parent. You know, they have no choice in the matter and they are here and you are their parent for better or worse and they have to live with that you know we don't get to choose our families or our parents and it's it's just not the same thing and i really think that in healthy adult child and parent relationships i find that this

question of what is owed doesn't really come up as much because the things that we are doing for one another come from a place of love and commitment and respect other than a place of obligation and owing. And so when you're asking yourself, like, do I owe that to them? I don't want to owe them that. I think sometimes that that is already coming from a place of lack in the relationship that maybe I don't feel connected to this person. Maybe I don't feel like there is anything between us. And so I don't understand why I'm being held to this standard to provide all these things for someone that has continuously hurt me, abused me, harmed me, left me, abandoned me, whatever it is, that how can I say to someone, you owe them everything simply because

they are your parent, simply because they gave birth to you? When in reality, that's not how relationships work. You will feel like you want to help someone, like you want to be there for them when the relationship is reciprocal. When you feel like I love my parent, they have been there for me. I want them to do well. I want to help them. I am going to do that within the best of my ability with the resources that I have available. I don't think that this question comes up as much in those types of relationships. And so if you find yourself kind of having these moments where you're like, well, I don't owe my kids anything, you know, that might be coming from a place of defensiveness

and already not feeling very connected or attached to them. Now, something that was brought up in our group at Calling Home was the idea that from the perspective of the child's, abandonment feels, like a betrayal. And a lot of people had been mentioning this word betrayal in our groups. And I think that abandonment can be a betrayal when it is from the apparent abandoning their child. And there are a lot of different types of abandonment here that we talked about earlier, right? So whether that's physical abandonment or emotional abandonment, it can all be extremely painful and feel like a betrayal.

And I think we are told from the moment we enter this world, no one will love you more than your parents. There's no love like a mother's love. Your dad's always going to protect you, whatever these messages are that you got in your family. And then you walk around the world and you watch other people have these relationships with their parents that don't look like yours. and you notice that they are getting support and comfort and maybe you're just getting hurt

and pain and trauma. And it feels like a betrayal. And some of you may have contorted yourself a million different ways to try to earn the commitment and love and presence of your parent only to be left in the end. And that feels like you were given. a promise and that promise was not kept by the one person in your life that you should be able to trust with anything, right? And I understand why that feels like a betrayal. And I think there are parents out there. I've talked to parents like this who feel that their adult child, not wanting to maintain a relationship with them in adulthood, also feels like a betrayal. And it feels like an abandonment, which brings me to the next thing, that we can have the feelings

of being abandoned without actually being abandoned. And this is some feedback that a lot of you gave me about this topic, is that two adults cannot abandon one another unless there is an existing obligation there where care needs to be provided that can't be found elsewhere. So an example that someone gave was like, if you are caring for your parent who is disabled and ill, and you just up and leave and don't care for them, like, yes, this could be considered abandonment, elder abuse, you can't do that, no matter what types of feelings you're having. You have to arrange other care, other resources, find a way to exit that relationship while also making sure that a person who can't care for themselves is taking care of, right?

And there's also the idea that a parent could stop speaking to their child in adulthood, and we might not consider that abandonment in the legal sense. You know, certainly this is an adults who can care for themselves. Now, if that adult child was disabled, was sick, and the parents just said one day, I'm no longer going to take care of you. And in the same case, did not provide any resources or attempts to secure help for their adult child. This would, of course, be considered abuse and abandonment in that regard. But can two adults really abandon one another in that context? And I think this is where we're actually having a conversation more about the feeling, the feeling abandoned. And we're talking more about that emotional abandonment, where I thought

that I was going to get to maintain a connection with you for life. I thought you were going to be there for me. I thought you were going to take care of me and that I could rely on you. And sometimes that is not rooted in reality for the parent because they have set up a life where that relationship would never result because of how they've interacted with their child for their entire life. And that adulthood is kind of just like the culmination of all of that. And I think also for adults whose parents stop speaking to them and stop interacting with them, that abandonment wound is sometimes coming from a younger version of yourself. And you're saying, I feel abandoned because I feel like a five-year-old when I'm interacting with my parent.

I've never been able to establish an adult relationship with them. They have been abandoning me every day of my life in some form or another, physically or emotionally, that this is triggering that. And I feel like an adult who does not have power in this situation, and I feel so abandoned by them because that's all they've ever done to me. And that is where it's like looking at what part of you is being triggered right now. what part of you is saying, I do not feel like an adult. I do not feel like someone with agency or control over my life because this has been happening since I was a young child.

I want to differentiate between two different types of abandonment that can also happen because you might be experiencing one of these or both of these. So a physical abandonment would be like a caregiver not being physically present, whether that's your parent, not coming to see you, not interacting with you. If a parent has left the home after divorce or chooses to not be physically involved in their child's life, and typically physical abandonment is going to go hand in hand with emotional abandonment because it is hard to be emotionally connected. of course, if you are also not physically present in any way, but emotional abandon would be when the caregiver does not provide any emotional support, validation, or affection. And this is when

you're going to really see emotional neglect. And I think that is really what most of us are talking about. When we talk about estrangement being a form of abandonment in adulthood is more this sense of emotional abandonment that I don't feel like I have any type of connection to you at all. And people have described this as a feeling of being like untethered to that family that they thought was going to be there. The main reason I wanted to have this conversation is because I think that it's important that we talk about abandonment in the context of estrangement between adults. And I think that having this conversation will help us shift how we see the act of estrangement. And we have to be very careful about how we use this word abandonment to avoid accountability

and change and awareness as parents. And we also have to be willing to use this word as adults. who are standing up for the childlike version of ourselves, for that inner child of us, that maybe actually was abandoned by a parent. And so I think this is where that word has to take on some nuance, and you have to adapt it to your situation. There are many of you that have been abandoned by a parent

so many times throughout your lifetime. You have been abandoned physically, emotionally, and now in adulthood, you may be saying, I want to take back some of my power. I am trying to figure out how I can assert myself as an adult that is autonomous from my family. And in doing that, when you set boundaries with your family members or your parent in this case and say, I am not going to have a relationship with you because you have harmed me in these ways and you have done nothing to repair it in the present, that seeing yourself as a child who was abandoned at one point by someone that was supposed to take care of you both legally and ethically can actually free you up from some of the guilt

and blame and shame that you might be carrying, that any of that was your fault, right? that if you had a parent that left you, that neglected you, they were the ones that carried the responsibility then. They were the only ones. You could not carry that responsibility. You were not supposed to be the one saddled as a child with creating and sustaining the relationship with your parent. That was on them. And then when we get to adulthood and we say like, okay, now this relationship can be a little bit more on equal footing. We're both adults. We have to look at the history that existed up until that point. And so if you are a parent who feels abandoned by your adult child, you have to consider that within the context of the entire

relationship. And I'm not talking about blaming yourself or shaming yourself. I'm talking about looking at, are there any moments in our life where my child's could have felt really alone, really let down by me, really unseen, confused, looking for comfort or affirmation that I wasn't able to give them or I was unwilling to give them? Is there anything that happened in our life cycle like moving, divorce, having to go somewhere for a job, custody issues, blend our families, having more children, is there anything that they have explained to me that I can think of? That might have been a moment where we lost touch with one another, physically or emotionally, that now they are still reacting to. And when I say that I feel abandoned by them, is it possible

that they also feel really let down by me? And that I as the parent, even though we're both adults, could get in the driver's seat and say, I want to help make this relationship better. I want to repair with you. I want to, you know, take accountability, apologize, listen to your side, try to hear your perspective. And could that be a way that both of us could feel more connected to one another? And one caveat that I want to give here for parents. I talked about violence, you know, on behalf of the child earlier in this episode.

And if any of you were listening and saying, you know what, being around my child is a threat to my safety. They have been violent towards me. They have harmed me. They have done things to my other children. I would never ask you to put yourself in harm's way. And I would want you to consider that the power to. that you have even from a distance to make a positive difference in your child's life at any age,

no matter how much they are struggling by saying, I love you, I see you, I hear you, I want to learn what you're going through, I want to learn how to help you while also having boundaries. I can't even explain to you how much power you might hold. And the stories that I've heard from so many adults who are longing for that recognition and who also understand that the ways that they have behaved in some of these moments have not been great. And so I say that all to say that I think that our job as parents never ends. It really doesn't. It just changes. It becomes different. You have to help in different ways and show up in different ways. But your child always will need you in some capacity.

and if you can find a way to be needed and be in contact with them in a way that makes sense for both of you and that allows them to be an autonomous individual adult, you can have a great relationship that is built on this foundation of equality and love and respect. But that has to start with healing some of those wounds from the past for so many of you. So now, after you've listened to this episode, I want you to think about that question again. You know, can an adult abandon their parent? Can a parent abandon their adult childs? Outside of the examples of disability and illness and death and dying and having a commitment

to make sure that someone is not being abused or harmed, what other nuance, you know, a lot of you said to me, it depends. And that's where I think, like, this is where we have to open up the discussion a little bit more, right? Is that it depends on so many different things, but it also comes down to how we view that power differential between parent and adult child and who really always holds the power up until what point. And there is a point between a parent and their adult child where the parent ages to such a degree that maybe they have no, maybe they no longer have the ability to take care of themselves physically or financially. And they've lost some of their cognitive abilities as well. And I think

in that situation, you certainly have a power differential where the adult child has the power to abandon their parent in a moment of need. And I still think, based on my work, this population, and I have talked to thousands of you, that that parent holds that emotional power even after their death, honestly, over their adult child. I really believe that. I think even when you think that your parent is gone and it's no longer there, that those wounds from early childhood and on, they still exist. And there's still those people who have not talked to their parent in 20 years, that if they ran into them, their hearts would still race, they would still feel anxious. They're living their own independent, empowered lives, but their parents still

holds that position in their life, that that was their parent. They don't get another one. And that's the hand that they were dealt. And it doesn't mean that they think about it all the time or that they're still resentful or that it's operating how they live their whole life. but I don't think that it ever truly just completely disappears and becomes this thing where the child has complete power over the adult. I hope that this episode was helpful in helping you understand the concept of abandonment when we're talking about estrangement. I am totally open to hearing your thoughts, comments, rebuttals to this episode. I'm sure there are things that I forgot and did not touch on,

so I would really love to hear from you. Please remember to share this episode with anyone that you think could benefit from this. And as always, you can join me for unlimited groups every month inside the family cycle breakers club at callinghome.co. And I would love to see you there. Thank you again for listening. And I will see you all again on Thursday. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Colling Home or Whitney Goodman.

For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below. I don't know.