“Mom, I don’t tell you enough how much I appreciate everything you did for us.” It’s a sentence adult children eventually deliver at some point in a parent’s seventies, usually in a moment they’ve been quietly rehearsing. It comes out at a birthday. Over a phone call. During a hospital visit that turned out fine. The sentence is heartfelt. It isn’t wrong. Research on what actually makes older adults feel valued suggests that it isn’t, on its own, quite what the mother is waiting to hear.
What the mother is often waiting to hear is a different kind of question altogether. Not “thank you for what you did.” Something more like “what are you reading these days?” or “what have you been thinking about lately?” or “what did you do this week that you actually enjoyed?” The distinction seems small. The research suggests it isn’t.
The research on mattering
The construct at the heart of this research is called mattering. It was developed in 1981 by the sociologist Morris Rosenberg, who defined it as the perception that we are significant to other people. Mattering has since become one of the more studied constructs in the psychology of adult wellbeing. And a specific finding keeps showing up in the research on mattering in later life: it isn’t the same thing as being loved, being appreciated for past contributions, or being treated with respect.
In a 2020 review paper in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, the psychologists Gordon Flett and Marnin Heisel synthesised what the research on mattering has found about older adults. Their central claim was that mattering matters more in later life than in any other stage, and that the most protective form of it isn’t gratitude directed at what the person once did, but attention directed at who they are now. Older adults whose family members treated them as significant contributors to the current life of the family reported measurably better mental health outcomes than those whose family members were, in effect, thanking them for the past.
A note on what this is
We write about research here, not from a family therapist’s chair. The patterns described come from the mattering research, not any specific family. Not every older adult wants the same thing. Some genuinely want to be thanked for what they did decades ago and don’t want to be asked about the present. What the research points at is a strong average pattern, not a prescription for how any particular parent should be spoken to.
What the two kinds of attention actually feel like
Gratitude for the past, offered to an older adult, has a specific quality. It says: I remember what you did. It positions the older adult as the source of good things that have already happened. It treats them, in a subtle way, as a completed project. The verb tenses are past tense. The person being addressed is, in effect, being told their contributions have been noted and filed away. This isn’t nothing. It’s genuinely welcome, in most cases. What it doesn’t do is what the mattering research suggests older adults most need, which is being addressed as a current person with a current inner life the family is interested in.
Interest in the present has a different structure. It says: I want to know what you’re thinking about right now. It positions the older adult as an ongoing person whose current mind is worth encountering. The verb tenses are present tense. The person being addressed is being asked a question they haven’t already answered. The question can be small. What are you reading? What did you do this week? What have you been thinking about lately? The specific content of the question matters less than the direction it points. It points at now.
If this article resonates, we came across a video that actually dives into what happens when adult kids stop calling – the reasons behind it might surprise you.
Click here to watch the video.
What the components of mattering actually are
In Rosenberg’s original account, the components of mattering included attention (being noticed), importance (being taken seriously), and dependence (being needed). What the research has documented since is that all three are, in later life, more available through interest in the present than through gratitude for the past. Being asked about your current life is being paid attention. Being asked follow-up questions is being taken seriously. And, in one of the more counterintuitive findings, being consulted about ongoing family decisions, not just informed about them, is a form of being needed that older adults consistently rank as more valuable than being praised for what they used to do. In a 2024 study of 200 older adults published in Middle East Current Psychiatry, researchers found that a person’s sense of mattering was one of the strongest mediators of the relationship between loneliness and depression in later life. The pattern held even when other variables were controlled for. Feeling loved wasn’t quite enough. Feeling significant to specific people in specific ongoing ways was.
Why adult children default to gratitude
The reason adult children default to expressing gratitude, when they attempt these conversations, isn’t a lack of love. It’s usually the opposite. The adult child is trying to say something they’ve meant for a long time. They’ve been rehearsing, at some level, since their late twenties or thirties. The past is where the concrete evidence of their parent’s love lives, the sandwiches made, the fevers watched, the money loaned, the small daily acts of care. The past feels like the substantive thing to acknowledge. And it is substantive. It just isn’t, on its own, what the mattering research suggests will land.
What this looks like in practice
The wider cultural conversation about how to treat aging parents still focuses on gratitude, respect, and honouring past contributions. The research points at something quieter and more useful. What most older adults want, when they’re being honest about it, isn’t primarily to be thanked. It’s to be interviewed. Not formally. Casually. Over dinner. On the phone. In the car on the way to the doctor. Asked what they’re reading. Asked what they think about something in the news. Asked what they did yesterday afternoon that they actually enjoyed. Asked what’s been on their mind. And then listened to. The research suggests that the older adult who gets asked these questions on a regular basis, by the adult children in their life, ends up feeling something that gratitude alone can’t quite produce. Which is that they still exist. Not as a completed project. As a current person whose current life is worth being curious about.
