I’m 29 and usually call my parents (450 miles away) once a week.
I’m in my 30s and both of my parents live in Montreal. I call Mom a few times a week to chat, and Dad every month or two to make sure he’s still there.
I text/call my mom usually about once a week, but it usually has something to do with my kids. It’s maybe once a month or so that we have a conversation about other stuff. I don’t really talk to my dad at all, unless it’s in person. He’s not a phone kind of guy.
My husband on the other hand, only talks to his dad once every couple of months, but I wish they would talk more. I feel like they are missing out on something, but I understand they were never really that close to begin with.
My mom’s dead.
I call my dad once every week. He’d like me to call every day or every other day, and when mom first died, I made an extraordinary effort and called him almost every. freakin. day. Now I feel comfortable dropping it back to once a week. It’s been three years.
I’d like to call him only once a month or so.
My SO calls his parents about once every two weeks. This would be OK, too. But his mom e-mails, so he can talk to her on e-mail. Dad does not do e-mail. Mom’s laptop is at my house.
I don’t really understand the appeal of talking to them more often, either. I am not friends with my dad and never will be, and tell him very little about my life. I don’t really understand why parents insist so much on talking to their adult children every moment they get. I am not a parent. I understand a lot about parents…but this isn’t one I get.
I’m 34 and live within a mile of my parents. I talk to them every day. Normally it’s because I am either dropping my dog off at their place so I can go out somewhere, or I am dropping by to walk the dog with mom.
They’ll usually find an excuse to call me on a day when they don’t see me or hear from me, because I’m alone and dealing with depression and I’m sure they worry about me.
They talk to my brother almost every day too, but they watch his kids so they need to keep up with schedules.
When my father was alive my brother and I called him every week in a conference call, just to check up, though he didn’t remember it from one week to the next.
My wife talks to our daughter in NJ probably several times a day, with some texting also. I probably talk to her once a week, especially when she wants to talk about her research or academic things. Our other daughter is in Germany, and she talks to us on Skype easily once a week. My wife works at home, so she is freer to talk in the middle of the day than I am.
It is all effectively free, so we talk to our kids far more often than our parents spoke to us at the same age, back when long distance cost money.
Thanks for all the responses.
My wife and I are pretty much trying to figure out the types of relationships we are going to have with our adult children - ages 22-25. It is pretty clear that we are more interesting in speaking with them than the other way around. But there has been a lot going on on both ends. Within the last/next couple of months eldest just got a new job, middle got transferred from TX to CO, youngest graduated and is starting grad school in CA, and mom and I just bought a new house we are fixing up. So there are some things we could talk about other than just our daily routine.
I know we aren’t likely to be each others’ “besties”, but they are pretty close to the top of a pretty short list of my favorite folk in the world and, as such, my preference would be that we be a regular part of each others’ lives. But I do not want to impose upon them. I would be happy to initiate a phone call to them every weekend, but I’m not getting clear signals that that would be appreciated - especially by the youngest.
I think that during those years, I wanted to talk to my parents like I wanted a hole in the head. 
I was forever screwing up everything I touched, and it seemed like every visit or phone call was me begging for help or them lecturing me about needing help. I don’t think I had truly pleasant contact with my parents until I was at least 28 and beginning to finally be capable of taking care of myself. Hell, Dad and I didn’t even like each other until I was almost 30.
So wait a few years, let them get their lives under them … communication habits will change.
I’m 46 - my 71 year old mom is about seven hours away. We don’t talk very often on the phone, but we email fairly frequently. I send her little things that I find interesting or entertaining, and do a more informative email every week or so.
I’m not a phone person; I would very quickly find a weekly phone call a chore.
My elderly parents live about 50 miles away, a 70 minute no traffic drive. I visit them about once every 6 to 8 weeks, or they visit me. About 2 to 3 hours. We talk once a weekend. Dad just says hi for 30 seconds, Mom talks for as long as I’ll stay on the phone. My brother and sister talk on the phone about as often, and my brother visits more often, but lives much closer. My sister lives much further and visits three times a year.
A big problem I have with my mother is that she unconsciously pushes all of my buttons repeatedly frequently when she speaks to me. She focuses on the negative. It takes me several hours to pull out of my depression from talking to her when she does this.
As little as possible. I love my parents, but talking to them can be painful. Mom likes to talk about the Lord all the time, and dad makes Grampa Simpson’s rambles seem concise. When we lived in the same town, I probably talked to them every other week. Now that we’re across country, once a month or so if that.
Yeah, one of the reasons I talk to my dad a lot now is he is not judgemental. That is partly because I have grown up and gotten my head out of my ass and am responsible, but it is also partly because he finally perceives me as being such and is not lecturing me. All my mother ever did for everything was lecturing me.
My BF talks to his mom a few times a week. I talk to mine every couple of months.
I live about an hour from my mom and talk to her about once a month. It used to be only every 3 months, but she’s over 80 now and I try to keep in closer contact than I used to. I do have siblings, so she talks to somebody in the family several times a week.
Dad’s dead, so I talk to him a lot less than I’d like to :(.
Too much, I talk to my kids several times a week. They think they know everything and they are pretty sure I am crazy. Seems like everytime they see me they have a new project for me. I can’t run and I can’t hide! I wouldn’t change a thing!
I talk to my mom every couple of weeks, my dad twice a year (and yes they are married).
It’s a bit of a chore but it makes my mom happy, and she’s a reasonable person so I try to do that. However, my life is pretty boring and squared away, so, I don’t need her advice (I have never needed her advice, I was a very independent and squared away child and young adult too) and there’s nothing to tell as far as news in the average day/month/year. I’m not interested in girly things and am child free by choice. I work for the government so my work is rarely exciting to non-lawyers, and when it is, it’s confidential.
So, our conversations consist of me reporting on the activities of my friends children. Really.
This has changed a lot over the years as our lives have changed. Immediately post-college when I was building a career and my parents were very busy with their own careers? It was not uncommon to go several months without calling (we tended to live at least 12 hours away–they moved and I moved a couple times). Now that they are retired and we live in the same city and I have a baby? A lot more often–I see them most weeks, and now that it’s summer, often a couple times a week. The baby really changes things: you have this whole new thing in common.
Adult child-parent relationships are far from static. As your kids’ lives change, what is a reasonable amount of contact will fluctuate.
I will say that there is an extended family message board that is pretty active, so even when I didn’t talk to my parents for months, I generally knew about Major Family Stuff and that everyone was still alive and healthy. I might have called more often if not for that.
In terms of only calling when someone wants advice, it’s worth mentioning that if a kid always gets advice when they call–even cheerful, laid-back, well-intentioned, no-pressure advice, they will call only when they are looking for advice.
I almost never talk to my parents because they suck. I would like to never talk to them ever again.
For me, calls are a big holidays/birthdays or something needs to be shared now thing – so not too often. Emails are also a few times a year.
For my wife, there’s an almost daily call frequency.
It all just depends on the people and the relationship.
As the adult child, my mother and I talked at least every morning. I would take time at work or at home for “coffee talk”. Sunday sauce and rigs dinner at her place without fail every week.
My children are adults and almost adults. My oldest is a mom with a family of her own. We talk often but irregularly throughout the week based on her work schedule. We have a standing weekly lunch date at the cafeteria where she brings my grandson and we talk and eat. My 19 yr old son lives with me so we talk every day. My youngest daughter is off to college but she texts me, at the very least, good morning and good night every day.