When Adult Kids Cut Parents Out of Their Lives

Parent-child estrangement is surprisingly common. Here’s why it happens and how families can heal.

Following her husband’s death more than 10 years ago, Kim Padilla suffered a double grief: Her daughter Sandy cut off contact. Kim reached out many times, desperately trying to understand what happened. But Sandy’s only response was to double down: She banned her mother from seeing her grandson.

Kim describes her resulting pain as crushing. “There’s a sadness in me that just will not go away,” she told Karl Pillemer, Ph.D., a professor of human development at Cornell University and author of Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them.

Kim’s situation isn’t uncommon. A staggering 27% of American adults are estranged from their families, according to Pillemer’s research. The phenomenon affects one in five families in the UK, according to similar research from the charity Stand Alone.

When family estrangement occurs, dads are most likely to be cut off. A recent study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family found adult children are four times more likely to be estranged from their fathers than their mothers.

But moms are not immune. Megan Gilligan, a sociologist at Iowa State University, studied 561 later-life families in Massachusetts and found 11 percent of mothers estranged from at least one of their children.

What’s driving the trend

For as long as families have existed, living together has presented challenges. Harsh or abusive parenting, divorce, money squabbles, and conflict around hot-button issues such as politics and religion have always been part of the picture.

But today experts point to new factors fueling family dramas, including celebrities who’ve gone public about their parental breakups.

Stories from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Angelina Jolie, Macaulay Culkin, and Drew Barrymore, among others, provide a virtual template for those looking to cut off contact.

Another motivator is the internet. Google “toxic parenting,” and dozens of sites appear, offering support and advice on how to “cancel” or “divorce” a parent.

On her blog, The Narcissist Family Files, writer Julie L. Hall writes about cutting ties with “narcissistic” or “toxic” parents and counsels those seeking to follow suit.

In a post about how to cut a toxic parent out of your life, Greatist refers readers to multiple resources, including Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Mothers Who Can’t Love, and Children of the Self-Absorbed.

Psychoanalyst Galit Atlas, Ph.D., says in an op-ed that canceling a parent can be seen as an extension of a larger cultural movement — one aimed at correcting imbalances of power and systemic inequality.

“Today's social justice values respond to this reality,” Atlas writes, “calling on us to censure oppressive and harmful figures, and to gain power for those who have been powerless.”

She describes the vein of online advice about toxic parents as an ineffective form of self-help that only serves to deepen the trauma. She believes the approach unnecessarily burdens young people by encouraging them to do the heavy lifting of emotional work on their own. “It urges them to reject parental figures altogether,” Atlas says, “avoiding any kind of dependency on another person.”

The road to reconciliation

Fortunately, there are alternatives to isolation and permanent family rupture. Pillemer notes that since it’s most often the adult children who break ties and parents who have the most to lose, it’s generally up to the parent or parents to initiate reconciliation. Here are some of the strategies he recommends:

• Give up your desire for the other person to accept your version of the story. Instead, focus on the future of your relationship.
• Seek to understand what role you played in the conflict. Even the most abusive situations are a dynamic, two-way process. You don’t have to accept fault, but you do need to consider your level of responsibility.
• Decide on the “least you can accept” in the relationship. Sometimes an initial step can lead to a more satisfying outcome. For example, one mother, for the sake of restoring contact, agreed to keep her second husband away from the grandchildren — a stipulation her daughter had insisted upon. (Eventually, all the daughter’s demands fizzled, and everyone reconciled.)
• Other strategies: Gaining the perspectives of relatives who haven’t taken a side, seeking professional counseling, or journaling from the other person’s point of view.

When reconciliation doesn’t work

Even when amends seem to be out of reach, there are ways estranged parents can cope. One example is from Pat Hanson, a grandparent who has been prevented from seeing her granddaughter for the past 13 years.

Hanson finds solace in letter writing. She’s penned hundreds to her granddaughter, hoping someday the girl will find and read them.

Hanson, who writes the blog Invisible Grandparent, says the practice has freed her from negative energy, and has helped her endure the pain of prolonged estrangement.

Moving forward

Families who have gone through the process of reconciliation say it can be emotionally grueling. There are highs and lows and starts and stops. Some compare it to running a marathon.

But for those who pass the finish line, the benefits are many. Among them: Reconcilers can regain access to support and resources, build stronger bonds with extended family members, avoid future regret, and rediscover enjoyment in the holidays.

Pillemer says reconciliation provides “a positive, sometimes even life-changing experience.”

That’s no small thing. And as reunited families agree, it makes all the effort worthwhile.

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