Adult children cutting off contact with their parents can leave moms and dads shocked, heartbroken, and searching for answers.
The new partner shift
Most parents often assume that their child’s spouse, partner, or friend group somehow brainwashed their adult child to reject the family. From their perspective, their son or daughter was loving and content until a controlling person came along and suggested cutting them off.
Parents feel extremely helpless watching someone come into their child’s life and rewrite years of family history and poison an adult child/parent relationship.
A single flame spreads
Some parents remember the beginning of estrangement starting with one little fight that suddenly blew up. They will often remember a fight about holiday plans, getting into a misunderstanding through text, or saying something silly that was misconstrued.
Ending all communication seems like a huge, melodramatic reaction to one little error that could have been remedied by talking.
The generation gap
Changes in political or religious views, parenting methods, or personal values can cause an enormous disconnect between generations. Many parents believe their adult children disown them just because they are ‘old-fashioned’ or speak their mind about topics that go against how their child is currently living their life.
To the parents, they feel as though they are being persecuted and muzzled for living their life by the beliefs they have always known.
Modern mental health
Many older parents often believe that contemporary therapy and mental health culture pathologize what they see as normal family disagreements by labeling them “toxic” or “abusive.”
They think terms like “boundaries” and “gaslighting” are trendy buzzwords that allow adult children to ditch family responsibilities rather than dealing with difficult feelings. They resent therapists who advise children to cut family members off entirely instead of helping them heal family relationships.
Past hurts, today’s wounds
Parents are often the first to admit they made mistakes raising their children but feel as though they are punished for those mistakes forever. They will often remind you that they raised their children in poverty or during a divorce or when they were super stressed but did the best they knew how at the time.
They feel hurt when their adult children won’t forgive them for mistakes after years of love, money, and care poured into them.
Drawing the wallet line
Money issues are one of the most common reasons sons and daughters become estranged, as seen through parents’ eyes. Parents say strife reached its height when they ended financial support, declined to loan a large sum of money, or placed conditions on family finances.
When an adult child cuts contact soon after refusing financial assistance, parents believe they were used and that their child only cared about what they had to offer materially.
Losing to the in-laws
One of the biggest complaints parents have is that they feel displaced after their child gets married and forges a relationship with their in-laws. Many parents feel as though the other in-law’s family gets all the holidays, birthdays, and visitation rights with grandchildren.
Gradually, resentment builds, and the adult child disconnects from the parents so there isn’t continuous conflict between two sets of parents.
Battle over raising grandkids
Parents complain that their kids insist on too stringent, rigid rules about feeding, disciplining, or entertaining grandchildren. Children see advice (even from well-meaning parents with 30 or more years of experience) as disrespectful or crossing boundaries.
It devastates parents to be made to feel like they’re no longer grandparents for giving grandchildren too many sweets, too much advice, or too much love.
Echoes of childhood jealousy
Parents are often confused when adult children complain they showed favoritism or played them against each other. Parents point out they loved each of their children equally, although they may have treated them differently as each child had different needs. When an adult child wants to cut them off because of childhood sibling rivalry, parents feel wrongfully accused of normal sibling jealousy.
Picking a side after a split
Adult children sometimes feel pressured to take sides when their parents divorce later in life, even when both parents attempt to shield them from the conflict.
Parents who are cut off after a later-life divorce often complain that the other parent spoke poorly about them to the kids or otherwise turned the children against them. The parent who has been rejected mourns the loss of two relationships: their marriage and their connection to their adult child.
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