Maybe We Don’t Have a Family Estrangement Crisis. Maybe We Have a Family Transition Crisis.
Part Three of a series exploring family estrangement, adult children and parents, therapy, boundaries, trauma, no contact, and what it actually takes to repair relationships.
In Part One of this series, I asked whether therapists may sometimes contribute to family estrangement.
In Part Two, I asked whether family estrangement is actually increasing, or whether we are simply talking about it more and experiencing family connection differently than we did a generation ago.
Now I want to ask another question.
What if some of what we are calling a family estrangement crisis is actually a family transition crisis?
I 100% believe family estrangement is real.
I work with it.
I see the grief it causes adult children. I see the grief it causes parents. I see families who desperately want to repair relationships and families where one person has decided they no longer want a relationship at all.
But I also see families struggling with something that happens long before estrangement.
A child becomes an adult.
And everyone has to figure out what being a family means now.
We don't talk nearly enough about how difficult that transition can be.
For most of childhood, everyone's role is relatively clear. Parents have authority. They make decisions. They provide care. They guide. They teach. They set limits.
Then the child grows up.
Except nobody sits everyone down and says:
Okay. The relationship is changing now. What do we want it to look like?
How often will we talk?
How much of my life do I share with you?
When do I want your advice?
What happens when we disagree?
How do holidays work now?
What happens when I have a partner?
What happens when I have children?
What role will you have with them?
What do we owe one another?
What don't we owe one another?
Most families don't have those conversations.
They just start living the answers.
And sometimes the answers each person imagined are nowhere near each other.
First, What Are We Actually Calling Estrangement?
I think we need to get clearer about this because we use the word estrangement pretty broadly.
To me, estrangement is essentially no contact.
Sometimes it is quiet.
Someone stops calling. Text messages go unanswered. Invitations stop coming. Maybe nobody ever officially announces that the relationship is over. It just slowly disappears.
Sometimes it is a loud, airport-style departure.
“I'm done. Don't contact me anymore.”
And sometimes both people have reached a point where neither is willing to continue engaging.
But I don't think every distant family relationship is an estranged one.
There is low contact.
There are emotional boundaries.
There are people who live across the country from one another and rarely talk.
There are also families who see each other regularly and aren't emotionally close at all.
That's important because if we start calling every reduction in access estrangement, we risk treating normal changes in adult relationships as evidence that something has gone terribly wrong.
There Is No Correct Amount of Family
How much contact should an adult child have with their parents?
I don't think there is one answer.
It depends on the family.
Some parents retire and move to another country and essentially say, “We love you. Come visit.”
Some adult children join the military and move every few years.
Some families talk every morning.
Others talk once a week.
Some have Sunday dinner together.
Others see each other a few times a year and still feel incredibly close.
There isn't a magic number of phone calls or holidays that makes a family healthy.
Research on parent and adult child relationships reflects some of this complexity. Frequent contact does not necessarily mean a relationship is emotionally healthy. Parents and adult children can have significant contact while also experiencing conflict, frustration, and mixed feelings about the relationship.
Frequency is not the same thing as intimacy.
And distance isn't automatically rejection.
The bigger question is whether the relationship that exists works for the people who are actually in it.
Sometimes Parents Are Grieving the Family They Thought They Would Have
I think this gets lost in conversations about estranged parents.
Parents imagine things.
We imagine holidays.
Grandchildren.
Sunday dinners.
Family vacations.
Maybe you picture your daughter living fifteen minutes away.
Maybe you imagine being the grandmother who watches the grandchildren every Friday.
Maybe you assume everyone will still come to your house for Christmas morning because that is what your family has done for thirty years.
There is nothing inherently wrong with imagining those things.
But then your child grows up and builds a life.
Maybe they move across the country.
Maybe they don't have children.
Maybe they spend Christmas with their spouse's family.
Maybe they don't want to talk every day.
Maybe they parent differently.
Maybe they have a completely different idea of what your role in their adult life will look like.
Now the parent isn't only adjusting to a new schedule.
They may be grieving the family they thought they would have.
That grief can show up as sadness.
It can also show up as anger, resentment, criticism, guilt, or:
“You've changed.”
Maybe they have.
Growing up is supposed to involve change.
That doesn't mean the parent's disappointment isn't real.
It means someone's disappointment does not automatically mean someone else did something wrong.
Sometimes everybody is hurting and nobody is the villain.
From the Day Your Child Is Born, Your Control Gets Smaller
I explain this to parents sometimes.
From the day your child is born, your ability to control them gets smaller and smaller.
When they're babies, almost everything about their lives depends on us.
Then they crawl.
They walk.
They talk.
They go to school.
They make friends we didn't choose.
They develop opinions we didn't give them.
They drive.
They work.
They fall in love.
They move.
They build lives.
The more they grow, learn, develop, and experience the world, the more our role has to change too.
When they're little, we do.
Then we teach.
Then we guide.
Eventually, we have to become willing to stop guiding unless we're asked.
That can be hard.
“I'm still your mother” may always be true.
But eventually it stops meaning:
“So I get a vote.”
And I think some parent and adult child relationships begin breaking down right there.
Adult Children Have a Transition to Make Too
This can't become another conversation where everything is the parent's responsibility.
Being treated like an independent adult also means taking responsibility for your adult life.
Money is probably the easiest example.
And my take on this may be controversial.
If your parents are substantially funding your adult lifestyle, I think there is a reasonable level of input that may come with that.
Not control.
Input.
If parents say:
“We'll pay your tuition as long as you maintain a certain GPA,”
you know the agreement.
You can accept the money and the expectation attached to it, or you can decide that arrangement doesn't work for you.
That's very different from:
“We'll only help you financially if you date someone of the race or religion we approve of.”
Now money is being used as a tool for control.
There is a line.
But I also don't think we can demand complete independence while simultaneously expecting another adult to indefinitely finance the choices over which we're demanding they have absolutely no input.
The answer is clarity.
What are you offering?
What expectations come with it?
Am I willing to accept those expectations?
Hidden contracts create resentment on both sides.
Technology Has Made Us Feel Closer and Farther Apart at the Same Time
This is something I started thinking about while writing Part Two.
Technology has given us a strange false sense of closeness.
I know things about people I haven't personally spoken to in ten years.
I know they went on vacation.
I know their kid started school.
I know they changed jobs.
I know what they did last weekend.
That's not necessarily closeness.
It's access to information.
At the same time, technology has given us entirely new ways to feel rejected.
Thirty years ago:
I called Sarah. She wasn't home.
That was pretty much the end of the available information.
Now:
I called Sarah.
She didn't answer.
But she just posted on Facebook.
She's active on Instagram.
She liked someone else's post.
So she's clearly on her phone.
Why isn't she answering me?
Suddenly we have enough information to create an entire story about another person's intentions.
Maybe Sarah is rejecting you.
Or maybe Sarah doesn't want to talk on the phone right now.
There was a time when phone calls were coordinated. You made plans to talk. You called when someone was available.
Now there can be an expectation that because I called you, you should answer me.
Being able to reach someone is not the same thing as being entitled to their availability.
I think we've blurred that line.
And Then There Are the Holidays
Nothing will test a family's ability to adjust quite like the holidays.
Holidays can be a source of contention even in families that generally get along pretty well.
An adult child gets married and suddenly there are two families trying to figure out Christmas.
Add divorce and remarriage and there may be three or four sets of grandparents hoping to see everyone.
Then grandchildren arrive.
Everyone has traditions.
Everyone has expectations.
And there are only so many hours between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Someone is probably going to be disappointed.
Disappointment doesn't necessarily mean someone did something wrong.
Ideally, adult children create the holiday schedule that works for their family at that stage of life, especially when young children are involved.
The older generations may have to adjust.
Then someday, as those older generations age, things may shift again.
Maybe Christmas happens December 23.
Maybe families alternate years.
Maybe one gets Thanksgiving and another gets Christmas.
Maybe you decide Christmas in July is your thing.
Get creative.
When an adult child says:
“We're staying home Christmas morning with our kids,”
they may not be saying:
“You aren't important anymore.”
They may be saying:
“I'm creating Christmas morning for my children now.”
Those can feel very different depending on which side of the conversation you're sitting on.
Grandchildren Don't Belong in Adult Conflicts
Grandchildren complicate estrangement tremendously.
There is an argument to be made that, particularly when children are young, access to them happens through their parents.
If you cannot have an appropriate relationship with the parent, it may be difficult to maintain a completely separate relationship with their child.
But I also don't believe every strained relationship between an adult child and parent automatically means a grandparent and grandchild relationship has to disappear.
There may be middle ground.
For me, a major question is:
Can everyone behave appropriately?
If a grandparent is making disparaging comments about the child's parents, questioning their parenting in front of the child, recruiting the child into the conflict, or using the child to gather information, then no.
We would find that inappropriate between divorced parents.
Grandparents aren't different.
But the responsibility goes both ways.
Adult children shouldn't be badmouthing grandparents to children either.
Children shouldn't be used as messengers.
They shouldn't be asked to choose sides.
They shouldn't be responsible for carrying information between adults.
As children get older, particularly into their teen years, there may be situations where they can have more input into what relationships they want.
There are obvious exceptions when safety is involved.
But generally:
Children are children. They do not belong in adult conflicts.
Culture Matters, Including Family Culture
There is another reason I don't love universal rules about what healthy adult family relationships are supposed to look like.
Culture matters.
And I don't only mean ethnic or religious culture.
Families have cultures too.
Some families do everything together.
Some don't.
Some adult children talk to their parents every day because they genuinely enjoy it.
Others would find that overwhelming.
Some families value multigenerational living.
Some value independence.
Some consider caring for aging parents a fundamental responsibility.
Others organize family life differently.
We see the same thing in romantic relationships.
Some couples spend almost all of their free time together and love it.
Other couples need independent friendships and hobbies.
Consensual nonmonogamy works for some people and would be completely unacceptable in another relationship.
The question isn't:
Would I want this?
It's:
Does this work for the people who are actually participating in it?
I think pop psychology sometimes struggles with this.
Interdependence isn't automatically enmeshment.
Closeness isn't automatically codependence.
Family obligation isn't automatically control.
But any of those things can become unhealthy depending on the people, expectations, and dynamics involved.
Context matters.
Money and Resources Complicate This Conversation Too
There is also a practical side to estrangement that doesn't get talked about enough.
How possible is it for someone to function without their family?
Dr. Joshua Coleman's work has raised questions about the role social and economic conditions play in modern family estrangement, and I think the underlying issue is worth exploring without pretending estrangement belongs to one economic group.
Resources change logistics.
If your mother provides childcare four days a week because you cannot afford daycare, creating distance from her has practical consequences.
If your parents pay your rent, there is financial dependence.
If several generations share a home, physical distance may not even be possible.
Someone with greater financial resources may be able to replace parts of their informal support system.
They can pay for childcare.
Transportation.
Housing.
Caregiving.
That doesn't make the emotional impact of losing family any smaller.
It changes how logistically possible separation may be.
And expectations can run both ways.
Some grandparents make enormous sacrifices to provide childcare.
There are also adult children who feel deeply disappointed when their parents don't want to take on that role.
Again, I come back to expectations.
What did everyone imagine this relationship was going to look like?
And did anyone actually talk about it?
Boundaries Aren't Rules for Other People
This came up in Part One, but I think it matters here too.
There is a difference between a boundary and an ultimatum.
Let's say political conversations with your father always end in an argument.
You can ask:
“Can we please stop talking about politics when we're together?”
Hopefully he respects that request.
But ultimately, you cannot control whether he brings up politics.
The part you control is you.
A boundary might be:
“I'm not going to participate in political conversations anymore. If politics comes up, I'm going to change the subject. If it continues, I'm going to end the conversation and we can try again another time.”
Your father still gets to decide what he does.
You decide what you participate in.
Sometimes enforcing a boundary eventually creates distance.
Sometimes distance is necessary.
Sometimes people use withdrawal to avoid having a difficult conversation.
Sometimes someone has communicated the same need for years and finally stops trying.
Those situations can look similar from the outside.
They aren't necessarily the same.
Even Healthy Boundaries Can Hurt
I think this gets missed sometimes too.
A boundary can be appropriate and still hurt someone.
If you've talked to your daughter every morning for twenty years and she decides she doesn't want daily phone calls anymore, you may feel rejected.
Maybe she isn't trying to punish you.
That doesn't mean the change won't feel painful.
The problem comes when both people become so polarized that they assign negative intent to everything the other person does.
She's trying to hurt me.
She's trying to control me.
He doesn't care about me.
He doesn't respect me.
Once we've decided we already know another person's intentions, there isn't much room left for curiosity.
And there definitely isn't much room for vulnerability.
Sometimes repairing a relationship requires enough space to consider:
What if they're not trying to hurt me? What if they're trying to do something differently?
Some Families Are in Customer Service Mode
There are also families who remain in contact but aren't particularly connected.
They attend holidays.
They send birthday texts.
They talk about work.
They discuss the weather.
Everyone is polite.
Nobody talks about anything that actually matters.
I sometimes call this customer service distance.
Think about how you interact with someone when you're working customer service.
You're polite.
You're welcoming.
You're friendly enough.
But you're not giving this person much of yourself because they're essentially a stranger.
Some families learn to interact that way.
It may allow them to maintain some relationship without constantly reopening old wounds.
But I wouldn't necessarily call it reconciliation.
Contact and connection aren't the same thing.
Sometimes Less Contact Actually Makes a Relationship Better
More contact doesn't automatically mean a better relationship either.
Maybe talking to your mother every day leads to constant arguments.
But dinner twice a month is enjoyable.
Maybe seven days together at Christmas is too much for everyone.
Three days works.
Sometimes distance gives people time to miss one another.
Sometimes it gives them an opportunity to appreciate things they stopped noticing.
Sometimes it allows everyone enough space to show up differently when they are together.
The goal doesn't have to be maximum access.
The goal can simply be finding a relationship that everyone involved can actually sustain.
How Do You Know Repair Is Happening?
One of the biggest things I notice when families begin repairing is that they become less interested in determining who was right.
That doesn't mean accountability disappears.
It doesn't mean the past no longer matters.
But the conversation begins changing.
There is less defensiveness.
People become more capable of holding space for one another's experience.
They can hear something painful without immediately preparing their rebuttal.
The questions begin moving away from:
Who did what?
Whose memory is correct?
Who started it?
And toward:
How do we want to do this differently?
What do you need from me now?
How can I show up in a way you can receive?
They can begin discussing things that previously would have caused a rupture.
Most importantly, they start allowing the other person to be different.
That matters.
If someone is forever required to remain the person they were during the worst period of the relationship, there isn't much room for repair.
And How Do You Know a Family Isn't Ready?
Sometimes people aren't ready.
One of the biggest signs for me is when the goal is still:
I need you to hurt like I did.
I need you to understand how badly you hurt me, and I won't believe you understand until I see you hurting too.
That's human.
It can come from years of feeling dismissed or unseen.
But it isn't a place where repair can stay forever.
The same is true when someone comes into a conversation prepared to tell the other person everything they're angry about but unwilling to hear anything difficult in return.
Their hurt matters.
Their anger matters.
Their experience matters.
And the other person's does too.
Each person's individual healing ultimately belongs to them.
When we come together to work on a relationship, the job becomes learning how to hold space for another person's experience even when hearing it is uncomfortable.
Family therapy can't simply become a courtroom where everyone presents their evidence and waits for the therapist to announce who won.
Maybe This Is a Family Transition Crisis
This is where I keep landing.
I absolutely believe family estrangement exists.
I don't think it should be minimized.
And I don't think every estrangement could have been prevented if everyone had simply communicated better.
Sometimes relationships end for very serious reasons.
But I also think some families begin moving toward estrangement because they never successfully figured out how to transition from:
parent and child
to:
adult and adult.
A parent imagined one role in their adult child's life.
The adult child imagined another.
Neither person is necessarily wrong.
But the expectations don't match.
The adult child experiences the parent's involvement as control.
The parent experiences the adult child's independence as rejection.
So the adult child creates more distance.
The parent gets scared and pursues harder.
The adult child experiences that pursuit as further proof that their boundaries aren't respected.
The parent experiences the increased distance as proof that they're losing their child.
Both people become more certain that the other person is the problem.
And eventually, sometimes, there really is an estrangement.
I wonder what would happen if we started having the conversation earlier.
What do you imagine our relationship looking like now?
How often do we want to see each other?
What kind of involvement feels supportive?
What feels intrusive?
Which traditions matter most?
What do you imagine my role with your children being?
What do you need from me?
What can I realistically give?
Those conversations won't always make everyone happy.
Sometimes they will create sadness.
Sometimes disappointment.
Sometimes a parent will have to grieve the adult relationship they imagined.
Sometimes an adult child will have to accept that their parent cannot provide the relationship they hoped for either.
But disappointment doesn't have to become estrangement.
People can adjust.
Expectations can change.
Relationships can change too.
You Can Build Your Adult Life Without Killing Your Childhood
Growing up doesn't have to mean leaving your family behind.
It does mean the relationship has to change.
When an adult child builds a partner relationship or a family of their own, the structure changes.
Parents and siblings who once made up their nuclear family may become extended family.
That doesn't make them less loved.
It doesn't make them disposable.
It means the adult child is building something of their own.
Parents have a transition to make too.
At some point, our adult children are no longer ours to guide unless they ask us to.
There can be grief in that.
But there is also something really beautiful available on the other side of it.
The opportunity to know your child not simply as your child, but as the adult they became.
And for adult children, growing up doesn't require erasing the family that came before you in order to prove that the life you're building belongs to you.
You can build your adult life without needing to kill your childhood.
Maybe the question isn't simply why adult children are leaving their families.
Maybe we also need to ask why so many families are struggling to figure out how to stay connected once the relationship is no longer primarily between a parent and a child, but between two adults.
That transition may involve disappointment.
It may involve grief.
Parents may have to give up some authority.
Adult children may have to take on the responsibilities that come with the independence they want.
Both may have to let go of some of the relationship they imagined.
And both have to make room for the other person to be different from who they expected them to be.
Maybe that isn't a sign that the family is breaking.
Maybe it's the work required for the family to become something new.
About This Series: Breaking the Silence: Understanding Modern Family Estrangement
This series explores the increasingly visible conversation surrounding adult children and parents, family estrangement, boundaries, no contact, trauma, therapy, accountability, and reconciliation.
The goal is not to convince families to reconcile at all costs.
It is not to convince anyone that estrangement is inherently healthy or unhealthy.
And it is not to decide who is right.
It is to make room for something that can be surprisingly difficult to find in conversations about family estrangement:
Nuance.
Previously in This Series
Part One: Are Therapists Contributing to Family Estrangement? Looking Beyond the Headlines
An exploration of therapists' influence, validation versus agreement, diagnosing family members who aren't in the room, boundaries, no contact, accountability, and what repair actually requires.
Part Two: Is Family Estrangement Really Increasing, or Are We Just Talking About It More?
A closer look at what research can actually tell us about prevalence and whether technology, accessibility, and changing expectations for family connection may have changed how we experience and describe relational distance.
About the Author
Sarah Benitez-Zandi, MSW, LCSW is a trauma and relationship therapist and owner of Trauma Wise Healing LLC. Her Cycle Breaker approach integrates trauma informed, attachment focused, somatic, and relational work with individuals, couples, and adult families.
Her family therapy work includes supporting adult children, parents, siblings, and family of origin relationships navigating relational injuries, boundaries, disconnection, estrangement, reconciliation, and intergenerational patterns.
Sarah provides virtual psychotherapy to clients in Wisconsin, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Minnesota, North Carolina, Indiana, Colorado, and Virginia.
This article is educational and is not intended to provide individual mental health treatment, diagnosis, or medical advice.
Sources & Further Reading
Manning, L. B., & Modica, C. A. (2026). “Developing a Measure of the Dialectics of Parenting Adult Children as Sources of Intergenerational Ambivalence.” Journal of Family Psychology. This research examines some of the competing needs that can emerge between parents and their adult children, including connection and separation, hierarchy and equality, and the needs of parents and adult children.
Birditt, K. S., Miller, L. M., Fingerman, K. L., & Lefkowitz, E. S. “Tensions in the Parent and Adult Child Relationship: Links to Solidarity and Ambivalence.” Research examining common areas of tension between parents and adult children and the ways different developmental needs and expectations may contribute to them.
van Gaalen, R. I., Dykstra, P. A., & Komter, A. E. “Where Is the Exit? Intergenerational Ambivalence and Relationship Quality in High Contact Ties.” Research that helps complicate the assumption that frequent contact necessarily means a parent and adult child have a uniformly positive relationship.
Lendon, J. P., Silverstein, M., & Giarrusso, R. “Ambivalence in Older Parent Adult Child Relationships: Mixed Feelings, Mixed Measures.” Research highlighting the complexity of relationships between parents and adult children and the importance of considering perspectives from both generations.
Birditt, K. S., Fingerman, K. L., & Zarit, S. H. “Adult Children's Problems and Successes: Implications for Intergenerational Ambivalence.” Research examining some of the tensions that can occur as parents balance wanting to help their adult children with wanting them to successfully establish adult lives.
Dr. Joshua Coleman. Coleman's clinical work on estrangement and reconciliation between parents and adult children informs portions of the relational framework discussed throughout this series.