Although family togetherness characterizes the Christmas season, some of us may find ourselves relationally poorer this New Year. No one has died, and yet gifts are unsent and places are empty at the table.
If this sounds familiar, you’ve got some ironic company. Research suggests a quarter of Americans suffer familial estrangement. I’m one of them.
Lucy Blake of the University of Cambridge Center for Family Research defines estrangement as “the breakdown of a supportive relationship between family members.” In 2015 she authored a pioneering report on estrangement in partnership with the British organization Stand Alone. They surveyed 807 people, mostly from the UK and the U.S., who “self-identify as estranged from family or a key family member.”
Stephanie Gail Eagleson
A subsequent study by Karl Pillemer, professor of human development at Cornell, surveyed 1,300 Americans for his 2020 book Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them; 27% of his survey participants reported they were currently estranged from a close relative. Then, in 2022, the first nationally representative survey of parent–adult child estrangement reported 6% of respondents were estranged from mothers while 26% were estranged from their fathers.
Research on estrangement has only gained traction in the last decade, so these studies are preliminary, but a through line seems clear: Familial rifts affect more people than you might expect. And despite the perhaps stronger stigma estrangement has with Christians, we are no exception.
The dissolution of blood bonds
I come from a nine-person conservative Christian family I once would have described as close-knit, but when my parents separated in 2015, my father cut me off without a word. He moved to the other side of the country after the divorce, taking my youngest siblings with him and blocking all my attempts to contact them.
Other siblings defended our father and slowly distanced themselves from me. One brother embraced white supremacy. Another ended up in jail. One by one, the damage I sustained in my remaining family-of-origin relationships became too much to bear, and I cut contact with everyone who hadn’t already cut me off. My mother, once I realized she continued to enable domestic violence in our family even after leaving my abusive father, was the last to go.
As necessary and right as I felt the decision to be, I found scarce support with my broader community. Fellow churchgoers quickly exited the conversation if I brought it up. Christian mentors already had spent years encouraging me to embrace these destructive relationships, even to proactively include my children, one of whom I later realized I had seriously endangered as a result. Yet even my father-in-law blamed me for cutting contact, telling me he worried I’d do the same to him and his wife.
Ironically, my husband later would be the one to pull the plug on that relationship after years of fruitless attempts to mitigate the harm my in-laws inflicted. The inciting incident, which a number of psychologists have noted is common in cases of estrangement — Rachel Fairbank dubs it “the final straw” — occurred at Christmastime.
Perhaps the only surprising statistic from Stand Alone is that 90% of those suffering estrangement found the Christmas period challenging; I would have expected 100%.
“Professional therapists generally have a better grasp of the dynamics of abusive family systems.”
Sadly, although I became terribly isolated, my experience is not: While 38% of the respondents from the Stand Alone survey identified as Christian, only 25% sought aid from religious leaders. The majority of these were reported to be of middling to no help. By contrast, nearly four-fifths of respondents sought support from counselors and therapists, with 54% of these proving “very helpful.” This also reflects my experience, and I suspect it is because professional therapists generally have a better grasp of the dynamics of abusive family systems.
Reasons for estrangement
The Stand Alone community cited emotional abuse as the top reason for estrangement from parents. This was followed closely by “mismatched expectations about family roles and relationships,” “clash of personality or values,” and “neglect.” By the time my spouse and I determined estrangement was necessary on both sides of our extended family, all these had come into play.
Others gave similar reasons when I polled them on social media.
I asked, “If you’re estranged from at least one family member, what is the primary cause of the division?” and offered four possibilities. “Behavioral problems” led the pack across platforms at 50% to 54%, with “boundary violations” following at 37% to 38%. “Abstract moral values” accounted for 8% to 12%, but no votes were logged for “practical social values.”
This all suggests that, contrary to popular belief, mere differing opinions or an unwillingness to forgive are not enough to drive families apart. The most commonly cited causes of estrangement are much more serious, speaking to a need to preserve mental and emotional if not physical health in extremis.
Lesson from the life of Jesus
It is in the epilogue to the Nativity, of all places, where we see a sobering illustration of this. Joseph and Mary flee to protect their son. In so doing, they abandon not just both their families but their entire community overnight. Imagine how this was received — the sudden withdrawal, little to no communication. They likely told no one before they were simply gone. They forsook everyone not for a lack of love, but to escape a threat they could not have explained to anyone’s satisfaction.
“They forsook everyone not for a lack of love, but to escape a threat they could not have explained to anyone’s satisfaction.”
The details are vastly different, of course, and yet that tension rings true for many of us today. It’s not that we want to leave family, but that we have to. Our family members may be wonderful in many respects, but something presides over their lives that is too harmful to tolerate any longer, even if we don’t blame them for it, even if we forgive them.
But sometimes we must follow the magi’s example and defy our personal Herods.
My story
It took nine years, but my youngest sister finally did. She contacted me for the first time in nearly a decade after fleeing our father’s home and building a new life for herself. After she cut him off, it was finally safe for her to reconnect with forbidden family — and oh, the tears I cried over that answered prayer.
My mother wrote me a few weeks later. She honored my request for no contact until she had made some serious changes, which her letter detailed. But what stood out to me the most were these two statements, shared now with her permission:
“I don’t think I would have even tried to take these steps or even thought about them had it not been for what you did. … I have to say that because of the estrangement between me and you, and learnings gained over these three years, I have gained a much better understanding of how to interact with my other adult children.”
Estrangement has taught me if something needs to change with someone else, I cannot do it for them. I cannot save them from themselves, and I cannot save them from others they are not ready to leave. I can only save myself by leaping off the sinking relationship.
But I can trust the Holy Spirit to work its power in my absence. When I step away, I commit my loved ones to the God who can restore what the locusts have eaten. By God’s grace, I have received a portion of that harvest in this lifetime. I trust God for the remainder, however long it takes.
Stephanie Gail Eagleson is a survivor of child abuse and certified advocate for victims of domestic violence with Give Her Wings. She also is a freelance editor and book coach specializing in novels and nonfiction on trauma, abuse and religious deconstruction. Find her at EaglesonEditing.com and on Substack at A Genuine Article. She is currently writing her memoir.