How Estranged Parents and Adult Children Can Heal

A recent Cornell study found that 27% of adults are estranged from a family member. Research from Ohio State finds that 26% of fathers are estranged from an adult child—and that fathers are 22% more likely to be estranged from a daughter than a son.

Other studies estimate that 11% of mothers have little or no contact with an adult child. And a recent YouGov survey reports that 38% of American adults are estranged from a sibling, 9% from a grandparent, and 6% from a grandchild. Behind each of these numbers is a story of loss, love, confusion, and hope. Family estrangement is rarely a sudden rupture.

More often, it unfolds slowly—a series of misunderstandings, hurt feelings, mismatched expectations, or unresolved conflicts that accumulate over months, if not years. Parents and adult children are navigating these decisions in a world where the vocabulary of psychology and therapy has become deeply woven into public life.

Terms like “boundaries,” “trauma,” “toxicity,” and “emotional safety” have entered everyday conversation, giving people new ways to name their distress—but also new frameworks for interpreting family relationships through the lens of harm. While this evolution has helped some break free from genuinely destructive dynamics, it has also made family life more fragile, as ordinary imperfections or intergenerational differences can be experienced as evidence of deeper wounds.

Understanding how these cultural forces interact with personal histories is essential to making sense of why so many families today find themselves struggling to stay connected. As a psychologist who researches estrangement and works with estranged families, my practice has become flooded with parents and adult children desperate to figure out how to navigate their relationships.

I’ve learned that reconciliation is difficult not because families are uniquely broken, but because both generations are operating with profoundly different assumptions about what love, repair, and responsibility require. The modern culture of family estrangement Over the past half-century, family life has undergone dramatic shifts, reshaping how we think about the bonds between parents and their adult children.

Today’s cultural focus on self-actualization and emotional health has recast decisions about maintaining—or severing—relationships not merely as personal choices, but as acts of psychological self-preservation. Within this framework, cutting ties with a parent or an adult child may be seen as a legitimate or even courageous step toward safeguarding one’s mental health, pursuing personal growth, asserting a gender identity or sexual orientation, clarifying a political stance, or simply seeking happiness and independence.

While family tensions and the wish to distance oneself are nothing new, framing estrangement as a necessary part of self-development reflects a distinctly modern mindset. “For most of history, family relationships were based on mutual obligations rather than on mutual understanding,” the historian Stephanie Coontz told me.

“Parents or children might reproach one another for failing to honor a duty, but the idea that a relative could be faulted for failing to affirm one’s identity would have been incomprehensible.” Estranged parents and adult children often come to the table with vastly different assumptions about what healing or reconciliation requires. Some of the greatest challenges stem from the changing definitions of what constitutes harm, abuse, trauma, or neglect. When the goal of parenting was primarily to raise a functional, independent adult, the standards for success were relatively clear. But as that goal expanded to include raising a happy, emotionally attuned, and socially fluent individual, the range of potential parental shortcomings has widened accordingly.

Behaviors once considered normal—or even well-intentioned—are now seen as damaging or formative in ways that demand redress. Unlike previous generations in Western societies, where values like filial duty and respect for elders were the organizing forces of family life, today’s parent–adult child relationships operate according to what British sociologist Anthony Giddens termed “pure relationships”—those sustained not by obligation, but by alignment with one’s aspirations for happiness, personal growth, and mental health.

These relationships require emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and communication skills that weren’t expected of earlier generations of families. There’s good news and bad news here. For those who can develop these skills, the reward is often a more open and meaningful connection with their adult children. As one father in my practice told me, “It was very hard to accept my daughter’s criticisms of how I made her feel when I raised her.

But it was only through empathizing and taking responsibility for my actions that she chose to come back into my life. Now I feel like we’re closer than ever.” The bad news is that many otherwise loving and functional parents are being cut off based on therapeutic narratives that may overstate harm and equate estrangement with healing or empowerment.

While some parents cut off their adult children due to incompatible beliefs around religion, sexuality, gender identity, mental illness, and addictions, studies find that the vast majority of estrangements are initiated by the adult child. Why reconciliation is so hard These cultural shifts shape not only why families become estranged, but also why coming back together is so profoundly challenging.

Many parents feel they did the best they could, sometimes under difficult circumstances. Others believe their parenting was good overall, even if imperfect. Some fear that acknowledging past mistakes will be used against them or will only deepen their shame and sense of loss. While these concerns are understandable, taking responsibility is almost always a necessary—if not sufficient—step toward reconciliation.

Sadly, not every parent can offer that. The same qualities that may have complicated parenting—unresolved trauma, difficulty with emotional regulation, rigid views on authority—can also interfere with attempts at reconciliation.

A parent who never addressed their own childhood wounds may shut down or lash out when an adult child tries to talk about painful memories. “You think you had it bad? I would’ve killed for the childhood you had” is a not uncommon, though not typically helpful, response. Others may experience the request for accountability as a reversal of the natural order—why should they, the parent, now be answerable to the child?

For some, especially in cultures that emphasize parental authority and filial obligation, the very idea of apologizing to an adult child feels not only uncomfortable, but offensive. And yet reconciliation doesn’t fail only because of a parent’s limitations. Some adult children reject sincere attempts at repair not because the parent is unwilling to change, but because of their own struggles—with addiction, mental illness, or the influence of a romantic partner who discourages any connection with the family of origin.

In other cases, poorly trained therapists may inadvertently make things worse—encouraging cutoff without exploring other options, misdiagnosing parents, or framing estrangement as a sign of autonomy rather than a possible form of conflict avoidance. The power and challenge of making amends While I don’t recommend that a parent directly ask their adult child for forgiveness, they can create the conditions for it through actions that help the child feel genuinely cared for and understood.

One of the most effective ways to do this is with a sincere letter of amends. At its core, a strong letter acknowledges past mistakes—large and small—and expresses genuine empathy for the child’s experience and its impact on their development.

It avoids common pitfalls like defensiveness, blame-shifting, or self-loathing. Instead, it communicates a willingness to listen, to grow, and to take the child’s pain seriously—even when the parent doesn’t fully agree with the details or characterizations.

Amends letters matter—not just because they say “I’m sorry,” but because they convey the psychological capacities that contemporary relationships demand: self-reflection, humility, and openness to change. They are often the clearest signal that the parent is invested not only in reconciliation, but in becoming the kind of person their adult child can relate to now—not just the parent they remember.

Writing one, however, is often emotionally grueling for parents. It can stir intense guilt, regret, or shame. Some parents worry: “If I admit to this, what does it say about who I am?” Therapists working with estranged parents should approach these roadblocks with compassion.

Resistance is rarely about stubbornness—it’s often tangled up with grief, fear, and identity loss. Helping parents move through these emotions, while still encouraging emotional generosity and accountability, allows the process to become one of strength, not surrender.

And for many, openly acknowledging mistakes—or what their child experienced as such—can be unexpectedly liberating, easing the burden of guilt or regret they’ve carried for years. That said, writing an amends letter doesn’t guarantee reconciliation. Some adult children, no matter how sincere the gesture, won’t respond. Others may require time or remain unsure whether a relationship can be repaired.

But the act of writing the letter can still serve as a meaningful psychological milestone—for the parent, and, potentially, for the child. What forgiveness requires of adult children Forgiveness and reconciliation also require reflection and, in many cases, work on the part of the adult child, if that’s their goal.

For those who have experienced genuine harm—neglect, rejection, abuse—this can be especially difficult. Forgiveness is not forgetting, excusing, or minimizing what happened. Rather, it’s a gradual and often nonlinear process that may include grieving the parent they wished they had, accepting the limitations of the parent they do have, and making meaning out of early experiences that may have once felt senseless or overwhelming.

For some, forgiveness may feel impossible—at least for a time. The wounds are still fresh, the harm never acknowledged, or the safety of the relationship still in question. In these cases, maintaining distance may be a necessary and self-protective act. And even for those who do want reconciliation, the fear of being hurt again—or of having their pain minimized—can make forgiveness feel like too much to ask.

Some may not trust their own ability to set limits on hurtful behavior while remaining in contact. Or they don’t feel sufficiently distanced from the parent’s influence to know they can hold on to their feelings of self-esteem if the parent behaves in ways they find hurtful.

In other words, the parent’s voice is still too powerful an influence. While therapy and self-help culture have helped many identify painful patterns and validate childhood experiences, these same tools have sometimes fostered a kind of psychological determinism—one that places heavy emphasis on parental mistakes as the central or sole cause of adult suffering.

The reality is more complex. Research has found that while early caregiving matters, so do many other forces: genetics, temperament, peer relationships, siblings, class, cohort, historical context, and simple bad luck.

Not every struggle with boundaries, mental illness, attachment, or trust is the direct result of parenting. For adult children who are open to it, expanding this view can be liberating. It doesn’t erase what happened, but it may soften the grip of the past. It may allow them to see their parents not only through the lens of harm, but also through the lens of limitation, fallibility, or even shared humanity.

It may also shift the focus from needing a parent to change in order to feel whole, to developing an identity that no longer depends on parental validation or alignment. As one newly reconciled adult child told me, “If you keep insisting that your parent has to change in order to have a relationship with you, maybe you’re the one who should change.” Forgiveness, in this light, becomes not about condoning or reconciling, but about loosening the hold of grievance—especially when that grievance has begun to shape one’s sense of self.

It’s about reclaiming personal agency, and making space for the kind of life the adult child wants to lead, regardless of what the parent can or cannot offer. Therapists can support this process by helping adult children reflect on whether continued estrangement still serves their well-being, or whether it has come to reinforce a narrative that no longer feels aligned with who they are becoming.

For some, estrangement may still be necessary. For others, the door may inch open. Either way, forgiveness—when it’s possible—is not an erasure of the past. It’s a decision to live less at the mercy of feeling hurt or wronged.

Decades of research find that forgiveness—whether or not it leads to full reconciliation—can lower stress, improve physical health, and strengthen emotional resilience. For adult children, the act of forgiving a parent can reduce the lingering physiological effects of anger and grief, while fostering greater empathy and perspective taking.

When that forgiveness is paired with a genuine willingness to re-engage, it can also reopen pathways to shared history, mutual support, and the repair of broken bonds. Estrangement is rarely a simple story of villains and victims. Repair, when it’s possible, asks something of everyone involved. Forgiveness—whether it leads to reconciliation or simply to a gentler inner stance—remains one of the most powerful tools we have for loosening the grip of grievance and restoring a sense of agency, compassion, and emotional freedom.

In a time when more families are growing apart, remembering our shared humanity may be the first step toward finding our way back to one another—or, at the very least, toward carrying our histories with greater freedom and clarity.