Family Estrangement Is Increasing – Are You Ready to Help?

Joshua Coleman, Ph.D.

August 21, 2025

Joshua Coleman, PhD, Author & Psychologist

Tom O'Connor, Publisher

Family estrangement, or the severing of family ties, is increasingly recognized as a prevalent issue, with a significant number of adults estranged from at least one family member. While exact statistics vary, research suggests that roughly one in four Americans may be estranged from a relative.  

Family Estrangement Is Increasing – Are You Ready to Help? When a client experiences alienation from a family member, the pain can persist, unspoken, unresolved, and very hard to work through. Even if reconciliation isn't an option, how can we support clients as they cope with the grief and complex emotions that come with family estrangement? 

Author Joshua Coleman, PhD, is a leading expert for families and individuals dealing with estrangement, parental alienation, couples' conflict, and other life challenges. ​Dr. Coleman is a psychologist in private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area and a Senior Fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families, a non-partisan organization of leading sociologists, historians, psychologists, and demographers dedicated to providing the press and public with the latest research and best practice findings about American families. 

He is the author of numerous articles and chapters and has written four books: The Rules of Estrangement (Random House); The Marriage Makeover: Finding Happiness in Imperfect Harmony (St. Martin's Press); The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework (St. Martin's Press); When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don't Get Along (HarperCollins).

According to Joshua Coleman:

Family Estrangement 

I think family estrangement is becoming more common, and troublingly so it's becoming more acceptable. I think there's a kind of social contagion that happens through Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit, where cutting out your toxic family member is becoming sort of an act of personal expression and identity, rather than what it often is, which is an expression more of avoidance. I'm not saying that there aren't places where, of course, there are. There are abusive, problematic parents or family members who, no matter how well you communicate with them, they're not going to change, and they can continue to be abusive, hurtful, and destructive in one form or another.

However, my colleagues and I are working with parents and families where that is not the case, specifically with those who would do anything, who are willing to undergo therapy, attend family therapy, and take responsibility. They're being told, No, my therapist says you're a narcissist or you're a gaslighter. And it's a massive problem in our society. We have a culture that's very rich in the language of separation, individuation, labeling, and diagnosis, but a completely impoverished culture around ideas of connectedness, interdependency, and mutual reliance.

I was impacted by estrangement in my own family. I was married and divorced in my 20s and have an adult daughter whom I'm very close to now. Still, there was a period in her early 20s when she cut off contact with me, in part as a result of my becoming remarried and having children from my second marriage, and her feeling somewhat displaced in many ways. And so when she was in her early 20s, she had stopped talking to me for really several years, which was easily the most painful, awful thing I've ever been through or hope to go through again.

Adult Children

Divorce is enormous, but it's not the only cause. What many adult children say as well - it's the result of abuse, you know, childhood abuse or neglect. And that's - certainly in my practice, I see that as well. But here's where it gets complicated. In the past three or four decades, we've radically changed the notion of what we label harmful, abusive, neglectful, and traumatizing behavior. And so often, you have the adult child talking about their childhood as being traumatizing, hurtful, neglectful, et cetera, and the parent going, "What are you talking about? You know, I gave you the best childhood imaginable. I would have killed for your childhood." And so they're often really talking past each other in ways. So a lot of my strategy with parents is helping them to learn how to blend these two concepts so that they're not so alienated.

The most significant barrier for parents is often their own unawareness of how much their culture of origin has changed. They often hold onto the idea that the adult child owes them something, and they'll motivate their adult child through guilt or feelings of obligation. My mission has been to help parents learn how to communicate effectively with their adult children, often drawing on therapeutic concepts and principles. And for those parents who can do so, they typically, although not always, usually have a good deal of success in reconnecting.

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Dr. Joshua Coleman's advice has been featured in major publications like The New York Times, The Times of London, and Psychology Today. He has served on the clinical faculties of the University of California at San Francisco and the Wright Institute. Josh offers a workshop on Family Estrangement at a reduced cost. Contact him at Josh@drjoshuacoleman.com.

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tinM-Lori Gottlieb, psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of MAYBE YOU SHOULD TALK TO SOMEON