When Was the Last Time You Talked to Your Parents, and For How Long?
More and more of my friends live alone these days.
I looked it up. As of 2024 Korea has 8.04 million single-person households. That's 36.1% of the total. More than one in three.
Living alone doesn't mean growing distant from family.
But it's worth pausing on the fact that more households now naturally have fewer chances to share a meal or trade small talk than before.
Even Living Apart, We Still Call Our Parents
According to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs' 2024 Korea Welfare Panel Survey and Analysis Report, adults living apart from their parents called them an average of 106 times a year.
But an average can be skewed by a handful of households that call especially often.
The median was 52 times a year. That's the middle of the pack, not the average.
So a typical person calls their parents about once a week.
That's not as few as it might sound.
I'm no exception. I call my parents too.
But What Are We Actually Talking About?
Maybe the real question isn't how often we call, but what we actually talk about in those few minutes.
“Did you eat?”
“Anything you need?”
When I call my own parents, this is pretty much what we talk about too.
We check in, ask about health, talk about upcoming plans. Then the call ends.
But sometimes, after I hang up, a thought creeps in.
I don't actually know what kind of person my mom was at twenty. I've never asked.
I called. But I barely heard my parents' own story.
So I Got Curious
Do you remember the last thing you actually talked about with your parents?
I honestly don't.
How Often We Call and How Well We Know Each Other Might Not Be the Same Thing
If you call your parents once a week, that's about 52 calls a year.
Over ten years, that's more than 500 calls.
And yet, after all those calls, we might still know almost nothing about their childhood, their youth, their first job, their romances, or what it was like raising us.
Maybe what matters isn't just calling more often.
Maybe sometimes, instead of the usual “Did you eat?”, we could ask this once.
“Mom, what were you thinking about when you were my age?”
I'm not sure what I'd say if she answered. I'm going to ask anyway.
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