Requires knowing the right place to start
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November marks the start of a season traditionally comprised of family gatherings and celebrations of long standing traditions. However, as those of us in the estrangement community are aware, there are significant numbers of people for whom the season no longer involves the communal reminiscing of early family memories or continuations of those traditions.
Over the last several years, there has been a surge in media coverage on the topic of parent and adult child estrangement and a growing recognition of the scope of the number of families experiencing it on some level. Common patterns emerge upon review of that coverage and the speculations contained around the phenomenon.
There are the unsubstantiated assertions that there is a rise in the incidence of estrangement. The fact is that there are relatively few studies exploring the demographics or statistics on the topic and those that exist reflect point in time data and not longitudinal trends.
Similarly unsubstantiated correlations are offered regarding the rise in estrangement related hashtags and social media forums as being associated with and causal to the speculated rise in estrangement itself. The suggested causal component of estrangement from social media is the claim of being a trend or a fad within younger generations due to the “encouraging” or “glorifying” content found there.
Rather, the rapid growth in forums on both sides of the experience far more likely reflects the existence across generations of a substantial population already impacted by estrangement where there has been a previously unmet need for community and connection around shared experiences. A specific type of community whose format offers a spectrum of anonymity options around a culturally taboo topic.
Analogously, the invention of left-handed scissors did not spontaneously generate new left-handed people, but provided a needed tool for an up ‘til then unrepresented and ignored group within society.
Commonly, there are suggestions of possible shifts in family values of those who are initiating the estrangement - which predominantly are the adult children.
Then there is the expressed consternation over the expansion in definitions of trauma - derived by similar expansion in knowledge in the fields of mental and emotional health - and the possible role of therapists in spurring a decision to estrange.
The speculations abound.
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What there seems to be not as much of is the evaluation of whether these are the right conversations to have.
None of the speculations on possible causes or supposed trends appear to bring resonant understanding or resolution to the underlying situation: adult children voluntarily and deliberately walking away from what is unquestionably the most important and societally sacrosanct relationship in a human being’s life.
With the declaration of this November as the inaugural observance of Family Estrangement Awareness Month, Together Estranged seeks to help bring a different focus.
As part of its mission to support and empower those experiencing estrangement and to destigmatize the topic within society, the observance is intended to not only help raise awareness of family estrangement during a season that can be difficult for those impacted to navigate, but to help generate productive versus speculative conversation around it.
To understand the causal components within a relational dynamic where there is a decision being deliberately made by one side of the relationship to remove themselves from it, the best source of information on those underlying factors are the ones who made those decisions.
Recently, Whitney Goodman, a licensed marriage and family therapist, author, and host of the podcast Calling Home which focuses on adult family relationships, conducted informal surveys with both estranged parents as well as estranged adult children and reported those results over the course of three episodes.
One of the biggest areas of disconnect the survey revealed between the two groups was on the experience of emotional maltreatment. The vast majority of estranged adult children, nearly 80%, cited the experience of emotional neglect and abuse in both childhood and adulthood as being significant factors for the estrangement while the majority of estranged parents did not believe their estranged adult child had actually experienced any emotional maltreatment.
This finding supports the body of academic research that has cataloged the factors cited by estranged adult children for their decision to estrange, and which has identified as well, the wide and seemingly impenetrable disconnect between the parties about their experiences in the relationship.
A meta-analysis of prevalence of different forms of childhood abuse found that emotional abuse is the most experienced form of childhood maltreatment and, when combined with emotional neglect, reflects a prevalence rate of 55% for emotional-related harm done to children. This prevalence rate is for emotional maltreatment on its own and outside of factoring its common co-occurrence with other forms of abuse.
What this points to is a lack of cultural understanding of what constitutes emotional maltreatment specifically within the parent-child relationship and how that manifests - both in childhood and in adulthood.
Contributing to that, in adamantly holding onto the cultural mandate of “honor thy mother and father,” there is a firmly embedded resistance to recognizing the lived experience of the adult child who identifies and rejects ongoing and unchanging relational dysfunction within their family system.
The intensity of that resistance and the associated avoidance to examine the interpersonal factors involved, is reflected in media coverage in the recurring speculative themes of causation around estrangement that focus intently everywhere but at the relationship level itself.
Ultimately, regardless of any other possibly related or contributory factors, the root of the decision to estrange comes down to the quality of the relationship between the adult child and the parent or parents they estrange themselves from - and whether there is any potential to improve it.
The more the cultural conversations can shift to and focus on those relationally-based factors that impact the quality of the dynamic between parents and their children and what the role is of the parent to establish, nurture and maintain that relational dynamic, the better able we will be as a society to prevent estrangement from occurring.
At that point, there will no longer need to be a debate about whether or not estrangement is a trend or a fad.
But to get to that point, the right cultural conversation around family estrangement starts by listening - deeply, authentically listening - to those who have initiated it.
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