Interesting question. I'm an extreme introvert, so my sister would have to remind me to call the parental units once or twice a month when I was in undergrad (she transferred to the same school). I figured I was fine, and they should assume that, and I hated phone conversations (still do); I'm more comfortable with face to face, since you get other cues than just dialogue.
The youngest takes a bit after me, so we talk to him a couple times a month and see him 4-5 times a year, on holidays and we drive up to Seattle at least 2-3 times a year. The oldest, with the grandkids, is more in touch, and he's an extrovert.
The irony is that both of my parents, while very close to their parents, moved away after undergrad and only saw them 1-4 times a year. I moved across the country to the West Coast to grad school, then ironically was hired in Texas after grad school; the parental units retired below Ft. Worth to a town where great granddad lived, so we saw them more often. DW moved across the country from Philly to the West Coast and saw her mother at most once a year, but talked to her once a month or so on the phone.
Dad was a little on the introvert scale, though. I inhaled the independence and raised our two sons that way, although we are close, but not in terms of talking 2-3 times a week. Younger parents with the cell phone generation, I think , will be different, just because of the new norms, which probably is a good thing; cell phones have revolutionized communication patterns for both better and worse.
I'm comfortable with not saying anything if you don't have anything to say, but I realize that that is not a norm; I'm very comfortable with listening to whomever and can do that all day. I blame the Swede-Finns on my Mom's side (although the Swedes are 10x more communicative than the Finns). I guess I got all the Finn genes. I think there is a gap between perceptions between introverts and extroverts, but my twin (fraternal) was an extrovert, so I recognized the difference very early (and he would too; he would tell me, hey I need to tell you this, if it was really important to him, so I was lucky to know from an early age the social differences. If I feel my sons need to talk to me, I will call them.)
Joke: How do you know you're dating an extroverted Finn?
Answer: He looks at your shoes when he's talking to you.
