What’s Ripping American Families Apart?

NY Times ^ | July 29, 2021 | David Brooks

[daniel1212]

At least 27 percent of Americans are estranged from a member of their own family, and research suggests about 40 percent of Americans have experienced estrangement at some point. The most common form of estrangement is between adult children and one or both parents — a cut usually initiated by the child...children in these cases often cite harsh parenting, parental favoritism, divorce and poor and increasingly hostile communication often culminating in a volcanic event...

The parents in these cases are often completely bewildered by the accusations. They often remember a totally different childhood home and accuse their children of rewriting what happened. As one cutoff couple told the psychologist Joshua Coleman: “Emotional abuse? We gave our child everything. We read every parenting book under the sun, took her on wonderful vacations, went to all of her sporting events.”...

there seems to be a generational shift in what constitutes abuse. Practices that seemed like normal parenting to one generation are conceptualized as abusive, overbearing and traumatizing to another..."you can be a conscientious parent and your kid may still want nothing to do with you when they’re older.”...

Coleman...argues...the function of family has changed. Once it was seen as a bond of mutual duty and obligation, and now it is often seen as a launchpad for personal fulfillment...Some kids seem to think they need to cut off their parents just to have their own life. “My mom is really needy and I just don’t need that in my life,” one Ivy League grad told Coleman. In other cases, children may be blaming their parents for the fact that they are not succeeding as they had hoped...

Major depression rates among youths aged 12 to 17 rose by almost 63 percent between 2013 and 2016. American suicide rates increased by 33 percent between...

[fireman15]

What about we are dramatically overthinking this situation, because being estranged from someone in your family is nothing new and probably hasn't changed over the years...

You make some good points but they contradict the experiences of especially those of us who live in liberal hot beads. The elderly have truly been abandoned in many parts of the country and it goes hand in hand with the left's villainization of previous generations and condemnation of our nation's history.

It is not a problem of "dramatic overthinking"; we are witnessing an undeniable trend toward the break down of family in this country. It may be a frog in water being heated up on the stove situation in some parts of the country. But if one were to take a snapshot of life in subsequent decades over just the last 100 years, a dramatic and disturbing trend would be very obvious. To deny this is rationally impossible.

369 × 200

[Responsibility2nd]

What’s Ripping American Families Apart?

One word: Divorce.

[Dilbert San Diego]

I have experienced this, such as attending Thanksgiving and someone insists on dropping liberal political statements, and then they take umbrage if anyone takes issue with it. People I know have told me similar stories of domineering annoying opinionated people in their families. It happens.

[a fool in paradise]

Woke revisionism

Leftists are anti-God and plenty of Leftists have given up talking even to their parents because of a difference of political opinion. Numerous books, articles, and at least even one movie bemoaning their “paranoid” parents getting “all of their news” from Fox News, etc.

Academics stated last year that parents shouldn’t be able to home school because they might introduce religion into the course materials.

[FLT-bird]

Blaming parents (or one parent) for not being as successful as they’d hoped or not as successful as siblings.

Yep. That described 2 of the 6 kids in my family. Those two were estranged not just from my mom but from everybody else in the family except each other. They were just really bitter, nasty and jealous even though they had the same opportunities as the rest of us. One has since died. I don’t care. I haven’t spoken to the other in 24 years and never will again. If she were hit by a bus tomorrow I couldn’t care less. The split was entirely their choice.

[a fool in paradise]

And this hasn’t changed. In the 1960s the Yippies and the Black Panthers were saying “kill your parents”. Maoists agree.

[ncalburt]

David Commie Phony Brooks and his treason pals at the Slimes are the enemy of the US .
The Slimes openly employ CCP operatives like the Chinese Commie Court Reporter who uses a fake name and came from a Beijing CCP Military newsletter.

[Toespi]

Liberal indoctrination has become a families biggest threat and they are being taught that relationships with their families must be sacrificed if they do not bend to their progressive agenda. “It is for the greater good and must be punished and conservative parents must be exiled”.

We all have friends and families who are going through this right now. We horrifically did, just did this past week. Our daughter in her mid thirties came to visit from Ohio, with two kids, seven and ten, she is in the middle of a divorce. She got our of her car, and after greetings, I asked what she had paid for fuel on the way and how much it had gone up since the last time she drove here. She threw her hands up in the air, declared it was cyclical, and didn’t want to hear it, obviously it triggered her. The next afternoon we turned “The Five” on in our family room, the kids were in there with us. She comes running out, grabs the kids and sequesters them in their bedroom. (So her son played some war game video while we watched the violent Fox News). This happened again with Tucker and the same the next day, Things started going south and a big argument ensued, not about politics, but anything that could be thrown up at us. Her children are a mess, rude, spoiled and arrogant. In fact when my husband took the ten year old boy for donuts, he started ranting about “poor George Floyd”. I was sitting on the sofa one night with my leg stretched out and her brilliant seven year old daughter who was on the sofa next to me, said “get your feet out of my face” (I was no where near her face). The argument was horrible and she left but not before she screamed “in the last 48 hours you looked like BIDEN sniffed you and licked your cheek, LOL”. It was the most unhinged thing I have ever heard and honestly, deranged. She has become unglued and declares she will not take any crap from anyone ever again.

So for now, this relationship is in shambles and I don’t know how it will change. She made me so sick, I don’t care at this time.

[PGR88]

America was a “balanced system” of political liberty, tempered by religious faith and personal self-responsibility. True Freedom.

The Left turned politics into a quest for government entitlement, destroyed christian morality and turned it outward into fake “social justice,” and perverted personal-responsibility into “self-discovery” and selfishness.

Now we don’t have freedom, we have license.

[Lazamataz]

What’s Ripping American Families Apart?

Werewolves.

[srmanuel]

that’s not what I’m saying at all, but I don’t think the number are really that different than they’ve ever been, it’s human nature IMO....

Think about families you know that splinter when the parents dies and leave behind any amount of money even if it’s trivial....

People marry someone who other members of the family believe is bad, it’s all kinds of reasons which never change......

[upsdriver]

The tax code tore families apart.

[ex91B10]

Alcohol.

When you're a drunk, you do some pretty ugly things, especially to family.

My father's last words to me were "Don't call me, don't write me, don't even THINK about me."

Sober for thirteen years and he still won't speak with me because of the crap I pulled.

[SaxxonWoods]

“Easy answer...The Left’s culture”

Yep, if Government Mommy isn’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. And Government Mommy is never happy.

And She’s about ready to try grounding us again.

[ealgeone]

of LONDON.

[ealgeone]

Oh, it's always climate change....always.

/sarc

[Pigsley]

Here is my take on this from personal observations:

1 The kid has been spoiled and cuts off parents AFTER they pay for Leftist university brainwashing.

2 True abuse. If your parent/s were pretty brutal to you, you don’t want to be around them any more.

[cockroach_magoo]

I thought in London it ended up being Jack.

[PGR88]

Most families I know have a crazy uncle who no one wants to be around....

Yes, that's absolutely true. But with that, one can argue our society has moved to the opposite extreme of "screw him."

[aynrandfreak]

Good point, and love your tagline!