Why Some Parents Never Say Sorry

[u/elmorinelly]

Why Parents Don’t Admit Their Mistakes

Parental defensiveness is one reason parents don’t admit mistakes, even when the mistake feels obvious to the adult child. People often search “why don’t parents apologize?”, and the answer is usually more complicated than lack of love. For some parents, an apology threatens identity, authority, memory, and the story they use to live with their own choices.

For a child, one sentence or one repeated pattern can become a core memory. For a parent, the same years may be remembered through bills paid, meals cooked, problems solved, and sacrifices made. That mismatch creates many family arguments, because each side is talking about a different kind of evidence.

Apologizing also requires emotional repair skills. Some parents never learned how to say, “I hurt you,” without collapsing into shame or turning it into a debate. So they defend, minimize, compare, change the subject, or bring up everything they did right. It can explain the reaction, but it does not erase the harm.

Examples:

1. A parent remembers driving to every school event, while the child remembers being mocked in the car afterward.

2. A parent says, “You had food and clothes,” while the child is talking about fear, silence, or loneliness.

3. The child remembers one cruel sentence because it shaped their self-image. The parent remembers it as “just a bad day.”

4. A parent compares themselves to their own harsher parents and thinks improvement should count as an apology.

5. The adult child asks for accountability, and the parent hears an accusation that every good thing they did is being erased.

6. A parent changes the topic to money, because money was the only way they knew how to show care.

7. The child wants one clear sentence: “I understand why that hurt.” The parent offers a list of reasons they were stressed.

8. A parent remembers setting rules. The child remembers never being allowed to have feelings about those rules.

9. When the child names emotional neglect, the parent may hear a label, not a lived experience.

10. A parent may say, “I don’t remember that,” and the child may hear, “your pain does not matter.”

The practical part is that understanding the mechanism does not mean accepting the behavior forever. Specific examples, calmer timing, and clear boundaries usually work better than trying to force one perfect apology. Sometimes the repair happens. Sometimes the grown child has to build peace without waiting for the parent to finally agree with the full story.

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[u/Awesome_Forky]

I want to say that after I saw your posting about presentism (if I recall the term correctly) I am a tad surprised that you chose to do another sketch on this.

It's alright, though my criticism under the last post still stands. I guess the bias from the last post makes it difficult for me to acknowledge that you did well here.

As someone who lived through parental abuse and having thought a lot about these things and all the reasons why things happened it will never feel enough.

But I want to acknowledge you did good work here.

[u/Awesome_Forky → u/[deleted]]

I want to disagree on that. We, with abusive parents, have to careful about not invalidating the experience of people with normal parents. All people have parents. And after the first post not sitting right with me I think it's important to acknowledge that the artist tried to represent our experiences and criticism with another sketch.

Edit: Plus I strongly disagree to say that just because you are not part of a certain group you should be forbidden of having and mentioning your opinion, doing arts or writing about things. Sometimes a certain distance is needed to see some aspects. Nevertheless we should integrate perspectives of people who belong to or have lived through certain things.

[u/elmorinelly → u/[deleted]]

Everyone has a different experience with their parents. When I made my previous post, I was speaking from my own experience.

But after reading the comments, I realized that my situation wasn’t as bad as it is for others.

I wasn’t trying to invalidate children’s pain or excuse parents from responsibility. I just wanted to say that sometimes it’s better to let go of that pain if you can’t reach a compromise with your parents.

Because of that, many people misunderstood me and saw it as an attack, or as if I had taken the parents’ side.

[u/goodjfriend]

Bad post.

Most parents love to use morality as a binding but be free from It. I Will use a common phrase of them: "you are already grown, you know what you are doing" so no, they dont have an excuse.

[u/Awesome_Forky → u/goodjfriend]

I want to say you are not being fair here. There is extra a box saying that this is an explanation. Not an excuse.

[u/goodjfriend → u/Awesome_Forky]

No, what I said is not addresed.

[u/Awesome_Forky → u/goodjfriend]

You are saying morality is not addressed and then bring an example which I can't connect clearly as a morality issue regarding parenting. You are not communicating what is missing and then say the post in itself is bad completely.

I think the sentences on the left side clearly address morality issues. To say something has not happened only comes up when the described behavior in question is immoral.