What Makes Adult Children Pick the Road of Estrangement?
Estrangement, the widespread and stigmatized condition describing cutting off one family member from one or more family members, is becoming increasingly common. Estrangement can mean cutting ties completely with no contact or little contact with emotional distancing.
When an adult child cuts ties from one or both parents, they choose to disconnect from a relationship they believe is unmanageable. Estrangement is painful and usually talked about behind closed doors. But in recent decades, there are many resources for the adult child to recognize unhealthy patterns and choose to separate.
Parents confronted with losing the relationship status with their adult child go through grieving and finding a way to reconcile.
Estrangement is a grueling matter, complicated and ambiguous. The arrangement hurts all involved parties. Research studies have yet to catch up to the demand for information to illuminate and make sense of this harsh condition.
Types of Estranged Relationships
We know there is a great divide in perspectives between the estranged and their parents. Some estranged family members’ struggles involve addictions, mental illness, abuse, and toxic behaviors. Unraveling generational dysfunction and its impact on individuals requires professional support. Parents and adult children sometimes must remain estranged to preserve their well-being.
On the other hand, some families have intense histories, including numerous contributors, and can move forward. Parents and willing adult children find their way to reconciliation, often with the help of a professional.
Then there are those parents and adult children who remain emotionally or physically distanced for years.
Within this range are parents and adult children who, regardless of the relationship status, come to acceptance and learn to live again. These individuals processed the emotions of grieving, invested in their well-being, exercised their empathy muscles, and intentionally stepped forward. They embraced alternative perspectives, including those of their kids.
When parents gain insight into the context in which their adult child cuts ties, it opens the door for parents to move forward. For parents, this means they move into the spectrum of acceptance, acknowledge their role in the estrangement, and grow their empathy muscle.
Estrangement Contributors
Intrapersonal Issues
We define intrapersonal issues as those where the adult child severs ties with their parents because of crucial personality factors. For example, if the parent struggles with mental illness, it might cause unwanted strife in the relationship, finally pushing the adult child away so far as to become estranged.
A mentally ill parent might not notice how their behavior affects their relationships, but that might not be enough to keep the adult child in the connection. Personality traits that may push adult children away also include self-centeredness, narcissism, and immaturity.
If the parent is unsupportive and unaccepting of the adult child’s feelings, the latter will likely internalize the relationship as low value and choose to estrange.
A widespread intrapersonal issue is personality differences. Adult children who do not feel accepted in their sexuality, gender identity, and religious ideals are more likely to separate from parental relationships.
Interfamily Issues
Interfamily issues refer to forces outside the family – for example, objectionable relationships imposed upon the adult child by a divorced parent. The adult child can choose not to be a part of that new family dynamic if they wish.
Other reasons may include influence from a third party, such as a controlling or abusive spouse. The adult child’s spouse pressuring behaviors work to dismantle the family relationship, which may result in estrangement to keep the peace within the marriage. Alternatively, the adult child’s parents may not like the choice of spouse and therefore create distance and conflict.
Intrafamily Issues
Negative behavior, abuse during childhood, and sustained rigid or distant parenting styles can eventually cause the child to cut ties. Someone who has suffered mental, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse as a child can choose to separate from their parents in adulthood for self-preservation.
Other examples include:
- Family conflict and rivalries.
- Drug or alcohol abuse.
- Alienation from one parent caused by the other inadvertently damages the child’s perception.
- Parental favoritism of other siblings.
It is not unusual for an adult child to recognize these behavioral patterns as detrimental to their well-being and choose to cut ties in their adult life.
So Why Is Adult Child Estrangement More Common Now?
With the newfound loss of stigma surrounding therapy and mental health, adult children are becoming keen on their circumstances and how their environment has contributed to their lives. If the relationship stops benefiting them or never has, they can choose whether or not to stay.
They are not responsible for their parents’ happiness and decide to put themselves first. The bare minimum isn’t enough anymore. Some agree that family is not a permanent state; it can grow and expand as family members age or come to a complete halt if so chosen.
Parent and adult children relationships tend to thrive when there are no expectations. The adult child can feel loved with no conditions and supported without fear of judgment. Unfortunately, adult children report feeling disrespected by parents who disregard their agency and adulthood.
Dr. Joshua Coleman, in his book Rules of Estrangement, discusses the shift away from the obligation to parents towards honoring one’s needs to be happy. Adult children who find their parents difficult and disrespectful can distance themselves or cut ties entirely.
What intrapersonal, interfamily, and intrafamily contributors discussed in the Carr et al., 2015 study
elaborates on the complicated nature of estrangement. Also, understanding that an adult child’s perspective can be highly different yet valid. Parents who hope to reconcile are willing to step away from their versions of the estrangement story and empathize with their adult child.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Do you think it is important to empathize with your adult child’s perspective? What resources have you found to be the most supportive? What do you do regularly that helps you nurture your wellbeing?
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Thank you for this article.
For 12 years I have grieved over an estranged adult son. It happened suddenly as if an axe had cut thru my body. No communication—nothing!
Today, I find peace, happiness and love thru mentoring other young adults.
Thank you on behalf of the world you make more beautiful by spreading your love where it can help others blossom instead of turning it inward and fostering self-destructive emotions. Your strength and emotional intelligence help us all.
I believe much of the current popularity of estrangement from “toxic” family members can be laid at the feet of culture. People are less inclined to take responsibility for their own feelings, instead insisting that other people protect them. If I don’t like your opinions, you are toxic and a threat to my mental health. It’s a lack of character and emotional maturity. Certainly, there are extremely difficult family members we have to separate from, but there is very little willingness to find common ground and compromise.
Yes! Beyond my own estrangement experience, I am fascinated by this evolution. I blame social media where judgements without supporting facts, generalizations, name-calling and trolling for fun are the norm. If you disagree with me, explain to me what (from your perspective) I am missing. If I upset you, tell me why and what I need to do to fix things. Hard conversations and not always received with open hearts, I am sure, but it’s how we grow as people, and as a society.
You took the words right out of my mouth.i say it often.. I’d rather be told of my “isms” so that
1. Im aware, because more than likely I’m clueless
2. Work to change said “ism” even if a compromise.
Hard conversations pay off later if you value the time, the love, memories, talks, hugs, love and a sense of belonging.
I mean, why do you assume that parents aren’t told of their “isms”? I think the problem is typically that the parent is told, but choose to continue on. My father is homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic. I’ve told him so many times about how his attitudes need to change, but he just won’t make the change. My mother is homophobic and transphobic, but not xenophobic. She won’t change either despite being confronted with her “isms”
I wonder how many “hard conversations” these parents were willing to have with their children back when they had power over them. You know without throwing fits about how they are the parents and they make the rules and are not to be questioned or “given orders”. The whole no need to compromise or even care about the child’s mental health, well being, or perspectives because as the person with power it’s what they say and want and choose that matters.
Oh but it should be different now that there isn’t a power imbalance, all that should be erased and the child should suddenly approach personal issues “with maturity”. Suddenly it’s unfair for the child to make decisions about their own life without centering their parents who would absolutely never return the favor and have not done so when they had the chance to show it?
Lmao, give me a break
Parents are fundamentally responsible for the well being and mental health of their children, and for the foundation they provide.
It is no lack of character that prompts people to end toxic cycles and embrace healing
I was hoping that the article would address more than just parent-child relationships.
Two years before my mother passed away, I said in conversation with her that “when you’re gone, [my sister] will cut me off and end any communication. Mom’s response was “I hope not”. But I knew my sister. My mother passes away 8 months ago — and I recently learned that I am not invited to my much-loved niece’s wedding that even far-flung 2nd cousins are invited to.
My heart is broken; I was there for all the events in my niece’s life — school events, concerts, plays, exhibitions, shopping trips and kept in contact throughout college and beyond. I can’t imagine that I will not be at her wedding.
If you can’t be there that day (so as not to make her wedding about you) maybe you can have a lovely lunch with the young couple after their honeymoon and look at the pictures together. Don’t hurt your niece by telling her you are hurt before the wedding, this is a fraught time for her too. Let it go, just share the joy with her. Be the bigger person. You are not the only one with a sibling like this, but you are blessed to have a lovely niece.
“Parent and adult children relationships tend to thrive when there are no expectations. The adult child can feel loved with no conditions and supported without fear of judgment.”
Do parents have the right to have no expectations put on them either? Because it seems like all of this is child-centric and leaves the parent as the “wicked” parent at every turn.
Specifically, problems arise when the adult child expects the parents to accept that they don’t intend to work or go to school or do anything except watch TV and troll people on social media all day and the parents will support this lifestyle indefinitely. If they don’t support this they are labeled “toxic.”
Parents have the right to expect that their children will become self- supporting if they are mentally and physically able. They should not be blamed for an estrangement that occurs because they expect their children to grow up and become functioning adults.
Emily, absolutely children should support themselves as they reach adulthood. Boundaries go both ways. If you have an adult child living at home have a discussion about their plan. If they decide to become angry over your boundary…it just might mean you set the best boundary.
If you take care of you and are respectful of their boundaries then it should work out. But that means holding your boundary compassionately. But the child still has their responsibilities.
My niece has done the distancing but she is close to her dads family.
My sister has very little money even though she has a job which she loves.
A couple of times my sister borrowed money from her daughter. Prior to this there was lots of domestic drama. Too much to tell. My sister and I are from a family where there is a lot of ADHD and my niece’s brother has ADHD and is bipolar.
My niece has been very stressed by this. I can fully understand why. It was probably a wise move for her. Also she did seek professional help.
I miss her and love her as does her mom, my sister.
My sister has decided to keep going and try to be happy, which she is.
We know that the girl (she’s about 35 now) is safe and supported emotionally by the dad’s family.
It is not always easy, but love isn’t easy.