When the adult kids go “no contact”

MeDenne Jones hasn’t seen her youngest daughter in nearly four years. The last time was December 2022, when she came home to Georgia for Christmas. The 21-year-old had a boyfriend, and Jones expressed concern that their relationship was moving too quickly.

When the boyfriend came to pick up her daughter, Jones and her husband had a terse conversation with them. It ended badly and the two drove away.

Jones, a Christian who raised her children in the church, said her daughter grew up sharing everything with her, even taboo topics like sex and birth control, Jones said. But after her daughter moved out of the house, ongoing disagreement over her relationship with the boyfriend meant the two talked less.

“She was ghosting me on text messages by this point,” Jones said.

About 27% of American adults are estranged from a family member, according to research by Karl Pillemer, a professor of gerontology in medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. Family estrangement—cutting off all contact with parents or a family of origin—is not new. Psychiatrist Murray Bowen first coined the term “emotional cutoff” in 1975 to describe a coping mechanism for someone struggling with unresolved emotional issues. Now, over 50 years later, the cultural conversation has shifted, with more people claiming that “going no contact” isn’t just a coping mechanism but can be a solution too.

Social influencers like licensed social worker Patrick Teahan and family coach Jerry Wise have made YouTube tutorials offering tips on how to end relationships with family members. Both have hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Aimee Palmer, founder of the support group Parents of Estranged Adult Children, said she founded the group in 2017 and has seen it gradually grow from a cluster of local parents in her church conference room to online, in-person, and private Facebook gatherings across the United States. Most members blame a relationship with a third party—a boyfriend, a spouse, in-laws, sometimes even a therapist—as the catalyst for the estrangement. Occasionally parents and children will split over political or religious differences, or after one comes out as gay or transgender.

In Palmer’s case, her daughter cut off contact in 2017 when she was 18, after falling in love with a young man. “We didn’t really have a fight or anything like that,” Palmer said. “It was just, all of a sudden I received a text message that she was cutting contact with us.”

Her daughter was estranged from the family for two years. She’s now 27 and has been in contact with family since 2023, but not before a second three-year-long estrangement.

Not surprisingly, estranged children see the situation differently, and they are more likely to blame family strife for their departure. According to a 2025 survey conducted by Together Estranged, a support group for estranged adult children, 81% of adult children cited psychological or emotional abuse, and 66% blamed a family member’s narcissistic tendencies.

WORLD reached out to the group for comment, but it declined, stating that “it would put our community members at risk.”

I spoke to five parents whose children stopped talking to them. In two cases, a divorce or separation likely led children to pick one parent over the other. In the other three cases, a child started a new romantic relationship or engaged in a lifestyle that parents didn’t approve of. WORLD was able to reach only one of the children, and she declined to comment.

Some parents, like Jones, blame a child’s therapist for mentioning the idea of going no-contact.

Therapists told me there isn’t any proof that more estrangements are happening, or that therapists are responsible.

“No definitive evidence shows that adult children are going no contact with parents at dramatically higher rates than in previous generations,” said Paul Hokemeyer, a licensed marriage and family therapist in New York. “What has changed is the language, visibility, and social permission to discuss it openly.”

But Julie Hamilton, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Florida, told me she has seen more clients who have been told by previous therapists to limit or cease contact with family members.

In those cases, clients were told to “put up boundaries,” a phrase she said is often misused and misapplied to justify cutting off relationships. It’s one thing to walk out of the room when your family talks politics, or not to call your alcoholic father on the nights he goes out for drinks. It’s another when boundaries become barriers, Hamilton said.

“Children need to be protected from abuse. Adults can take action to protect themselves. It doesn’t mean having to keep that person out of your life entirely,” she said.

Every person I spoke with said children of any age should seek safety from family relationships involving sexual or physical abuse. But in all other cases, both Hamilton and Hokemeyer agreed that a good clinician would only see estrangement as a last resort, if at all.

“Therapy at its best should neither reflexively prescribe estrangement nor pressure a vulnerable person back into a relationship that remains harmful,” added Hokemeyer.

Even so, this advice is of little help to the parents of estranged children, who spend months or years wondering whether their children will ever respond to text messages or walk in the front door. All said they have grieved an estrangement like a death in the family.

Amy McCullough, a mother in Bay City, Mich., says she last saw her daughter Shannon 10 years ago, at her college graduation. In the time since, McCullough found out on Facebook that Shannon had gotten engaged, married, and given birth to a boy. McCullough, who teaches swim classes to children, took it hard when she realized she couldn’t see her grandchild.

“I had to quit teaching the babies class for a couple of months, because I couldn’t hear ‘Mama’ or ‘Grandma,’ because I’m never going to hold that little boy,” she said.

Some children do reconnect. Parents said sharing problems with a trusted person helps, as does reflecting on the relationship and working on communication skills.

Deborah Satonick, a 71-year-old mother of three in Connecticut, said two of her children went no contact for four years. But the impending death of the family dog brought both kids back into the house—and their lives. She said seeing the dog die prompted her to ask her children what they would do if mom and dad were dying.

One of her estranged daughters asked, “What actually do you want?” Satonick said. “A daughter,” she said she responded. “Maybe a text once in a while. But I don’t have your number. You blocked me.”

Satonick’s daughter asked for her phone. “So I gave her my phone,” Satonick said. “She put the number in.”