Thursday, 4 December 2025
Damage across the generations
A Mother/Grandmother’s perspective on family estrangement; with comment from Dr Terri Apter (University of Cambridge).
21 November 2025
Two years ago, our lives changed. My husband and I had been away for a month, and we returned home to provide childcare for our grandchildren as planned. During the holiday, connection with our daughter had seemed to dwindle. We'd been sending photos and messages, with one or two going unanswered. But when we still hadn't caught up to make the arrangements and the week was already underway, it worried us. Our daughter's detachment, and lack of any interest in our lives, had been troubling us.
We were about to be cast out into a wilderness. There was no tragedy you might expect preceding these events. No divorce, major illness or addiction to contend with. There was no background of feuds or dysfunction. We looked after our grandchildren regularly, providing help with their childcare since they were born. There was no conflict around the usual cross-generational triggers. We were in agreement with our daughter and her husband about the children's best interests, and happy to take guidance from them.
My daughter had had a lot of stresses – illness in the family, a house move, a change of job, plus a hangover from the pandemic to deal with. We looked for practical ways to help where we could. We made allowances for her coldness.
My husband called her to sort out the arrangements, and asked her to open up about what was wrong. Looking back, the effort was clumsy and clearly ill-timed. In the course of the call he told her he loved her and that she mattered to him. He wanted to know what was the cause of the distance that had come between us, and what could be done about it. She reacted very badly; she seemed angry, said he was putting pressure on her, and cut him off.
There followed a week where we gave her space and hoped she would come round. She didn't. We haven't seen or spoken to her since – two years now.
This is an appeal for psychologists, and any others with influence, to understand the costs of adult children going 'no contact' with their parents, and the casualties when grandchildren are also involved. Should this ever be validated or encouraged, aside from the important exclusions of serious cases of physical, emotional or sexual abuse? Nobody would begin to argue that in those serious cases it is not entirely right and appropriate; but beyond these circumstances, would you defend or even encourage an adult child to take action such as this, resulting in damage across the generations? To make this choice rather than to work instead at finding a solution? And how much help is out there for families in these circumstances?
A shocking realisation
We each apologised to her in the early weeks by email, for contributing in any way to her stress. We asked for guidelines that would help us move forward. Our aim was to reconcile… that was the important thing. But as all this was unfolding and I struggled to make sense of it, an alarming idea occurred to me – was she possibly, even unconsciously, blaming us for her troubles? Turning on a safe close target?
We didn't address that directly – we loved her unconditionally, and simply appealed to her for perspective – it all seemed out of any proportion. Her written reply, when one did come, was so angry that we reeled from the shock of it.
We pulled back for a bit and then, rather than trying to defend ourselves, we asked for compassion and focused on requests to see our grandchildren. But eventually, we were blocked from all communication. We continue to send our grandchildren cards and gifts by post, but with no acknowledgement that they had reached them. There are no Zoom calls or photographs, no updates. There's a blocking of information from any other sources which even, it became apparent, involved recruiting extended family to the campaign.
We reached out for help from our close core family group – her brother, her aunt and others. But there followed a shocking realisation that there was no desire for reconciliation. Mediation was rejected out of hand. I have written many hundreds of words, but none of it penetrates the wall that has been built to keep us out. Many of these messages are met with complete silence. I learn painfully what gaslighting is and how utterly wounding silent treatment can be. I wake up daily with a feeling that my chest is constricted, and then remember what is weighing down on me.
Occasionally I have some respite. I dream about them. I'm hugging them, and feel convinced for a few moments that we can fix this. It doesn't last. Nothing has worked.
An ugly story
How have we come to this? What have our relations with our families been like to bring about this outcome? Have they been poor, fractious, toxic even? All I can say is that we had no previous indications of this. In a way that feels worse, because what is there to fix? We have somehow become bad – villains, even. Is there no recognition of years of practical emotional and financial support? It's not that we expected reciprocity. It was not transactional, given as it was out of love and a belief in showing that love through actions. But there is no goodwill here for us and no compassion, and that alarms me. What kind of thinking leads to this?
I am realistic enough to know that we are being judged by others on how this looks. We must have done something awful to bring about such an extreme reaction from our daughter. When our son and his wife throw their lot in with them and also cut us off… well, surely that's further confirmation that we deserve this.
What is the best we can expect now? Is there any sort of closure for grandparents subjected to estrangement at the hands of their own adult children? Where do you go with it? What do you do with the hurt? Is it possible to repair and rebuild shattered identities, which were almost wholly 'mother and grandmother', 'father and grandfather'? And is there realistically potential to heal in these final decades of life, when everything has been upturned so brutally?
All our relationships have been impacted, but others have been fatally damaged as the ripples of a family estrangement extend in widening circles around us. How do I relate any more to friends, contemporaries who are almost all grandparents? If I avoid the pain, and also the effort this now requires of me, then isolation and loneliness become my companions. It is a difficult story for us to share and difficult for others to hear, even with those who still do care about us. What kind of people can we be, whose son and daughter have rejected them? And what words of comfort can be offered anyway? It's a very ugly story.
A call for more status
The road to recovery requires a belief that things can get better, but we feel cast aside and worthless. We are grief-stricken, and at times we allow ourselves privately to be angry. I dream that I am utterly cast adrift and have lost my bearings. That I don't know this place. I desperately want to go home or at least find a safe harbour, but I know that this is really about family and how all my efforts are failing.
Grandchildren have no automatic rights for the relationship with their grandparents to be maintained. Grandparents have no rights for contact with their grandchildren, even though their role is recognised as important. We are advised that in the family courts there would be no requirement for parties to attend mediation. But does this protect the rights of children to their extended family life and the value that many grandparents bring to it?
And yet this close relationship results in benefits for both generations, research shows. There needs to be more focus on it, as well as the potential for real psychological harm to both young and old. It should be better recognised in law – not to ultimately deny a parent's rights, but to recognise it as an important welfare issue and something worth preserving.
'A balanced view of parental efforts versus a child's experience is, in the context of estrangement, unattainable…'
A comment from Dr Terri Apter, University of Cambridge.
Family rifts are a staple of stories, from the Bible to Greek myths to contemporary plays, novels and TV series. But it is only in the past decade that psychologists have begun to explore how and why one family member deliberately breaks off contact with another. In 2015, Hidden Voices: Family Estrangement In Adulthood, a collaboration between Dr Lucy Blake and Becca Bland, explored the experiences of 800 people estranged from their families. In 2023, Joshua Coleman's book Rules of Estrangement mapped the varied and very painful dynamics of family estrangements, primarily from the parents' perspective. In my 2025 book Grandparenting: On Love and Relationships Across Generations I explore estrangement through the consequential loss of access to grandchildren.
There are as yet few models of this complex and often chaotic dynamic. As in so many cases when an adult child and parent are estranged, the author's daughter initiates the estrangement for reasons her parents cannot fathom. The question she poses to 'psychologists (and others with influence)' is whether a child's rejection of a parent 'should ever be validated or encouraged' where there is no evidence of physical/sexual abuse. Yet in one-to-one therapy, clients often seek resonance for their belief that a difficult parent/child relationship results from the parent's 'toxicity' or 'narcissism'.
Coleman, however, who works with many estranged parents, insists that the toll on the rejected parents should be a significant consideration. The costs in terms of pain, loneliness, self-doubt and a consequent loss of relationships with, for example, grandchildren, are high. Perhaps the core therapeutic principle of empathy with and reflection of the client's perspective needs to be challenged?
The grandparent's question appears measured and reasonable, but in the context of family estrangement it is largely irrelevant. Any approach based on the assumption that justifications and harms can be weighed fairly on each side is likely to be futile. The perspectives of child and parent in such cases are often unrecognisable to one another. The parent has warm memories of wonderful times with the child and knows they had only good intentions, while the adult child reels off a staggering list of harms that a parent inflicted and perhaps continues to inflict. Refuting these accusations is likely to be seen as proof of the parent's unwillingness to understand the child. Perhaps the adult child's view is manipulated – for example, by a partner who for some reason wants to alienate their in-laws – but a parent's self-defence is no match for whatever influence is currently shaping the child's views. If the child blames a parent for how their own life turned out, then a parent's reminder of the support and encouragement they offered will simply reinforce the child's belief that their parent wants to make them feel guilty or 'bad'. Appeals to the child to consider the parent's need for connection are also likely to be counterproductive; perhaps such appeals reinforce the child's view that the parent thinks only of themselves.
A balanced view of parental efforts versus a child's experience is, in the context of estrangement, unattainable. The rejecting child will shut down in the face of a parent's pleas to be given a fair hearing. Such efforts will be interpreted as attempts to prove the child 'wrong'. However painful, Joshua Coleman advises, a parent must listen to the child's complaints and find some kernel of truth. Empathy with the child's accusations is difficult but necessary. So to some extent the rejected parent needs to 'validate' the child's view, but this does not require self-flagellation. The message, 'I know you are doing this because you genuinely feel this is best for you and I want to understand why', may reassure the child that it is safe for them to repair the relationship.
But what if, as in this case, the rejecting child is unmoved by such parental efforts? What if they ignore or 'ghost' the parent, meeting every gesture of reconciliation with cold silence? There is little a parent can do to shift the gears of this relationship if a child remains stuck in the grooves of resentment. The most a parent can do is signal their willingness to reconnect. At intervals, they can send a message conveying good wishes and a hope that soon the child will be willing to open up and assure the child that when they do, you will listen without defending yourself or arguing against their position.
It is estimated that 1 in 7 grandparent is denied easy access to grandchildren by an estranging child or child-in-law. Establishing the precise number is difficult because of the stigma and shame surrounding family estrangement. They worry, as this grandparent does, that others will conclude there must be something wrong with you if your own child keeps their child from seeing you. Until such a time as adult child and parent are reconciled – efforts that can take years – what can grandparents do to alleviate what many refer to as the 'raw wound' of a grandchild's absence in their life?
Grandparents have no automatic rights to see their grandchildren. They can apply to the court for a Child Arrangement Order, providing they can show that contact with them is in the best interests of the child. But such recourse is unlikely to mend the rift with their child. Deprived of contact with and even information about their grandchild, they worry about the negative things the parents might say about them. They worry that the grandchild might conclude that the grandparent does not want to see them. Pat Hansen, whose daughter cut ties with her when her granddaughter was four-years-old, mended 'the hole in her heart' by writing letters in preparation for the day she might see her granddaughter again. In these letters she built a picture of herself to counter the very negative views of her daughter. She includes accounts of where she goes, what she sees, and what experiences she would like to share with granddaughter.
The pain of estrangement rarely ebbs with time, but, Coleman advises, parents should 'compartmentalise' this grief to limit its impact. A child takes this drastic step for their own varied reasons. But when you have done your best, their decision should not ruin your life.
The author responds:
I have two aims in shining a spotlight on this painful experience. Many grandparents/parents caught up in family estrangement have been 'good enough' parents or better. It becomes utterly impossible to improve the situation where dark motives are attributed to their every effort to reconcile. And perhaps there is nothing counselling/psychology services have to offer to grandparents beyond advice to 'compartmentalise the grief' (if that is achievable for some). But if grandparents are largely on their own dealing with this trauma, what about grandchildren who are caught up in this? What do we all owe them? The child has a fundamental right to an ongoing loving relationship with other significant adults in their family life. Do we place value on the extended family, on grandparents and their often important nurturing role in their grandchildren's lives? Or do we see them as disposable? This is not an attempt to undermine parental rights but rather in the absence of evidence of harm, a presumption that the grandchildren/grandparent relationship should be protected. Those family connections can be at times vital to children, providing them with stability and a sense of legacy. Dr Apter herself talks elsewhere about the important role of the grandparent and quotes as an example the feeling of safety many grandchildren report having in their grandparents' company. And with the reports of growing rates of anxiety amongst schoolchildren we need to take this seriously. Is there a place for this to be recognised and encouraged in therapy, even when 'no contact' is the choice a parent makes for themselves in this situation? There is an injustice at the heart of this. Children have rights that should not be overlooked.
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