The Wall Street Journal has a new article out titled “Why Are So Many Adults Cutting Off Their Parents?” about the rising levels of family estrangement in our society.
“Many experts believe that estrangements between adult children and their parents are becoming an epidemic in the U.S., just like divorce in the 1970s,” writes Elizabeth Bernstein. “Much like then, the movement is driven by a convergence of large societal trends — this time the rise of social-media algorithms, changing therapeutic approaches and a broadening definition of trauma.”
As has become the fashion these days, Bernstein largely pins the blame for this phenomenon on TikTok.
“Last month, more than 138,000 new videos that mentioned cutting off or going low-contact with parents were posted on TikTok, up more than 10-fold compared with August 2020,” Bernstein writes, adding that “More than 82% of the posts were by women.”
What gets very little consideration in Bernstein’s article is the much more obvious contributing factor to this rising trend: the fact that many parents are horrible to their children.
The reason divorce became an “epidemic” in the 1970s (though I would never use that word for it) is because people stopped feeling pressured to remain trapped in abusive and hurtful marriages. This rising trend in family estrangement looks very much the same.
It turns out that in a secular society without a lot of rigidly enforce patriarchal cultural doctrine, you actually have to be a decent person to your children if you want them to have a continued relationship with you into adulthood. Gone are the days where your progeny would feel pressured to maintain a relationship with you even if you choose to be an asshole to them, as much as that fact might annoy your average aging wealthy conservative Wall Street Journal reader.
You can no longer force your kids to have a relationship with you, in the same way you can no longer force your spouse to stay married to you. And just as the normalization of divorce has meant that spouses can no longer be abusive to each other if they want to remain married, the normalization of estrangement now means we as parents need to step up our game.
Without any enforceable cultural leverage to coerce our adult children to maintain a relationship with us, we need to make sure we’re giving them positive reasons to come calling. We need to be decent. We need to be kind. We need to be respectful and pleasant to be around. Because if we’re not, there’s no guarantee our kids will stay in our lives.
And that’s as it should be. There is no other type of relationship in which someone is expected to remain in contact with a person who is cruel to them. If I refused to be decent to my adult children, I would expect them to stay away from me. That’s completely normal.
I said this on Twitter a few hours ago and got dogpiled by conservatives calling me the devil incarnate. My notifications are currently full of angry people furiously defending their God-given right to treat their children like garbage and expect zero repercussions of any kind. Apparently conservatives are all about personal responsibility until you suggest that they are responsible for their own behavior toward their kids, because it makes them collapse into a bunch of blubbering crybabies.
I’m right, though. Of course I am. Be kind to your kids or they’ll stop talking to you. That’s the most normal position anyone could possibly put forward.
I have heard it said that the way our adult children treat us is our performance review for our job as parents. I couldn’t agree more.
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"There isn't a single person on this planet who is entitled to treat you badly. Remember that."
“I have heard it said that the way our adult children treat us is our performance review for our job as parents.” is exactly correct.
Once a child is an adult and no longer dependent on their parents/guardian, they’re free to make their own decisions and choices. If a parent/guardian has nurtured, nourished and protected the child while demonstrating love, devotion and appropriate response to the developing child’s talents and needs, chances are that same adult child will reciprocate. If not, well, ‘you reap what you sow’. For what it’s worth, that’s my take as a parent and grandparent.
I’m so grateful for this nearly daily injection of clarity and rational analysis by Johnstone. It’s my lifeline and often a wake up call.