Only after I started researching my book did I discover the pervasive silence that hides the intertwined phenomena of abuse and estrangement. This silence starts early, and it often starts at home. Kids are hard-wired to believe that whatever they experience in the home is normal and to put their caregivers on a pedestal, regardless of how they treat them. Abusers cement that belief by convincing kids that they deserve their abuse. Institutions like schools and churches can add to the stigma, either with potentially toxic messages like “honor thy father and mother” and “turn the other cheek” or with no teaching at all. Then there are the sins of omission committed by all those — relatives, neighbors, friends — who may witness abuse but say or do nothing.
Pop culture also normalizes family dysfunction, tacitly encouraging us to endure difficult relatives rather than estrange them. Popular TV series, from “The Sopranos” to “Succession,” show us clans that stick together season after season despite abuse that would be suspect if anyone other than a relative perpetrated it. And we’re awash in a sea of self-help books, podcasts and videos that urge us to set aside our sadness, forgive and forget, be grateful for what we have, accept that everything happens for a reason and draw good things to us by thinking only good thoughts. This toxic positivity makes us ignore our emotions and stifle our pain, which lets our abusers, and the culture that abets them, off the hook.
All these forces and more obscure the scope and impact of abuse. Research suggests that child maltreatment may increase the risk that one will suffer a slew of ailments in adulthood: diabetes, high blood pressure, lung disease, cancer, stroke, depression, anxiety, addiction, relationship problems, suicidal ideation and more. Few survivors recognize these conditions as the fallout of abuse; instead, we tend to see them as normal or as innate mental or physical flaws for which we blame ourselves. Fueled by shame, too many of us keep quiet and forgo the support we might receive by sharing our experiences with other survivors.
But others are speaking out — and stepping away — at last. I began writing my book just as estrangement became an epidemic, as Joshua Coleman, a psychologist who has studied the phenomenon extensively, and Will Johnson, the chief executive of the Harris Poll, have called it. In the past year alone, stories in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, NPR, Oprah Daily, Vogue and elsewhere pondered the implications of this apparent uptick. And a Harris poll conducted in November in collaboration with Dr. Coleman buttressed the anecdotal evidence I shared above, putting the proportion of estranged Americans at 1 in 2. (The previous benchmark — 27 percent — came from a Cornell study published just four years before.) These numbers disprove one of the most persistent myths about estrangement: that it’s rare. In fact, it is perhaps becoming the norm.
Estrangement’s growing visibility reveals a shift in social attitudes brought about by several factors. Among them is the pandemic, which thrust some families into painfully close quarters and offered others a hiatus that some members came to relish. More young people are in therapy than in previous generations, and they’re more knowledgeable about concepts like trauma, narcissism and complex post-traumatic stress disorder that relate to abuse. Yet another is the opportunity social media gives people with abusive relatives to support one another and escape the isolating stigma that society, family and even well-meaning friends impose.
