So Many Adults Are Cutting Off Their Parents. But Are We Asking the Right Question?
The Wall Street Journal is asking why adult children are walking away. After spending the last several weeks writing about modern family estrangement, I think the answer is more complicated than either side wants it to be.
The Wall Street Journal recently published another article about family estrangement, this time asking why so many adults are cutting off their parents.
And I have to admit, I don't entirely disagree with the premise.
We might actually be experiencing something that could reasonably be described as a family estrangement epidemic.
I just don't think "Why are adult children cutting off their parents?" is the most interesting question.
Or even the most useful one.
Is Family Estrangement Really an Epidemic?
The word epidemic certainly gets your attention.
It's dramatic. It's provocative. And after living through an actual global pandemic, I think we should probably be thoughtful about throwing the word around.
But if we step away from the medical context for a moment, an epidemic generally refers to something occurring at a rate significantly above what would normally be expected within a population.
Could family estrangement qualify as a social epidemic of sorts?
Maybe.
Family estrangement researcher and psychologist Dr. Joshua Coleman has raised a related question using an intentionally provocative term:
Is estrangement an "affluenza" problem?
Coleman's argument isn't simply that wealthy people become estranged from their families. He points to a larger body of social-class research suggesting that greater socioeconomic resources can be associated with increased attention to the self, while people with fewer resources may rely more heavily on interdependence and attention to the needs of others.
That's an interesting lens through which to consider modern family estrangement.
Because perhaps part of what we're witnessing isn't simply a change in how many families become estranged.
Perhaps we're also witnessing a cultural shift in how we understand what relationships are for.
Previous generations often operated under a model of family that prioritized obligation, loyalty, sacrifice, and maintaining the family unit, sometimes to an unhealthy extreme.
People remained in relationships that were abusive, destructive, or deeply unhappy because family obligation outweighed individual well-being.
We've pushed back against that.
In many ways, appropriately.
But pendulums have a tendency to swing.
And I wonder whether we've sometimes moved from:
"Your individual needs don't matter because family comes first."
to:
"My individual needs are the only thing that matter because my well-being comes first."
Neither seems particularly healthy to me.
Healthy relationships require both autonomy and interdependence.
I should be able to establish boundaries with you.
You should be able to disappoint me.
I should be able to say no.
You should be able to disagree with me.
I should care about the impact my behavior has on you.
And you should care about the impact your behavior has on me.
That's relationship.
So when we talk about a possible "epidemic" of family estrangement, I'm less interested in deciding whether the label itself is technically correct than I am in understanding the cultural conditions surrounding what we're seeing.
Because there certainly seems to be a culture developing around estrangement.
Social Media Didn't Create Family Estrangement. But It Changed It.
I don't believe social media created family estrangement.
I absolutely believe social media has changed the way we experience it.
Thirty years ago, if you stopped speaking to your mother, you might have known one or two other people with a similar experience.
Today, you can type a few words into Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, or TikTok and find tens of thousands of people who will tell you they understand exactly what you're experiencing.
There can be tremendous value in that.
Someone who has spent years feeling ashamed or alone may finally discover that they aren't the only person struggling with their family.
Someone experiencing abuse may encounter language that helps them recognize behavior they previously believed they simply had to tolerate.
Someone who has never understood why interactions with their family leave them feeling terrible may finally have a framework for examining those patterns.
But there's another side to this.
Online communities can also become echo chambers.
An estranged parent can post, "My daughter won't let me see my grandchildren," and immediately receive hundreds of responses confirming that adult children today are selfish, entitled, manipulative, or abusive.
An adult child can post, "My mother doesn't respect my boundaries," and receive hundreds of responses telling them their mother is a narcissist and they should go no contact.
Nobody in those comment sections knows the family.
Nobody has assessed the relationship.
Nobody knows what happened before the post was written.
But everybody has an opinion.
And because algorithms are designed to keep showing us more of what we engage with, it doesn't take long before one perspective begins to look like the only perspective.
Social media has helped by giving this problem a name and increasing awareness.
It has also harmed by sometimes glorifying estrangement as a goal of healing rather than one possible outcome of a complicated relational process.
When Clinical Language Becomes Internet Language
This is where pop psychology enters the conversation.
"Toxic."
"Narcissist."
"Gaslighting."
"Trauma."
"Triggered."
"Unsafe."
"Boundaries."
These words mean something.
The problem is that some of them now mean almost everything.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a clinical diagnosis. Someone being selfish, emotionally immature, difficult, controlling, or unpleasant does not automatically make them a narcissist.
Gaslighting describes a particular pattern of psychological manipulation. Someone remembering an argument differently than you do is not automatically gaslighting you.
And feeling uncomfortable is not necessarily the same thing as being unsafe.
That doesn't mean these experiences aren't real.
It means language matters.
In my clinical work, when someone tells me, "My mother is a narcissist," my response isn't to immediately agree or disagree.
I get curious.
What has happened that leads you to believe that?
What behaviors are you seeing?
Do you see those behaviors in your parent's other relationships?
What does this explanation help you understand?
What does it help you cope with?
And, sometimes, does this narrative allow you to avoid looking at anything about your own behavior within the relationship?
Because my job isn't to hand someone a villain.
My job is to help them understand the relationship.
Not Everything Painful Is the Same Thing
We also need more precision when talking about trauma.
I often distinguish between what people sometimes call Big T and little t trauma.
There are experiences most of us would readily recognize as potentially traumatic: war, natural disasters, physical assault, sexual assault, severe abuse.
Then there are experiences that may become traumatic for a particular person because of their developmental history, previous experiences, available support, or the way their nervous system responded to what occurred.
Those experiences matter too.
But experiencing something painful does not automatically mean someone has PTSD.
Being emotionally activated is not automatically evidence that you're in danger.
Having an attachment injury within one relationship does not necessarily mean you have an attachment "problem" across every relationship.
Sometimes what we're describing as an attachment issue is actually our nervous system responding to a repeated relational pattern.
Your partner becomes angry and withdraws.
You become anxious and pursue.
They withdraw further.
You try harder to repair.
Repeat that cycle enough times and, yes, it can change how secure you feel within that particular relationship.
That doesn't necessarily mean there is something fundamentally wrong with your attachment system.
It means the two of you have developed an unhealthy relational pattern that needs attention.
The same distinction matters in families.
There is trauma.
There is abuse.
There are attachment injuries.
There is relational harm.
There is ordinary conflict.
There is disappointment.
And there are imperfect parents.
Those things can overlap.
They are not interchangeable.
"I Never Would Have Cut Off My Parents Over This"
I hear versions of this argument frequently.
"I would never have stopped speaking to my parents over something like that."
Maybe that's completely true.
But that doesn't necessarily mean your adult child is fragile or entitled.
It may simply mean you have different non-negotiables.
Context matters tremendously here.
We're talking very differently about a grandparent who left the front door open and let the heat out of the house than we are about a grandparent who repeatedly leaves a young child unattended in a car after being explicitly told not to.
Those are not equivalent disagreements.
If someone clearly communicates, "I am not comfortable with this. If it continues, I will no longer participate in this situation," and the behavior continues, we cannot act completely bewildered when that person eventually follows through.
Which brings us to one of the most misunderstood words in this entire conversation.
A Boundary Is Not an Ultimatum
A boundary tells another person what I am willing to participate in.
Control depends on making you change your behavior because I want you to.
Those are not the same thing.
And I see them confused constantly.
Sometimes a parent genuinely dismisses a reasonable boundary because they don't like the consequence.
But sometimes what is being called a boundary is retaliatory.
"They said they needed space, so I'm taking back the gift I bought them."
"If my kids won't talk to me, I'm not doing anything for them."
"If you don't start talking to me again, I'm taking you out of my will."
Estrangement complicates obligations.
If another adult has chosen not to participate in your life, I don't necessarily believe you are indefinitely obligated to financially support them or continue behaving as though the relationship hasn't changed.
But motivation matters.
There is a difference between changing your own participation in a relationship that no longer exists and withholding money, gifts, inheritance, grandchildren, affection, or access in an attempt to force someone back into compliance.
One is responding to the reality of the relationship.
The other is leverage.
Did Therapy Cause the Estrangement?
This question deserves more nuance than it usually gets.
If a parent tells me, "My daughter started therapy and suddenly decided I was toxic," I'm not going to automatically conclude that an irresponsible therapist convinced their daughter to cut them off.
But I'm also not going to automatically conclude that the parent is lying or refusing accountability.
I'm going to ask questions.
What changed?
What did your daughter begin saying or doing differently?
Were there conversations about these concerns before she entered therapy?
Did she previously try to communicate dissatisfaction in ways you may not have recognized?
What happened when she did?
It's difficult to assign responsibility for a painful decision to someone we love.
Sometimes it's psychologically easier to identify a third party.
The therapist did this.
The new spouse did this.
The in-laws did this.
Their friends changed them.
Someone must have taken our child away from us.
Sometimes outside influences absolutely affect relationships.
But adult children are still adults who make decisions.
There is another possibility I think gets overlooked, particularly with children who learned to fawn within conflict-prone families.
Fawning can look a lot like closeness.
A child may seek approval, maintain frequent contact, avoid disagreement, anticipate a parent's emotional needs, and repeatedly attempt to keep the relationship stable.
To the parent, everything may appear fine.
To the child, maintaining "fine" may have required an enormous amount of emotional labor.
So when that adult child eventually stops participating, the parent may experience the change as sudden and inexplicable.
"I don't understand. We were so close."
Maybe you were.
But maybe what looked like closeness from one side sometimes felt like survival from the other.
That is worth exploring before we decide anyone was brainwashed by therapy.
Therapists Still Have a Responsibility Here
None of this means therapists are beyond criticism.
Quite the opposite.
I think therapists need to become more comfortable challenging clients.
Unconditional positive regard does not require unconditional validation of every interpretation a client brings into therapy.
We should be curious about narratives.
We should explore patterns.
We should help clients recognize their own participation in relationships, even when their participation was simply continuing to engage in an unhealthy cycle or repeatedly trying to make another person change.
And outside of situations involving ongoing safety concerns, I don't believe my role is to tell an adult client that they should cut someone out of their life.
If someone is experiencing ongoing physical or sexual abuse, serious threats, or another situation in which their safety is at risk, protecting themselves obviously becomes paramount.
But outside of circumstances like those, my job isn't to decide whether someone should speak to their mother.
My job is to help them examine the relationship honestly.
What have you tried?
What happens when you communicate directly?
What are you hoping will change?
What happens if it doesn't?
What responsibility belongs to you?
What are you asking the other person to take responsibility for?
What options exist between maintaining the relationship exactly as it is and ending it entirely?
And then the client gets to decide.
Sometimes Parents Really Don't Know
There is a common response online when estranged parents say they don't understand why their child stopped speaking to them:
"Yes you do. They told you. You just refused to listen."
Sometimes that's absolutely true.
Sometimes the adult child attempted the conversation repeatedly and was interrupted, dismissed, told they were too sensitive, informed that their childhood wasn't bad because the parent's childhood was worse, or simply told that their experience didn't happen.
But I don't believe that explains every family.
Sometimes people hint.
Sometimes they withdraw.
Sometimes they expect someone else to recognize that they're upset.
Sometimes they don't know how to have the conversation.
Sometimes they attempted it once, it went badly, and they decided they weren't doing that again.
And sometimes avoiding the conversation simply feels easier.
That doesn't make their feelings invalid.
But if we're interested in understanding estrangement rather than determining which side deserves our allegiance, we have to be willing to examine communication on both sides.
"I Did the Best I Could"
You probably did.
And it still may not have been enough.
Both things can be true.
What doesn't help is responding to someone's pain by explaining why they shouldn't have experienced it that way.
"You're too sensitive."
"You don't know what abuse is. You should have met my parents."
"You had everything."
"I worked constantly to give you that life."
"After everything I sacrificed for you..."
Intentions matter.
Circumstances matter.
Generational context matters.
And impact still matters.
Your child telling you they were hurt does not necessarily mean they're saying you were an awful parent.
Sometimes they're asking whether you're capable of hearing that something you did hurt them without making them responsible for comforting you about it.
Adult Children Have Work to Do Too
Parents aren't the only people I think need to hear uncomfortable things.
Your parents were never going to be perfect.
They weren't intended to be.
They made decisions with whatever emotional maturity, resources, knowledge, trauma histories, financial circumstances, and support systems they had available at the time.
That context doesn't erase harm.
But understanding context can be part of making sense of it.
Your ability to work toward forgiveness also belongs to you.
It cannot remain entirely dependent upon someone else becoming the person you wish they had been.
What you decide to do with that forgiveness is different.
Forgiveness does not require reconciliation.
It does not guarantee access.
And it does not require pretending something didn't happen.
But if healing becomes dependent upon another person finally understanding your experience exactly as you do, you may be handing them considerably more control over your life than you realize.
Maybe We Really Are Less Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
I think there's another cultural piece we need to be willing to talk about.
We have become remarkably good at eliminating discomfort.
Food arrives at our doors.
Packages arrive the same day.
Entertainment starts immediately.
We text instead of calling.
We can block someone instead of having a conversation.
We curate what we see, who we interact with, and increasingly, which perspectives enter our world.
And yes, we gave out participation trophies.
There. I said it.
I don't think any one of those things caused family estrangement.
But I do wonder what happens when an entire culture becomes increasingly accustomed to removing friction.
Relationships require friction.
Healthy relationships require the ability to tolerate being misunderstood long enough to clarify.
They require hearing something we don't like.
They require apologizing.
They require waiting.
They require allowing someone else to be disappointed in us.
They require conflict.
Not abusive conflict.
Not coercion.
Not fear.
But the ordinary discomfort of being deeply connected to another imperfect human being.
Perhaps part of the conversation about estrangement needs to include whether we've become less practiced at tolerating that discomfort.
Family Is Still Different
I do believe family occupies a special category of relationship.
I just think the meaning of that has changed.
Historically, "They're your family" often meant you were expected to tolerate behavior from relatives that you wouldn't accept from anyone else.
I think younger generations are increasingly turning that idea upside down.
Family isn't held to a lower standard because they're family.
They're held to a higher one.
Your mother doesn't get to call you a "fat bitch" and have it be acceptable because she's your mother.
And yes, I'm using that example because my own mother said it to me.
The expectation should arguably be higher precisely because she is your mother.
That's the cultural transition I think we're struggling to negotiate.
How do we preserve the commitment, responsibility, interdependence, history, and belonging that make family different without using "family" as an excuse for behavior that repeatedly harms one another?
I don't think the answer is returning to:
"You tolerate it because they're family."
But I don't think the answer is:
"Any relationship that disrupts my peace is disposable."
There has to be something between those two extremes.
What Happens During the Estrangement Matters Too
This may be the piece of the conversation I wish we discussed more.
When estrangement happens, everyone focuses on whether the relationship will resume.
Will my daughter call me?
Will my mother apologize?
Will I see my grandchildren again?
Will we ever be a family again?
But what are you doing in the meantime?
I would love to see more people navigating estrangement work individually with clinicians who actually understand family estrangement.
Not to convince them to reconcile.
Not to convince them to remain estranged.
To do the work.
Grieve.
Examine what happened.
Take ownership of what belongs to you.
Recognize what doesn't.
Learn how you participate in conflict.
Work on emotional regulation.
Understand your attachment patterns.
Learn how to have difficult conversations.
Figure out which boundaries are actually necessary and which behaviors might be attempts to control an outcome.
And build a meaningful life that doesn't revolve entirely around the estrangement.
Because if the opportunity for reconciliation ever does arise, imagine how different that first conversation could be if both people had spent the intervening time becoming healthier rather than simply building stronger cases against each other.
That's when I believe reconciliation becomes possible.
Not when everyone agrees about who was right.
Not when someone finally wins.
Not when one person has been punished sufficiently for causing the estrangement.
But when two people can come to the table with a common goal:
We want a better relationship.
Can we understand each other's experiences?
Can we hold space for the hurt?
Can we acknowledge our own contributions?
Can we learn skills that keep us from recreating the same relationship that brought us here?
If the answer is yes, there may be something to work with.
Maybe We're Asking the Wrong Question
So, are we experiencing an epidemic of family estrangement?
Maybe.
But I don't want us to become so fascinated with counting estranged families that we stop asking what is happening around them.
Social media has changed.
Technology has changed.
Therapy has changed.
Parenting has changed.
Our understanding of trauma has changed.
Our expectations for emotional intimacy have changed.
Our tolerance for certain family behaviors has changed.
Our communities have changed.
And perhaps our tolerance for ordinary relational discomfort has changed too.
Which brings me back to the idea of "affluenza."
Perhaps one of the most important cultural shifts isn't simply that people have become more willing to leave unhealthy relationships.
In many circumstances, that's progress.
Maybe the larger question is whether, somewhere along the way, we've struggled to find the balance between individual well-being and healthy interdependence.
I don't want to return to a culture that says:
"Your individual needs don't matter because they're family."
But I don't want to embrace one that says:
"My individual needs are the only ones that matter because I have to protect my peace."
Maybe what we've lost somewhere between those two extremes is healthy interdependence.
The ability to care about myself without becoming indifferent to you.
The ability to tolerate discomfort without tolerating abuse.
The ability to have boundaries without using them as weapons.
The ability to remain an individual while recognizing that being in relationship with other people requires something from us.
So instead of only asking:
Why are so many adults cutting off their parents?
I think I want to ask:
What role are shifts in social media, technology, parenting, therapy, and our increasingly individualistic culture playing inside our homes, and what can we do to move toward caring for ourselves and one another in healthier ways?
Because I don't think the solution is returning to a world where people tolerate anything because "that's your mother."
And I don't think the solution is building a world where the only person whose comfort matters is our own.
Maybe the harder work is somewhere in between.
Learning how to care about ourselves without becoming indifferent to one another.
Learning how to establish boundaries without weaponizing them.
Learning how to tolerate discomfort without tolerating abuse.
Learning how to hold people accountable without reducing them to the worst thing they've ever done.
Learning how to forgive without pretending.
Learning how to apologize without demanding immediate absolution.
Learning how to recognize when a relationship is genuinely unsafe.
And learning how to remain connected to other imperfect human beings without requiring either them or ourselves to be perfect first.
Maybe that's the conversation we should be having.
Additional Reading
The Wall Street Journal
Why Are So Many Adults Cutting Off Their Parents?
This is the article that prompted this response.
Read the article
Dr. Joshua Coleman
Is Estrangement an "Affluenza" Problem?
Coleman explores research on social class, individualism, compassion, and interdependence and considers how those cultural dynamics may intersect with family estrangement.
Read Dr. Coleman's article
Continue Exploring Family Estrangement
If you're new to my writing on this subject, this article builds on my six-part series:
Breaking the Silence: Understanding Modern Family Estrangement
Part One: Are Therapists Contributing to Family Estrangement? Looking Beyond the Headlines
Part Two: Is Family Estrangement Really Increasing, or Are We Just Talking About It More?
Part Three: Maybe We Don't Have a Family Estrangement Crisis. Maybe We Have a Family Transition Crisis.
Part Four: What Does Family Reconciliation Actually Require?
Part Five: Acceptance Without Approval: Can We Move Forward When We Remember the Past Differently?
Part Six: When There Is No Path Forward: Life After Family Estrangement (coming 10/5/26)
Together, these articles explore estrangement from both sides of the relationship, including the role of therapists, generational differences, accountability, reconciliation, grief, boundaries, and what happens when repairing the relationship isn't possible.
Exploring Family Estrangement or Reconciliation?
Whether you're an adult child trying to understand your relationship with a parent, a parent navigating estrangement from an adult child, or a family considering whether reconciliation is possible, these relationships are rarely as simple as choosing who was right and who was wrong.
At Trauma Wise Healing, I work with adult children and their parents navigating family-of-origin trauma, attachment injuries, estrangement, and the possibility of reconciliation.
Family therapy can provide a structured space to explore whether a different relationship is possible when both people are willing to participate.
Individual therapy can also provide space to process grief, examine relational patterns, take ownership of what belongs to you, establish healthier boundaries, and prepare for the possibility of future reconciliation without making reconciliation the only measure of healing.