From polarised politics to growing awareness of how difficult relationships can impact our mental health, there are many reasons that drive family estrangement.
Content creator Chassity Marchal recently made a video to share her own take on the subject, and by saying that children shouldn’t be judged for cutting ties with their parents, she has ignited a heated debate on who bears the responsibility in these situations.
Judging from the discussion, there aren’t any easy answers. However, one thing is for sure: as much as anyone would like to be on good terms with their folks, it’s not always possible.
Content creator Chassity Marchal made a sincere video, explaining why she thinks people have the right to go “no contact” with their parents
Image credits: Liza Summer (not the actual photo)
“Stop telling people who have no contact with their parents that they need to either make things right, they need to talk to their parents”
“‘That’s your mom, like, how can you just not talk to her?’ I had someone on my live yesterday saying that my mom is not guaranteed tomorrow, and that should give me the reason that I need to talk to her.”
Image credits: chatswithchass
“I have 26 years’ worth of things that have happened”
“I just know that if it was my husband that was saying or doing the things that my mom has done, that y’all would not be telling me that I need to stay with him and talk to him and make it work. So why is it different when it comes to parents?”
Image credits: chatswithchass
“I don’t care who you are. I have boundaries. I’m not gonna let people treat me just whichever way they want to treat me”
“Also, keep in mind that me being no contact with my mom was not an easy decision for me. It is not something I wanted to do or that I took lightly, and I’m still not happy about it. I don’t want to have this sort of relationship”
Image credits: chatswithchass
“I don’t want to be doing this, but I’m also putting myself first and doing what I feel is best”
What makes these situations really difficult is that when they arrive at estrangement, parents and adult children are often looking at the past and present through very different eyes.
Estranged parents tend to say that their adult child is rewriting the history of their childhood, accusing them of things they didn’t do, and/or failing to acknowledge the ways in which the parent demonstrated their love and commitment, while adult children frequently say the parent is gaslighting them by not acknowledging the harm they caused or are still causing, failing to respect their boundaries, and/or being unwilling to accept the adult child’s requirements for a healthy relationship.
“Never before have family relationships been seen as so interwoven with the search for personal growth, the pursuit of happiness, and the need to confront and overcome psychological obstacles,” historian Stephanie Coontz, the director of education and research for the Council on Contemporary Families, told The Atlantic. “For most of history, family relationships were based on mutual obligations rather than on mutual understanding. Parents or children might reproach the other for failing to honor/acknowledge their duty, but the idea that a relative could be faulted for failing to honor/acknowledge one’s ‘identity’ would have been incomprehensible.”
As Chassity’s video went viral, it inspired other creators to chime in as well
Experts believe that rifts in families are becoming more common, particularly with adult children stopping contact with one or both parents. For example, a study from 1997, which explored family relationships in later life, found that 7 percent of adult children had cut ties with their mothers and 27 percent with their fathers. But in 2020, research by sociologist Karl Pillemar showed that as many as 1 in 4 Americans could be estranged from their families—or roughly 67 million people.
In these and other studies, common reasons given by estranged adult children are emotional, physical, or sexual abuse in childhood by the parent, toxic behaviors such as disrespect or hurtfulness, feeling unsupported, and clashes in values.
Parents, on the other hand, are more likely to blame the estrangement on their divorce, their child’s spouse, or what they perceive as their child’s entitlement.
And it spawned a lot of reactions
Many of which came from people with similar stories
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