CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Why Parenting Has Changed and Isn't Going Back

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

If you've ever felt like the relationship you have with your parents or with your adult child looks completely different from the one that your parents had with their parents, you’re not imagining it. Whitney explores why relationships between generations have fundamentally changed over the last 30 years and why they're probably not going back.Whitney Goodman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Calling Home, a membership community that helps people navigate complex family dynamics and break harmful cycles.Have a question for Whitney? Send a voice memo or email to [e-mail] the Family Cyclebreakers Club⁠⁠Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhitFollow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft⁠⁠Order Whitney’s book, Toxic PositivityThis podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you've ever felt like the relationship you have with your parent or with your adult child looks completely different from the one that your parents had with their parents, you are not imagining it. I'm Whitney Goodman. I'm the host of the Calling Home podcast. And today we are going to be talking about why adult child and parent relationships have changed and why they are not going back to how they used to be. Over the last 30 years, the entire landscape of family relationships has changed. And when I say changed, I don't just mean that it has evolved or grown. The ground has entirely shifted beneath us,

especially for a lot of people who were very used to these deeply entrenched beliefs about family. Expectations, norms, boundaries, communication, obligation, everything is operating under a new set of rules. And even though I think most of this change has been very, very good and healthy, many families, especially intergenerationally, are struggling to adapt. And so today I want to talk some about why this shift has happened, what it means, and why these changes are probably not going to be undone, and why they shouldn't. We've gone from role-based obligation to relationship-based connection. And for generations, the boomer generation, silent generation, and maybe older Gen X, they believed that family life was governed by role-based duty, right?

So the idea was very simple. You respect your parents because they are your parents. love, loyalty, and obedience were tied to the role, not the quality of the relationship. So no matter what happened between that relationship, you kept your respect and love and obedience and deference because of the role. And you couldn't control who your parents were or how they acted towards you. It was just kind of this thing of like, you are born to parents and that is how you act towards them. But I think that this has been entirely flipped and for a variety of reasons. Today, relationships, even with parents, are judged, particularly by younger people, through

relational quality criteria, not obligation. So these adults are asking themselves questions like these about their parents. Do you respect me? Do you take accountability? Do I feel safe with you? Do you treat me well? And this shift is reflected in a concept that was in a journal article by Rexic. I hope I'm saying that right in 2025, where they talk about democratized kinship.

And this is where connection is not automatic. Instead, it is chosen, reciprocal, and mutual. So this means that your role. role, which is entirely sort of just like random, you know, you are, you become a parent, you have a child, you reproduce. It doesn't automatically guarantee you access, especially in adulthood. The relationship still has to function in order for there to be a relationship. And I think for many parents today, especially those who were raised in family systems, cultures, or a world where obedience was just expected and demanded and it was a right,

this feels shocking and even insulting. It is a huge shift. And a lot of these parents are thinking, well, that wasn't an option for me. Like, I did not know that we could have this kind of outcome. And it's very, very difficult to wrap your head around if this is an entirely new concept for you. There's another major shift that a lot of boomers, silent generation, and older Gen X adults were raised with authoritarian parenting. Okay. And authoritarian parenting is really like, do as I say, because I'm the parent, respect is owed to me. And I think that it has lost its cultural dominance among a lot of groups. And, younger generations, right? And I do, I've said this many times before and I talk about this in my work

that I think overly authoritarian parents have the most trouble maintaining healthy adult relationships with their adult children because they no longer have access to the power that they had before, especially when their adult child is able to be financially independent, move away, find a new partner, pursue their interests. They cannot control them. through a lot of the fear, domination, and threats that they used to utilize when their child was younger and was living under their roof and they had power over them. And sometimes one of the last vestiges that these authoritarian parents have is money, that they're able to control their children through money. And when that's gone, it's very difficult to have an authoritarian

relationship with your child when they are an adult. I think that many of the adults, today in the millennial generation, Gen Z and even Gen Alpha as they're growing up, they were raised in an era that one had way more access to therapy and information about trauma, developmental milestones, adverse childhood experiences, the impact that certain events can have on children. There's a lot of mental health education for better or worse. They've had conversations about boundaries, the idea of emotional abuse and neglect has become very common and mainstream among young people. And they're very aware of the consequences of emotional abuse and emotional neglect, where I find that for some people who are,

especially, you know, 60 and up, emotional abuse and neglect is still a concept that they either outright deny don't believe it's real or they don't think that they participated in it, or they don't see any value in not being emotionally abusive or neglectful. They may even, like, tout that that was good parenting that helped their children. And they may not understand that they were emotionally abused and or neglected. There's also quite a bit of emphasis on mutual respect among adults in these upcoming generations that are now adults going into midlife or raising young children. etc. I think that the majority of adults that I talk to today, especially who struggle to

maintain relationships with their parents in adulthood, it's because they value closeness, not hierarchy. They really want to have a partnership with their parent that feels mutual and connected. They don't want to be in this power dynamic where their parent is just trying to constantly dominate them and be above them and be the deciding. factor in their life. And so when an authoritarian parent especially continues to approach their adult children from a position of control, superiority, or unquestioned authority, the relationship fractures. And I think we are seeing a cultural evolution in real time that people just don't want to have relationships like this anymore and they know that they don't have to. The other thing that I think has

had a major impact and has changed the landscape of these adult family relationships tremendously is the constant digital reach. 30 or 40 years ago, distance from your family could happen naturally. You could move away from your parents and call them once a week, once a month, only see them on holidays, because that's all technology allowed for. And so no one was blaming you for not reaching out or being in touch because there was no ability to do so. You know, when air travel wasn't as common or not everybody had a car, like you lived in a big city and you didn't have access to transportation to get to the other side of the country to see your family. You could just say, I'm busy at work. I can't make it. Flights are too expensive. There were a lot more

excuses that were built in barriers for individuality, privacy and independence. And now, Now there are zero natural boundaries. Okay. You can be reached by call, text, email, a group chat. You can track people's locations. There's social media, comments, DMs, tagging. You can see what people are liking. It's really wild.

And I have heard so many stories of like my parent drives by my house. They have burner phones. They create more emails when I block them. They have a bunch of social media accounts. They have burner accounts so that they can follow me and see what I'm liking or send me messages. Like, there are so many points of access into our lives now. And so this means that adults today have to set active boundaries, not because they're being difficult or they're obsessed with boundaries, but because the world literally no longer

provides these people with any natural space that is protected. They have to create those protections themselves. I also think that with the rise of things like helicopter parenting and surveillance of our children and all these monitoring and tracking apps that we use with our kids from a very young age, parents are now very, very used to being a part of their child's life in an immediate, ongoing digital way that constantly gives them this like reassurance that they are connected to their children. They are very susceptible to anxiety or feeling this sense of lack when contact slows or when there are boundaries. And it can feel like an abandonment, even though historically, the level of

contact that we have right now between children and their parents in adulthood is probably quite unnatural. It's certainly not historically accurate. You know, when we look at how much contact we used to have when people started to move away from their families, start their own families, etc. I think now that small acts of distance feel very huge for parents. And in that, in that tension in that abandonment feeling, they often do these big attempts at like more closeness, more pressure, more boundary violations. And it just intensifies the tension and and even intensifies the adult child's desire to pull away and retract more from that relationship. Adults today also have access to more people that may become like chosen.

and family to them. In previous generations, you know, if your family wasn't safe or supportive, you had very limited options. And so you often stayed connected out of necessity. That may have been your housing, your job, the only people that you could associate with. It was much more difficult and riskier to separate yourself when your extended family was your entire network and the people that you lived with. And so I think today adults can form. communities that feel more like family than their, you know, family of origin ever felt for them. There are online communities, friendships built around shared values, support groups, communities for different identities, co-working spaces, religious communities, geographic

communities, people are living further and further away from their families. And so if these relationships that these adults find are more emotionally available, respectful and more aligned with who they are, they are often more likely to pull away from those more difficult, tense, maybe even abusive or harmful parent relationships or family relationships to prioritize that chosen family, right? I think that when you see adults start to compare the way they feel around these people to their biological family that may be harming them, gilting them, controlling them, the choice becomes very obvious to them. They don't want to stay in relationships, family or not, that damage their lives logistically, emotionally, mentally,

physically. They have realized that their lives can be much more enjoyable when they choose to prioritize those other relationships. We talked a little bit about connection, you know, digitally. I also think that visibility and social media have changed family dynamics tremendously. So a generation ago, you know, no one knew what your family dynamic looked like or they couldn't infer things from social media. And we didn't feel as much of a pressure to perform these generational family dynamics. But now, with how much sharing goes on on social media, you know, people can see who you visit, who you call, who you've blocked, who's commenting on your post, who's in your pictures at the holidays, like if you're choosing to share that stuff. And family closeness is often

a public performance on the internet. And so I think the pressure to maintain that image publicly is huge. And I think some people value that more than others. of course, but it certainly is a factor. And I think also that, you know, you can use social media to validate how you're feeling. And so a lot of the pushback that I see on social media about estrangement, I think is really rooted in the fact that a lot of adults are hearing many, many stories from others who grew up like them. And they see that there are different ways of relating. there's language, there's new models of family. They notice like, oh, it doesn't have to be this way. And once they see that and they see that there are options, they want to take them. In my experience,

you know, as a therapist and in the really immersive work that I have done with this population, especially over the last five years, I truly believe that these adults today, particularly adults that have done this work, they want relationships, not a control power dynamic. I think that one of the biggest misconceptions is that younger adults don't want relationships with their parents. I find that to be completely false. Most of the adults that I have worked with, I would say the vast majority, want closeness, but they want healthy closeness. So they want respect, emotional, maturity, boundaries, reciprocity, accountability, repair, safety. They, they aren't estranging themselves because they just like don't like their parent. A lot of the time it's because

this behavior or lack thereof is still happening now in the present. And it's very hard to have an adult life and an adult relationship in a hierarchical power dynamic like this. It it can be very, very difficult. There's also the reality, and we see this reflected in the data. I looked at a study about how many text messages are exchanged, like in any given time period between young adults who I think had just gone away to college and their parents. And I can't remember exactly how much it was, but it was striking. And they found that younger generations today actually have more frequent contact with family

than previous generations. We are talking to our family more. And sometimes more interactions actually lead to more conflict. And if we had less interactions, the relationships might even be better. And that doesn't mean estrangement, but that means figuring out what cadence for us actually works. Because the problem is, is that these adults also have higher standards. They have language to define how they're feeling clear expectations and they are willing to walk away from relationships that are harming them even if they are with family. And I think that this creates attention, especially intergenerationally, that a lot of adults did not navigate with their own parents or they have never had to navigate with another adult in their family before. They expected that if they gave these certain things,

typically food, shelter, being there at night, showing up at school stuff, you know, that they would experience built-in loyalty and obligation from their children. And now they are experiencing this level of evaluation that feels very uncomfortable and unsafe for them. And I think for many of these parents, it feels like a betrayal. And for many of these adult children, it feels like it's empowerment and clarity and them getting to choose what is best for their life. Now, I saw that Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson brought this up on the Oprah special about going no contact, that she mentioned, you know, these relationship dynamics are not going to go back to what they were. And I completely agree with that assessment.

I think that everything about modern life today has rewired, family relationships, especially relationships between adults and their parents, right? We've mentioned some of these technology, mobility, therapy, language, social media, the ability to find other communities, shifting gender roles, you know, more women moving into the workforce or being breadwinners, the economic realities that families are facing, increased longevity. So parents and their adult children are living longer, having longer lives together. there are changing parenting norms, and we have different models for what we think family

relationships should look like. And so there is no way that we are going to return to an era of unquestioned parental authority, silent suffering, role-based obligation, minimal contact, or emotional obedience. The world has changed too much, and I don't think that we can undo this. I don't think that we should. I don't think that the old way led to much better outcomes. I think what we're just looking at right now are a lot of growing pains, you know, between sort of like old way and new way and that a lot of people who are growing together are actually seeing a ton of improvements in their family relationships and things are getting better, right? we cannot undo the reality that relationships require accountability. And we can't undo people recognizing these patterns of emotional immaturity or abuse. And once a culture shifts from being mainly about hierarchy and power to relational quality,

I don't think it ever goes back. Certainly not without a very, very big fight that I think most people don't want to participate in. For families today, I really think that, like, the old rulebook is gone. And adults are building relationships on connection, not out of control and obedience. They want safety rather than just total sacrifice. And they want mutual respect, not just obligation that only goes in one direction. And this is not a breakdown of the family. It's really an evolution. And I think if parents and adult children want to stay connected today, the path isn't authority. It's accountability. It's not hierarchy. It's having humanity and understanding for one another. And your family relationships can be

rich and deep and meaningful, but only when the people in them are willing to grow and not just keep fighting against it. And so for any of you parents listening, I think, you know, when you have that urge to be like, this just isn't the way it's supposed to be. Screw my kids. You know, they don't want to have a relationship with me than I'm done. Like, this is your defensiveness coming up. This is you feeling scared of what's ahead and all of these changes. And I get that. But so much good can happen when you sort of step back and say, okay, you know what? Things have changed. So if I want to have a good, close relationship with my children, maybe I should try something new. Maybe I should just give it a shot and be vulnerable.

And maybe I might find that like this was the best thing that I ever did for my family. I want to thank you all so much for listening to this episode of Calling Home. We are just wrapping up our full month on how to be more emotionally mature at Calling Home. That means that there are four weeks of worksheets, articles, therapy guides, podcast episodes, anything you could need to develop your emotional maturity. I think that this is a great topic literally for anyone on the planet. It was such a good way to start the new year with this positive new skill that everyone can learn. If you missed the groups this month, the content is still all there.

And if you join the Family Cycle Breakers Club at www.callinghome.co, you can get access to everything, as well as our entire previous content library and all of our future content that's coming up. Next month at Calling Home, we are going to be talking about parental rejection and abandonment and the effects that that can have on you. So if you join now, you will also get access to all of those unlimited groups. We would love to see you inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club next month at Calling Home. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you again soon. 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 healthcare provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Colin Holm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Holmes' terms of service linked in the show notes below.