32-year-old Svenia, who prefers to remain anonymous, has been speaking to her mother for over two years. The reason: her mother wanted to determine almost everything in her life, from how clean her apartment would be to whether or not she would break up with her partner. Now mom and daughter don’t even spend time together on Mother’s Day. And when at some point they met, Svenia felt even worse.

Not having any communication between parents and their adult children is not as unusual as one might think. A survey in Germany of more than 10,000 participants showed that around 7% of them have no contact with their biological father, while 2% do not communicate with their biological mother at all – and those who feel emotionally distant are even more. These phenomena are even more frequent in families with adoptive parents.

Can alienation be a “healthy response”?

At the same time, there are people who maintain contact with their parents, but suffer from this process. Hence there are many, such as the British psychologist Lucy Blake, who argue that “distancing can be a healthy reaction in an unhealthy environment”.

The reasons for estrangement between parents and their children are many. And in the majority of cases they do not involve something extreme, such as incidents of sexual or physical abuse. Usually one parent may have an addiction problem, for example being an alcoholic, or on the other hand the distancing follows a period of years in which the child was overly attached to the parent.

As another English research shows, alienation from the children’s side can also be due to the generation gap and the resulting different values ​​that parents and children embrace, or to consider that their parents did not support them emotionally as much as they would have liked. Parents usually cite reasons such as a divorce or that they did not like their children’s partner. Most of the time, although not always, the children are the ones who cut off contact with their parents, while there are also times when no one in the family knows who caused this estrangement.

When do children become alienated from their parents?

Alienation can happen in different phases – for example when the two parents divorce. In the aforementioned English survey, most children are between 20 and 35 years old when they cut off contact with their parents.

In still other cases, children may become estranged when one of the two parents dies or when they too start a family – especially when the grandparents no longer treat the grandchildren in a bad way.

Although alienation may sometimes be a one-way street, one should first exhaust the scope for remedying the situation. But even this must be done, after considering what the effects will be on one’s mental health, as long as one is possibly hurt again.

Seeking re-approach

In England, USA and Germany there are self-help organizations which support people from broken families.

The expert advice to those who want to seek reconciliation with their own people is not to call directly, since their relative may feel pressured by the sudden direct communication. Instead, it’s probably better to send a regular letter or e-mail that someone else can read at their leisure.

And this is exactly what Svenia has done, and in fact many times, in an attempt to explain to her mother her thoughts and why it is difficult for her to communicate with her. Her mother never answered. And now Svenia makes no further efforts. Not even on Mother’s Day.

Edited by: Giorgos Passas