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Debunking Myths About Estrangement
New research challenges the deeply held notion that family relationships can’t be dissolved and suggests that estrangement is not all that uncommon.

By CATHERINE SAINT LOUISDEC. 20, 2017

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It’s the classic image of the holidays: Parents, siblings and their
children gather around the family table to feast and catch up on one another’s lives. But it doesn’t always work that way.

After years of discontent, some adults choose to stop talking to their
parents or returning home for family gatherings, and parents may
disapprove of a child so intensely that he or she is no longer welcome home.

In the past five years, a clearer picture of estrangement has been
emerging as more researchers have turned their attention to this kind of
family rupture. Their findings challenge the deeply held notion that
family relationships can’t be dissolved and suggest that estrangement is
not all that uncommon.

Broadly speaking, estrangement is defined as one or more relatives intentionally choosing to end contact because of an ongoing negative relationship. (Relatives who go long stretches without a phone call
because of external circumstances like a military deployment or
incarceration don’t fit the bill.)

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“To the extent you are actively trying to distance yourself and maintain
that distance, that makes you estranged,” said Kristina Scharp, an
assistant professor of communication studies at Utah State University in
Logan.

Last month, Lucy Blake, a lecturer at Edge Hill University in England, published a systematic review of 51 articles about estrangement in the
Journal of Family Theory & Review. This body of literature, Dr. Blake
wrote, gives family scholars an opportunity to “understand family relationships as they are, rather than how they could or should be.”

Estrangement is widely misunderstood, but as more and more people share
their experiences publicly, some misconceptions are being overturned.
Assuming that every relationship between a parent and child will last a lifetime is as simplistic as assuming every couple will never split up.

Myth: Estrangement Happens Suddenly
It’s usually a long, drawn-out process rather than a single blowout. A
parent and child’s relationship erodes over time, not overnight.

Kylie Agllias, a social worker in Australia who wrote a 2016 book called “Family Estrangement,” has found that estrangement “occurs across years and decades. All the hurt and betrayals, all the things that accumulate, undermine a person’s sense of trust.”

For a study published in June, Dr. Scharp spoke to 52 adult children and
found they distanced themselves from their parents in various ways over
time.

Some adult children, for example, moved away. Others no longer made an
effort to fulfill expectations of the daughter-son role, such as a
48-year-old woman who, after 33 years with no contact with her father,
declined to visit him in the hospital or to attend his funeral.

Still others chose to limit conversations with a family member to
superficial small talk or reduce the amount of contact. One 21-year-old
man described how he called and texted his mother, but not his father,
after leaving for college. “They still live together so obviously he
noticed and that bothered him,” he said.

Estrangement is a “continual process,” Dr. Scharp said. “In our culture, there’s a ton of guilt around not forgiving your family,” she explained.
So “achieving distance is hard, but maintaining distance is harder.”

A complete rupture can be years in the making. It’s been three years
since Nikolaus Maack, 47, has had contact with most of his family. But
he started distancing himself from his parents and siblings a decade
before. “I was staying away,” said Mr. Maack, a civil servant in Ottawa. His father’s temper had always kept him on edge, he said, and he felt
that holiday meals were particularly uncomfortable and demeaning.
Eventually, Mr. Maack stopped attending Christmas festivities altogether.

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Reached by email, Mr. Maack’s father declined to be interviewed but
insulted Mr. Maack and said he no longer considered him a son.

Myth: Estrangement Is Rare
In 2014, 8 percent of roughly 2,000 British adults said that they had
cut off a family member, which translates to more than five million
people, according to a nationally representative survey commissioned by
Stand Alone, a charity that supports estranged people.

And 19 percent of respondents reported that another relative or they
themselves were no longer in contact with family.

Myth: There’s a Clear Reason People Become Estranged
Multiple factors appear to come into play. In a 2015 study, Dr. Agllias interviewed 25 Australian parents, each of whom had been cut off by at
least one child. The reasons for the rupture fell into three main
categories. In some cases, the son or daughter chose between the parent
and someone or something else, such as a partner. In others, the adult
child was punishing the parent for “perceived wrongdoing” or a
difference in values. Most parents also flagged additional ongoing
stressors like domestic violence, divorce and failing health.

A woman once insisted to Dr. Agllias that she had not spoken to her son
and his wife in seven years because she asked her daughter-in-law to
bring a specific dessert to a family gathering, and the daughter-in-law
had deliberately brought the same one she had baked. The mother-in-law
saw it as “a symbol of total disrespect,” Dr. Agllias said, yet she revealed other factors that had undermined their relationship, including
that she felt her son’s wife sometimes kept the grandchildren from her
and didn’t properly take care of her son. The dessert, Dr. Agllias said, became a symbol of the “cumulative disrespect” she felt.

Myth: Estrangement Happens on a Whim
In a study published in the journal Australian Social Work, 26 adults
reported being estranged from parents for three main reasons: abuse
(everything from belittling to physical or sexual abuse), betrayal
(keeping secrets or sabotaging them) and poor parenting (being overly
critical, shaming children or making them scapegoats). The three were
not mutually exclusive, and often overlapped, said Dr. Agllias, a
lecturer at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Most of the participants said that their estrangements followed
childhoods in which they had already had poor connections with parents
who were physically or emotionally unavailable.

For instance, Mr. Maack resented that he was routinely left in charge of
his two younger siblings, so much so that he decided never to have
children of his own.

After years of growing apart, the final straw was his wedding day.

In 2014, he and his longtime girlfriend decided to marry at City Hall
for practical reasons: They realized she wouldn’t be able to inherit his pension, otherwise. He didn’t invite his family, in part because it was
an informal gathering. But also because a brother had recently married
in a traditional ceremony, during which his father had backed out of
giving his speech. He worried that his father might do something
similarly disruptive. He did not want to invite him and said he didn’t
think anyone else would come without him.

“I agonized over inviting them or not, for a long time,” he said, “but
in the end, decided, ‘I can’t have them there.’”


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His family found out he was married through Facebook. One brother told
him he was hurt he wasn’t even told. And his sister and father made it
clear they would no longer talk to him, according to Mr. Maack and his
wife. Two other relatives confirmed their account.

These days, one brother still talks to Mr. Maack, mostly through
Facebook messenger, but they don’t talk about the others.

A version of this article appears in print on December 26, 2017, on Page
D1 of the New York edition with the headline: When Families Fall Out.
Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/well/family/debunking-myths-about-estrangement.html

-------------------------------------------------
then follow up https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/learning/teaching-activities-for-debunking-myths-about-estrangement.html

Teaching Activities for: ‘Debunking Myths About Estrangement’
Article of the Day

By CAROLINE CROSSON GILPIN JAN. 3, 2018

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Nikolaus Maack of Ottawa started distancing himself from his family a
decade ago. Estrangement is neither rare, sudden, nor easy to explain, researchers say. Credit Alexi Hobbs for The New York Times

Before reading the article:

Do you know anyone who doesn’t speak to his or her parents, or siblings?
What is that person’s story, and what do you think about it?

How common do you think family estrangement is, and what are some of the reasons behind it?

Now, read the article, “Debunking Myths About Estrangement,” and answer
the following questions:

1. What have researchers discovered about family estrangement over the
last five years?

2. How is estrangement defined?

3. What countries are focusing on estrangement research, and what are
the details of those studies?

4. What are two myths about estrangement mentioned in the article, and
what are the facts and discoveries that debunk those myths?

5. What are the three main reasons adults report being estranged from
parents?

Finally, tell us more about what you think:

Do you think reconnection and reconciliation should be a goal in cases
of family estrangement? If so, why? If not, why not?

How does social media complicate or ease family estrangement, and why?

For more from The Times on the topic, see “Negotiating Conflicts, Part
1: Family Grudges,” from 2013, and “In the Facebook Era, Reminders of
Loss After Families Fracture,” from 2012.

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