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 so much to everyone for engaging with this article. I hope to have shed some light on one of the many complex facets of estrangement. My goal here is to continue to provide resources and information to guide you on your healing journey.
Children in America are ungrateful snots. 😒 and every article I read is training children and grandchildren to reject old values, and cancel you if you don’t join them . They are taking America to HELL on earth . I would rather live the rest of my 20 years 😪 completely alone, than to agree with their globalist woke ,no Jesus, multicultural, sexual perverted rainbow society. Proverbs 14 12 The ways that seem right to mankind, lead to destruction and death.
You seem well adjusted. It doesn’t seem like you’re living with a bitter Bronze Age mindset at all. I totally can’t figure out why your kids want nothing to do with you.
Sweetie, Ray Charles and even Stevie Wonder Can see why Bobby has been cut off by his own sons and daughters.
Wow a Westboro klans member learned to use the internet to whine about not being liked by even their own children that escape the cult
(Jk. I know Westboro and the kkk have beef with each other. Just wanted an excuse to remind people of that because it’s objectively funny seeing them go at it).
Empathy is necessary from both sides and I believe when divorce poisoning is involved that causes it with a false narrative then there is not much hope. I believe therapy encourages estrangement and I think it should first encourage reconciliation with the parent . If reconciliation is not possible then estrangement is probably necessary. However many younger therapists encourage estrangement that in a lot of cases is not thoroughly investigated to see if it’s truth or false narrative perpetrated by another parent or Daughter in Law or Son in Law or even other family members like a grandparent or aunt and uncle. So to say estrangement should be truly investigated or the mental health of all will suffer greatly. If estrangement is no choice then there will be an upside to your well-being not running away from difficult conversations it will not feel good. I’m both an estranged daughter (from narcissistic father and negligent mother) it wasn’t a decision taken lightly and it took many years to make that decision and my father was a diagnosed narcissist not made up by my unprofessional diagnosis that many adult children spew. As an estranged mother who had a beautiful relationship with her children for 22 years till I divorced and divorced poising happened. I think we need to separate completely and make it more public what abuse is, what constitutes a healthy parent adult child relationship, what is considered a good healthy upbringing and what forces (divorced poisoning) can cause an otherwise healthy relationship dissolve and through it all say reconciliation therapy should happen or conflict resolution before estrangement is the answer. Too many children and parents are suffering. We have become a throwaway society instead of an empathetic understanding communicative and conflict resolution society. It’s blame, grandstand and discard. Zero tolerance and no unconditional love and respect for each other. Just me me me! It will be interesting to see how all will fair long term. Parents die, wills are being rewritten and history erased. Does the punishment Estrangement fit the alleged crime? Only time will tell. Let’s be assured, silence is violence to all! No one can argue that communication and thoughtful steps to resolving family conflict is not better except in violent situations for your mental health.
NPD is genetic and often triggered to manifest by long term childhood trauma.
You don’t really paint yourself as being that different from your father either, honestly.
Also no one’s entitled to a relationship with anyone, incel. It doesn’t matter who is “right” in therapy,it matters how ones mental health is affected and how beneficial/mutual the relationship actually is.
And silence is violence only works on issues like police violence, the AIDS crisis and simialr other events where marginalized lives are being discarded and ignored. Not because some entitled old people feel sad that no one likes them or feels obligated to hang around them anymore, despite their unwillingness to even try to consider other people’s perspectives or feelings
My husband and I married when my daughter was 12. They loved each other. He had a 7 year old son at the time, too. The kids got along.
She had a very serious condition that required losing her large colon and anus when she was 12. I devoted all my time with her while my husband worked full time.
She cared about her looks and clothing while growing up. Then, her grades began to fall. She left home when I kicked her out for not following house rules at her 17th year. She rarely bathed, clothes smelled. Her last birthday celebration was when she turned 23 with friends in our home. She recently turned 49 last month. I could go on. She had destroyed my relationship with my mother and siblings. I must close and take care of myself because I deserve it. I am a good person and am seeing a psychiatrist and social worker.
Sounds like she was in a difficult position and when she needed understanding, support, and additional help the most you showed her that you never loved her at all and completely abandoned her because “rules”. And now you think you’re some kind of a victim? And a “good person” that blames your disabled and clearly depressed child for your other relationships failing?
Give me a break.
My younger daughter has been estranged from me for years, it makes it difficult to see my grandson, who is now 14,I usually I call him or try to see his his dad, I am accepting however, it still makes me sad