Posted on 06/21/2026 8:17:48 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
That’s the opening line in Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina.” It’s an eye-catcher, but one wonders if he’d write those words if he were living in 21st-century America. Distinctions marking unhappy families may still apply, but more and more of those families share one thing in common:
Estrangement.
This phenomenon—siblings breaking all contact with siblings, adult children turning their backs on parents and grandparents, or vice versa—is growing, and growing fast. A 2025 YouGov poll found that 38 percent of American adults are estranged from at least one family member. North Carolina writer and therapist Paula Rinehart wrote that “about 1 in 4 adult kids has reportedly gone ‘no contact’ with a parent.”
Columnist Mirinda Kossoff shares the heart-wrenching story of her estrangement from her two middle-aged sons, who apparently sided with their father during a divorce many years earlier. Psychologist and writer Andrea Gurney notes that, in her practice and all around the country, “A growing cultural phenomenon known as ‘going no contact,’ in which an individual severs ties with a family member, has become increasingly common.”
Additional toxins are now poisoning family relationships. A major shift in American culture emphasizing individual happiness and fulfillment over family obligations has created tensions that finally snap. Some critics point as well to helicopter parenting as a cause, the widespread practice of closely monitoring and guiding children that was rare 50 years ago, which consequently drives some young adults to rebellion and going no contact. Because of helicopter parenting, some young adults also lack the resilience to meet life’s challenges, which includes taking a stand against their parents’ intrusions and directives.
That’s when it seems easier just to walk out the door and not look back.
“Love is a labor of love,” therapist Annie Lefler told The Epoch Times. “There is no way you’re going to have a relationship without working at it. And because of our culture, where everything is made so easy for us, as soon as anything is difficult, we just want to give up.”
Married for 20 years and the mother of two teens and an adolescent, Lefler works in a group practice in Scranton, Pennsylvania. While she’s only practiced family and adolescent therapy for three years, she brings some unusual gifts and insights to her profession.
For one, though she has lived in the United States for almost 30 years, Lefler is a native of Benin in West Africa. In that country and around most of the continent, the idea of “no contact” is practically non-existent. “Family ties are much stronger than they are here,” she said. “There’s no uncle that nobody talks to anymore.
It’s very pro-community, very pro-peacemaking, trying to include everyone.”
Even today, when she visits relatives in Benin, she sees an extended family in action rather than the nuclear family more typical of the United States. There’s also a sort of organization to family interactions. “Often there is one person in the family, usually the oldest, usually a woman, who has the job of gathering everybody, the one who organizes parties, the one who lets people know when somebody has a problem,“ she said. ”It’s very communal.
It’s not obviously organized, but after a while, you realize there are some people that are key people, the people that you go to for different things.”
Lefler recognizes the good that comes from American culture, imbued in the values of individualism and personal liberties. “Americans are very hard-working people,” she said, “so in that sense, they’re tough. But when it comes to social work, that’s harder, and it may be partly because America’s more of an introverted culture. It’s a more do-it-yourself culture, which really goes against ‘let’s all be together.’”
“Aristotle’s big point is that we are able, as human beings, to build habits, either for the bad or for the good,“ she said. ”One of the main things he talks about is the golden mean: that you don’t want too much and you don’t want too little. That protects us from extremism, like this idea that, ‘Oh, I’m just done with this person.’ It also protects us from too little, which is to let someone walk all over us. So virtue is somewhere in the mean where both of us can flourish to the best of our ability.”
Aristotle’s golden mean comes into play in an increasingly popular concept in therapy: boundaries. An adult child—or anyone else in a stressful relationship—can set limits that will allow a relationship to survive and even thrive.
As an example, Lefler uses a holiday visit between parents and their grown children. Instead of coming for a 10-day visit, when tensions are sure to rise, either party can opt for the boundary of a two-day visit. “The idea that good fences make good neighbors is paradoxical,” Lefler said, “because you would think fences separate, but they make good neighbors when they protect the dignity of people.”
These positive boundaries aim at improving relationships, not diminishing them. “People from both sides of the boundary have to change their idea of what a boundary is,“ Lefler said. ”Somebody on the one side, where something just got fenced in, feels hurt, but they have to understand this could allow this other person to become an equal. And the person who’s erected the boundary needs to understand that this is for the sake of more relationship, not for the sake of less relationship. It’s for the sake of eventually being able to meet on an equal footing. And I think we lose sight of that on both sides of the boundaries.”
It’s then that boundaries can become borders with walls, barbed wire, and “No Trespassing” signs.
Many therapists, including Lefler, are aware of the power of online influencers and their contributions to the “going no contact” movement. “I think influencers are very, very dangerous, and I try to warn my clients away from TikTok,“ she said. ”The people on YouTube are not necessarily the same people if you met them in real life.
They have these personas, but it’s all buffed, and if you met them, you might have all these other non-verbal cues that this person is not trustworthy. So that’s a problem.”
Besides shying away from most advice given online, anyone seeking to repair a no-contact relationship might consider the steps recommended by Andrea Gurney at the Institute of Family Studies. Having witnessed such estrangement among my own acquaintances and family members, Gurney’s advice seems right on target for a restoration of harmony. Here’s an annotated list of her suggestions:
We become more fully and more powerfully human when we try to balance “both/and” with humility and insight. “In family relationships,” writes Gurney, “this often sounds like: ’I feel both grateful and frustrated by how my parents handled conflict.’ Both can be true. One does not cancel out the other.”
As Gurney writes, “And when it comes to love—especially love strained by distance or estrangement—this capacity for ‘both/and’ is not optional. It is the very skill that allows relationships to heal, deepen, and begin again.” Reflection, patience, work: These are the essentials if we’re to reestablish a broken relationship. As Annie Lefler said, “Love is a labor of love.”
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What you mean “we,” white man ?
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4366835/posts
‘Going No-Contact’ Is a Blood Sport
Intellectual Takeout ^ | February 11, 2026 | Jeff Minick
Posted on 2/14/2026, 8:37:56 AM by DoodleBob
“Interestingly, (a recent YouGov poll estimating that 38% of Americans are estranged from a sibling, parent/child, or grandparent/child) reveals that large percentages of estranged relatives would in certain circumstances consider reconciliation. Nearly always, it’s up to one of the parties involved to initiate the repairs: a letter, a phone call, a message delivered via a mutual friend or relative. Is this difficult? Absolutely. And if conversation between the aggrieved parties resumes, someone will need to take the next difficult step and say aloud those two tough words, “I’m sorry.” Reconciliation is rarely easy and may require an immense amount of time and effort.”
Been there, done that,..doing it again sometimes
Doesn’t it depend why somebody is estranged?
I know the subject has come up a bit before in regard to politics. Some liberal types are estranged from family and friends who had the audacity to vote for Trump.
There can be good reason to be estranged from someone. I think you’d have to judge cases case by case, as to why an estrangement happened.
Exactly...if your sister tells someone she’s going to poison you...you might want to estrange yourself.
Best thing that ever happened to me was my Dad disowning me for marrying a Jewess.
My brother, sister and mother all killed themselves because of who he was.
I’m a tough son of a b*tch.
I think she was listening to influencers and some of her liberal friends when she disowned us and then figured out for herself how much she relied on us for emotional support and that she couldn’t live without us in her life (but on a limited basis, lol).
I am very sorry, Uncle Miltie. That’s tragic.
I know you’ve grown through that. I had problems with my own father and had to put plenty of distance between us.
The life is not fair and can’t be made so.
In the end, none of that matters, anyway.
Why counter it? We might want to increase it.
The author posits that a symptom should change when instead the causes should be.
Bttt
There is a correlation between the closing of mental institutions and interactions with many people. We're dealing with multiple generations of mental illness, and many of them are breeding.
yes absolutely. Some people I’m related to would murder me in a second with no hesitation or remorse. They’re part of a terrorist organization. I wouldn’t call them family.
“if your sister tells someone she’s going to poison you”
Err..what????????
I’m sorry to hear that.
You are tough
“yes absolutely. Some people I’m related to would murder me in a second with no hesitation or remorse. They’re part of a terrorist organization. I wouldn’t call them family.”
____________________________________________________________
I guess if you’re in a crime family that might be true, but it’s hard to believe anyone in your family would murder you without hesitation or remorse. That is unless you’ve done something so heinous as to deserve it.
“I’m sorry” and “I was wrong” are two phrases liberals are physically incapable of uttering. Life’s too short to hang out with people who hate you, even if they are family. I’ve lost friends over this divide. I’m sorry it turned out that way. But I’m not gonna change. There are far worse things than being alone. Like being with people who tell you you’re wrong with every other breath.
CC
Nature has had to resort to all kinds of tricks to get women to have children, and mental illness is one of its few success stories, not only resulting in more children, but with different fathers. The main reason mental illness is so prevalent, and seems to be getting worse, is because temporary insanity sometimes results in pregnancy.
That's what it often would boil down to!
Regards,
Well, Mr. GG2 spent another Father’s Day without a call from either one of his spoiled, self absorbed lefty children. We finally stopped sending Christmas cards and gift cards to them and the grand kids this past year as they have never even acknowledged it for the past 10 years. I have total disdain for both of them.
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