I have been in that place where I really needed to talk to my parents about certain things that happened during my upbringing, but they were totally unavailable for any discussion of that type, and in fact would start yelling at me and vehemently denying that they ever did anything of the sort (whatever I was asking them about.)

These things mostly happened when I was in my mid to late 20s. It presents a dilemma if the people who did certain things won't admit it or discuss it. I was mostly left with doing things like talking to a psychotherapist and writing letters to my parents telling them how certain things they did affected me or made me feel and what problems I was having as an adult because of them. I never sent those letters, but they did provide some psychological relief anyway.

As I got into my late 40s, my parents started talking about some of these things on their own. It seems that the distance of years allowed them to feel more comfortable admitting that, yes, they may have done some things that were damaging.

By that time, I had already somewhat accepted that they had done these things and come to the conclusion that I didn't think they had purposely hurt me. They were really very young when they were bringing me up and had lots of hurts from their own upbringing.

So, basically, by the time they were ready to discuss the things I needed to hear from them when I was a young adult, I had mostly moved past needing to hear it.

I don't know of anything, really, that can be done about this kind of situation. We often end up having to process our feelings of hurt and anger towards our parents without any participation from our parents.

And, of course, many people have much more serious issues to deal with from their childhood than I did. I experienced what I'd call garden-variety excessive criticism and emotional neglect. It was minor compared to what so many children go through, but it still had a huge impact on my psyche.

I don't have children myself, but I can see how, after putting so much time and effort and a huge chunk of their very lives into bringing up children, how many people would be unable to face any criticism from their children of that effort.