13 Abandoning Parents in Old Age Quotes

Why do adults in their 40s and 50s tend to abandon their elderly parents?

There is no one answer to this question. Some adults do not feel the need to keep tabs on their parents. While there are others who have to distance themselves from their nuclear family from their parents as a result of a mental illness to the elderly

Whatever the reason, whether it seems rational or not, no senior citizen deserves to be left all alone on the streets. The following section provides abandoning parents in old age quotes. To be perfectly honest, I am in no position to tell you how to live your life. My goal here is to shed some light on the problems and challenges of the elderly.  

Here are the 13 Abandoning Parents in Old Age Quotes

1. American adult children, and I think most adult children, seem to believe that they are entitled to a perfect relationship with their parents and if it can’t be perfect, if it is challenging in any way, then they are justified in abandonment because she/he is just too difficult to relate to.

Sharon Wildey

2. The feeling of abandonment overwhelmed me as I realized that no one had waited, or cared where I was.

Emily Williams, Letters to Eloise

3. I just let the pain take over, allowing it to numb the pain of being left behind.

Jessica Sorensen, The Coincidence of Callie & Kayden

4. Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.

Pablo Neruda

5. You can’t put abandonment and alienation under arrest. 

Carrie P. Meek

6. I have always been scared of confrontation. My therapist says it stems from my fear of abandonment. 

Nikki Glaser

7. Only terminate your relationship with your parents in the most extreme of circumstances and only then after careful counseling and guidance from a professional

Richard A. Gardner, The Parental Alienation Syndrome

8. The way you treat your parents produces feelings of abandonment and ostracism which is experienced as physical pain.

Sharon Wildey

9. The way you treat your parents causes them to develop mental diseases such as PTSD, depression, obsessive thoughts, low self-esteem, aggressive and self-destructive behavior, distrust of entering relationships, isolation, anxiety, panic attacks, and obsessive thought of suicide. 

Sharon Wildey

10. Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

11. Perfectionism is the unparalleled defense for emotionally abandoned children.

Pete Walker

12. You can’t kiss me and vanish.

Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good

13. A monster

Someone who left me in the dark

Someone who darkened me

A million times over

Dorothea Lasky

Closing Thoughts

Things may appear perfectly normal from the outside but there are tons of parents out there who are facing abuse and neglect from their adult children. 

Don’t get me wrong. I am not naive enough to overlook mental health conditions like NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). NPD-affected parents can drive their children crazy with all the lies and gaslighting. 

Putting a mentally ill parent in a nursing home is a lot better option than abandoning them altogether. I hope abandoning parents in old age quotes provide a new perspective. Don’t shy away from having to rethink the decisions you made in the past.

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