Nearly three in ten Americans are cut off from a close relative
An October 2022 YouGov poll found that 29 percent of Americans were estranged from a parent, child, sibling or grandparent. Estrangement is often treated as rare and shameful, so few talk about it. Yet one study found that over half of such rifts were patched up, at least for a while, within ten years.
Estrangement means a family relationship shrinks to little or no contact for a long stretch, and often at least one side wants it to end. The rejected person may experience something like ostracism, which strikes at basic needs to belong, to feel in control, to keep self-esteem and to find life meaningful. It can trigger grief that never quite resolves, because the lost relationship might still, in principle, come back. For the person who walks away, especially from abuse or constant conflict, health and wellbeing can improve, and in surveys most estranged adults report feeling better afterwards.
Causes vary. Many rifts involve a third party, such as an adult child's spouse or a stepparent. In one study, divorce was cited by 12.3 percent of parents and 2.3 percent of children, and child abuse by 13.9 percent of children who initiated estrangement. Clashes over sexuality, religion, politics or choice of partner, addiction, mental illness, disputes over inheritance and changing ideas about good parenting all play their part.
Culture matters. Parent-child estrangement is about twice as common in the United States as in Israel, Germany, England or Spain, and scholars link this to individualism. Here researchers divide. Some see a rapid widening of what counts as harmful or abusive, and a newer tendency, since the late 20th century, to frame cutting off family as personal growth. Others see a self-protective response to genuinely harmful relationships, and recent studies of adult children describe the decision as gradual and considered rather than impulsive.
The consequences can surface late in life. Social workers caring for elderly people report that absent family members make the last days of life markedly more painful.
Source: Family estrangement
