there is a certain style of parenting that is very logistics focused, in which any conversation with the parent tends to revolve around whether the child has eaten, whether they are sick, whether they need a lift to get somewhere, etc. and these are all very important matters in life (even when the children are adults themselves) but they don’t address anything higher up the hierarchy of needs, like self-actualisation, or understanding who the child actually is as an independent person with their own interior life and emotions, hopes and fears, all the gooey stuff like that.
it’s a mode of interaction that is most commonly associated with dads in the popular culture – Telstra even had an ad campaign based on the premise of dads having nothing meaningful to say on the phone (!) – but mothers are prone to it too and of course it can occur in every other kind of relationship as well, between teachers and students or between coworkers or even romantic partners, it’s always easier to deal with the material concerns of life than relate to someone as a human being.