I dig through my memories and I remember this was a thing since I was a kid. Like I remember my mom just constantly saying “We love you a lot, do you know that?” and then straight up asking me: “Do you love your mom and dad?” (speaking in 3rd person for some reason) then followed by “Do you love mom or dad more?”… and I remember always just answering that: Yes I love them, and mom more than dad… (I remember that is probably just honestly how I felt, I never lied about it)

I don’t remember dad ever asking this…

Sometimes (when I was younger) mom asked me: “If mom and dad got a divorce, who are you going with?”…

wtf mom

And like sometimes they argue then threaten divorce…

So… mom has higher income so I feel like at the time I just told her I’d go with her solely because of the financial stability… (I mean dad also doesn’t really show affection… 🤷‍♂️)

(This was many years ago, during my teenage years. The divorce thing never happened, empty threats…)

…

Now as a young adult, I’m dealing with depression and she still says this… and like I feel very awkward when she asks me “Do you love me?”

I do feel an attachment towards her, but idk if you can call it “love” per se.

So sometimes I stay quiet… so it just ended with an awkward silence…

Then mom was like: “Do you you not love me? Do you hate me?”

No wtf mom, that’s not what I meant…

Do parents just do that? Are they seeking validation about their decision to choose to have children?

Cultural Context: My family is ethnically Chinese.