Last year (and the year before) I wrote about child estrangement, where adult offspring increasingly cut off contact with their parents. Public health advocates report a growing mental health crisis among young people since covid that many young people appear to attribute to their parents raising them. Therapeutic estrangement is a growing fad on social media, in which TikTok therapists and sociology gurus on YouTube counsel young adults on becoming estranged, cutting off contact with family members. After I wrote about child estrangement a man contacted me and said a granddaughter had cut contact with the family. It was very painful and hard for them to understand.
It is more common for adult children to cut off their fathers, but mothers tend to suffer the stigma of child estrangement more than fathers. Last December the Wall Street Journal reported that estranged parents are pushing back against what they perceive to be unreasonable demands from their kids that led to estrangement. A support group community has sprung up on TikTok, Instagram and elsewhere, where estranged parents can commiserate with others sharing the same fate.
Another recent trend is parents cutting off their adult offspring and becoming estranged at their own choice:
Across dinner tables and family group chats, a subtle but significant trend is emerging: more Baby Boomers are disengaging from their adult children—not with dramatic confrontations, but with quiet withdrawal. Phone calls go unanswered, holidays go uninvited, and relationships once steeped in sacrifice are fading into estrangement. Unlike the well-documented cases of children going “no contact” with their parents, the reverse—parents cutting off their grown kids—is now becoming a topic of serious social and psychological concern.
According to research from Dr. Karl Pillemer, a Cornell University sociologist and author of Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them, over 25% of American adults are estranged from a close family member, with parent-child estrangement being the most common. And increasingly, it’s not just children initiating the break.
A lot more common than total and complete estrangement (no contact) is parents and offspring establishing boundaries and maintaining low contact. More from MSN:
While Millennials and Gen Z have championed the language of boundaries and healing trauma, Boomer parents are increasingly adopting the same tools. Articles and advice columns once written for children looking to escape toxic parents are now being mirrored in Boomer-focused media—encouraging older adults to protect their peace, even if that means stepping back from difficult children.
Some parents have quietly come to the conclusion: if my child is never satisfied, constantly critical, and I always end up hurt—why am I staying in this relationship?
Another reason parents are stepping back from their adult children is due to financial and inheritance expectations. Again, from MSN:
What begins as occasional support—help with rent during a tough stretch, covering an unexpected expense, assisting with childcare—can evolve into something more consistent. And when that shift happens without clear boundaries, it can leave parents feeling less like a safety net and more like a financial extension of their adult child’s life. That’s often where resentment starts to build…
Another catalyst is emotional burnout and unreciprocated support. Some parents (especially from some cultures) view childrearing as an investment that creates a reciprocal obligation on the part of their offspring. Adult children don’t always agree and often themselves expect emotional and financial support well into adulthood, even middle age.
There are also political and social divides between Baby Boomers and the younger generations. One survey found 13% of people have stopped speaking to a family member due to political differences. Woke ideology came out of universities and is more common among younger people. Many believe their parents act like Neanderthals by comparison.
Parents often have different definitions of respect and loyalty. The biggest reason for parental (and child) estrangement is probably that quiet estrangement is no longer stigmatized like it once was. It is difficult to gauge whether estrangement is more common than decades past or if people are more willing to talk about it. Or perhaps words and definitions have changed.
Child estrangement is still relatively rare. More common is reducing contact with clingy parents or offspring. A reasonable compromise is to set boundaries and reduce contact when boundaries are not honored. It also makes one wonder whether estrangement is increasing, or whether we are just hearing about it more.
Read more at MSN News: The silent goodbye: Why some boomers are quietly cutting off their adult children
See also:
Goodman Institute Health Blog: Mothers are Pushing Back Against the Stigma of Child Estrangement
Goodman Institute Health Blog: TikTok Therapists Promoting Family Estrangement Therapy to Young People