It's the holiday season. The time of year when many of us go back home to see our families. But this year, a lot of people aren't going home, and maybe haven't been back in a long time. 27% of Americans are estranged from at least one family member, and the term "no contact" is increasingly being used to describe estrangement between adult children and their parents. But is estrangement happening more often, or are we just more open to talking about it? And is our culture around family shifting? Host Brittany Luse sits down with culture journalist Kui Mwai and Whitney Goodman, licensed marriage and family therapist and the host of the Calling Home podcast, to find out.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Why are adult children going no contact with their parents?
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It's December.
We are deep in holiday season, the time of year when many of us go back home to see our families. But this year, a lot of people aren't going home and maybe haven't been for some time.
I've been happily estranged from my mother since March of 2010. I've recently become estranged with my parents because I am in a relationship with a woman.
I am estranged from both of my parents and six of my seven siblings.
Those were TikTok users Kay Creasel Art, Ill B. Crown, and Laura Gray C. We're talking about familial estrangement. One study showed that 27% of Americans are estranged from at least one family member. There's been a lot of chatter about estrangement this year. Stories about it have been written up in the New York Times, Vox, and Vogue in the past year. And a common theme among those stories?
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Chapter 2: What are the statistics on familial estrangement?
Estrangement happening between adult children and their parents. Which left me wondering, is estrangement happening more or is there just more attention on it? And are there bigger cultural changes that are bringing estrangement to the front of our minds? To find out, I am pleased to be joined by Whitney Goodman. a licensed marriage and family therapist and host of the Calling Home podcast. Hello.
And culture journalist, Koei Mwai. Thanks so much for having us. Let's get into it. What's different about the estrangement that's happening now in our current moment as opposed to simply losing closeness with family?
So I have one theory to explain this. And I think that we are so much more connected than we've ever been, especially with our family members using things like social media, texting, email, et cetera, that it's really difficult to just create distance from your family without setting these hard rules or boundaries with people.
You can't really just like move across the country and say, oh, I can't get home for the holidays.
Right. Because we're so interconnected, like estrangement now has to be done much more intentionally, I imagine.
This is something that people are doing because they thought about it and they had to do it. And it was important for them to do it. And it was the option they had to take because pursuing distance likely didn't work.
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Chapter 3: How is estrangement different in modern times?
Yeah, I wasn't able to find data about estrangement rates in the past, but is it happening more or are people just more open about it now?
I meet with hundreds of people every week in groups who have either been on the receiving end of estrangement, they're becoming estranged, And my understanding is that it really isn't happening at much greater of a frequency than it was. I also think this is not like a young people's thing.
I think the reason it appears to be that way is because young people feel most comfortable speaking on social media and sharing about this stuff. Yeah. I meet people who are in their 70s down to their 20s. You know, I feel like it's a lot like divorce. Like it's something that was very taboo. It was kind of embarrassing.
And now it's like a normal thing. So it's not necessarily a new thing as much as some of the stigma around sharing about it has changed.
Yeah. And I feel like family estrangement is moving in that direction where we're talking about it more and saying like, oh yeah, people can have family relationships that are harmful or even abusive or just not good for them. And maybe they need to get out of those relationships in the same way they would need to leave any other type of relationship.
Whitney, your work is about improving relationships between adult family members. And because of that, you work with both estranged adult children and parents. And you've done some surveys with each. What themes are you seeing pop up in how and why estrangements are happening on a personal level?
Yeah, so this was really fascinating. I was able to survey a little over 2,000 estranged adults who are estranged from their parents. And something interesting that I found is that most of the reasons that people are reporting are why they became estranged are to do with emotions in some way. So
About 98% of those adults said that they believed that their parents were emotionally immature and that was a reason for their estrangement. I'm sorry, wait, what was that percentage? It was around 98%.
Sorry, I've never heard of so many people agreeing. I know. On one experience on a survey. That's wild. That is wild.
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Chapter 4: What emotional factors contribute to estrangement?
I think a lot of it is freedom and space. The folks that I spoke to, and even in my own experience, for a lot of people, it seemed like it came down to identity, right? Like my parent isn't seeing this core part of who I am, or they're not hearing about this core experience that I had that made me who I am today. So for a lot of people, myself included, it's an opening up, it's a freeing of space.
But I think it is just like that room to be who you are, to feel how you feel, to live the life that you want to live. I know with my dad this year, as we've kind of gone back and forth and ping ponged in and out of estrangement, I decided to make the decision to be estranged because I was like, I need to have the room to be me again. This is taking up so much space.
So I really think the biggest thing is freedom.
Coming up, are there generational divides in how we want to relate to family? Stay with us.
I just feel like when I talk to them, it causes more harm than good. You see people that get along with their parents so well or have like really good parents. Like nobody's perfect, but like it sucks that you like feel like you don't have that.
And you're so sad even though you know that nothing was being added to you by the relationship. And you know that they're never going to accept you for who you are.
Those were TikTok users Sarah Willeman Rainey, Liv Elizabeth Gifford, and Ilby Crown. We've talked about some of the disintegration that can happen in family relationships on like a personal level. But what are the cultural shifts that are driving these changes and how we relate to family? Kowie, I'd love to hear from you first.
Yeah, well, I definitely think that the pandemic changed everything. And so I think that people are thinking about themselves differently. I think it's completely transformed interpersonal relationships. And even though we're a few years out from the pandemic, I find that we're in something of a puberty of an adolescence when it comes to interpersonal relationships now.
And I think that we're sort of trying to figure out, okay, how do we find those healthy boundaries? How do we take what we learned in the pandemic about ourselves and what we care about and what we want to surround ourselves with and even what community building looks like? And how do we translate that now to a world in which we're not as isolated? There's still a learning curve there.
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Chapter 5: Are there generational differences in family relationships?
Oh, yeah. You're grateful you accept what it is because everybody's family has hardships and it's always hard, but we always love each other. I think builds a pressure that a lot of people either live with or they crumble under.
Yeah. Also, a number of Americans seeking mental health treatment is almost twice as high as it was two decades ago. And I think with that, there's been a lowering of the bar for what constitutes trauma. Like it used to be big T trauma, you know, like a car accident, surviving a fire, being a war veteran, surviving some type of physical attack or assault.
But now there's little T trauma, a lot of, you know, emotional abandonment or emotional neglect that, you know, these are things that can feel extremely devastating and leave emotional scars. And I can't back this up necessarily, but it does seem to me that that shift is generational.
Yeah, I agree with you. I think when you talk about the rise of therapy culture, that I have, of course, actively participated in perpetuating online of teaching people a lot of these words that boundaries and emotional intelligence and all this stuff that, of course, people are now learning that and saying, wow, I don't know if I want to be in relationships where I'm treated poorly.
And this widening of the definition of trauma, that's something that's very, very difficult for parents, right? And I'm a parent. I want to empathize with any parents listening to this who are thinking like, oh my gosh, my child is coming to me and saying I hurt them. in XYZ way. And I didn't know that I was doing something wrong, or this is something we didn't learn about till later.
And that's where I feel like as parents, we have to have some humility around that stuff and say, we used to think it was okay to smoke cigarettes around our kids or smoke cigarettes ourselves. And now we know that's dangerous. That's not a good thing to do. If you exposed your child to that, you would reasonably be expected to be like, wow, we shouldn't have been doing that. I wish I knew.
But I find that with some of these little T things that you're talking about, like emotions, a lot of parents across cultures are much more willing to say like, oh, that wasn't that big of a deal. Get over it. And I think we are learning as a society, especially younger generations, the impact those things can have on you. We're saying like, hey, but you actually did hurt me.
And all I really want you to do is recognize that, right? And try to learn how to do better and maybe apologize so that we can have a better relationship moving forward.
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Chapter 6: What cultural shifts are driving estrangement?
Chapter 7: How does social media influence estrangement?
Those were TikTok users Sarah Willeman Rainey, Liv Elizabeth Gifford, and Ilby Crown. We've talked about some of the disintegration that can happen in family relationships on like a personal level. But what are the cultural shifts that are driving these changes and how we relate to family? Kowie, I'd love to hear from you first.
Yeah, well, I definitely think that the pandemic changed everything. And so I think that people are thinking about themselves differently. I think it's completely transformed interpersonal relationships. And even though we're a few years out from the pandemic, I find that we're in something of a puberty of an adolescence when it comes to interpersonal relationships now.
And I think that we're sort of trying to figure out, okay, how do we find those healthy boundaries? How do we take what we learned in the pandemic about ourselves and what we care about and what we want to surround ourselves with and even what community building looks like? And how do we translate that now to a world in which we're not as isolated? There's still a learning curve there.
I think that's happening. I think technology also too plays a huge role, right? Like I think TikTok being a platform not just for getting snippets of information, but also really finding community and being more comfortable to open up about certain things.
Like now if I'm feeling silenced in a relationship, I can go on TikTok and I can find a whole group of people who can rally around me in that feeling, right? I can find support not just in the IRL, but on the online too in a different sort of meaningful way. So I think that those sort of things are playing together.
Whitney, I see you nodding. Yeah, I think you're so spot on, right, about some of these larger shifts. I think when you see like, oh, I can find other people that seem like they like me and they want to be around me, I might choose to spend more time with them. I also think that generationally, I have noticed a major shift in what people value in relationships.
So, you know, millennials that I work with definitely report wanting relationships with more emotional intimacy and authenticity. And when they cannot get that from their families, they might go elsewhere where we look at like some Gen X, I think Gen X is split, but like Boomer, Silent Gen was more like, you just push everything down to get along.
You know, that was like the name of the game, right? And there's a lot of generational, I think, kind of infighting over that because we have different ideas about what it means to be quote unquote family, right?
I've been thinking a lot about just how much the standards have been raised for all relationships, even in my lifetime. And I'm a millennial. I feel like I was taught when I was younger that I should look for a romantic partner who respects me. But I don't feel like we're taught more generally to expect respect from family members. Like the phrase is respect your elders, not respect your children.
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