CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Are We in an Estrangement Epidemic?

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Rin Reczek spent two decades studying families before she turned her research toward estrangement.  What she found in the data took her by complete surprise. In this conversation, the sociologist and author of Families We Lose explains why the estrangement rate probably isn't actually rising, why the language of "honor thy father and mother" shows up even in nonreligious families, and why grandparent estrangement is almost never the selfish, spiteful choice it gets painted as online.In this episode, you'll learn:- What "compulsory kinship" means, and how biology-based language like "step" and "half" quietly signals hierarchy in families- Why religious phrases about honoring parents show up in estrangement stories even among people who aren't religious- Why the data doesn't support the idea that adult children are cutting off grandparents to be controlling or spitefulConnect with Rin ReczekWebsite: www.rinreczek.comBuy Rin’s Book: https://amzn.to/4guKWI2Whitney Goodman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Calling Home, a membership community that helps people navigate complex family dynamics and break harmful cycles.Have a question for Whitney? Send a voice memo or email to [e-mail] the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.coFollow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhitFollow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmftOrder Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivitySign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0o This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you've ever been estranged from a family member, you've probably noticed how fast the conversation, especially the public narrative about estrangement, turns to blame. Selfish kids, therapy-brained millennials, and a generation that just throws people away. My guest today has spent two decades studying family life, and she's here to tell you that almost none of that story holds up in the data. Rinn Rizek is a professor of sociology at Ohio State, a family demographer, and the author of the new book Families We Lose. Rinn interviewed a wide range of adults who are estranged from at least one member of their family of origin, and she did something the cultural panic almost never does.

She just listened to them. She listened to the people who left. And what she found is that estrangement isn't the disease. It's the symptom. It's what happens when family members are operating on fundamentally different pages about what family is even supposed to mean. She calls this old model compulsory kinship. The idea that biology obligates you for life that elders are owed obedience and that the family

image must be protected at any cost. And she argues the people walking away aren't the problem. They are the canary in the coal mine. We get into all of it in this episode. you will be able to tell that I was so excited to speak to Wyn. I have read all of their studies and included them in my book, and you've seen me talk about them on Instagram and TikTok. So this was a very exciting opportunity for me. We talk about why a stranger looks a lot like divorced it a generation ago, why the data says it's more impermanent and cyclical than the headlines suggest, and what biology has to do

with any of it. And we talk about what it would mean to build a family on autonomy and safety instead of just duty and submission. So, Rin, welcome to the calling home podcast. I seriously was reading your book and was just smiling like ear to ear because it is so nice to see things that I have felt internally and registered like in the public discourse be given back to me in the form of of data and being done at a university setting by someone who really is so involved in this on the research side. Because sometimes, and I don't know if you're very familiar with the discourse around estrangement online, but sometimes I can kind of feel like you're going a little bit

insane with some of the takes out there. I'm like, am I missing this? So I'd love to hear even your thoughts on that. Like just with what you do and not being public facing, how does a lot of that discourse land for you as a viewer. Yeah. That is an incredibly important question and actually does motivate some of my work. Maybe I came back up and say a little bit about like my entry into this field. Please do. Because I didn't start my careers in this area. I've been, you know, really studying family relationships since my dissertation. And I love studying families. I think they're fascinating and

complex and a lot of my early work is trying to understand, you know, how people stay in relationships and what those relationships really look like and the strategies that people use to maintain healthy ties. And that goes across marriage and siblingship and parent-child ties and extended kin, all these kinds of things. And in my first book with Emma Bosley-Smith, I interviewed kind of like a case study of LGBTQ adults and their parents, people who maintained ties. And I interviewed both the young adults and the parents. And I really just wanted to understand the strategies that they use to maintain relationships,

especially when they had rejection or negative experiences. I think that really speaks to, I know, your book and what you, you know, you kind of plan to talk about. And in that, in the process of doing that work, I did come across a couple of people who had either previously estranged from their parents or one of their parents. And or, you know, in the case of maybe two, I think, were currently estranged from one of their parents. And I ended up, we wrote a chapter on this. It's the very last chapter, empirical chapter of that book. And I was just like, whoa, I never really had done any work on this.

And I found it fascinating. And so, of course, naturally, I said, I need to do actually a research project on this to see what's going on. And in the process of doing that, I started to pay more attention to the conversations that were happening in the public discourse. This is something that I do tell, you know, my graduate students who are learning a new area of research. Because like how the public writ large, how newspaper opeds are talking about it, how, you know, social media trends, all these things. actually are very important for us as researchers to understand. So we can get a grasp on what's what's kind of like what we call the cultural logics that are surrounding a topic. So I started doing, like, looking for a stranger, I started to have some like news, you know, alerts on it. And I was

a little bit shocked at what was happening. In part at the same time, I'm doing my empirical, you know, research. I'm looking at the research on the topic. And I was like also shocked. because there was so little research. And the research that was done, I mean, there are actually some really great people who have founded the field. I can think of like Lucy Blake, for example, amazing work. But this is really only in the past, like maybe five to maybe 10 years. And a lot of the researchers in the area are, you know, I'm a sociologist, which I can, you know,

explain. But, you know, there may be psychologists or social workers. And a lot of the work being done was. on parents. So I'm looking at this area from like the public perspective and then the research perspective and just seeing like a huge gap in what we know and how we're talking about this. And as a result, as a result, I think of the research being really underdeveloped, it means that the public conversations about it are also in my view biased because you have some very vocal people who are in, you know, kind of what's the word? Maybe like,

making it sensationalized and creating some panic around estrangement in a way that I think is really problematic. And so that is kind of how I started this project is really like paying attention to both of these areas. Yeah, we have such a similar path kind of into this. I think the interesting thing about the estrangement discourse online is that most of the people participating have personal stake in it. They are estranged parents. There are so many. I mean, even some of the researchers are estranged parents, right, who have become psychologists and things like that. And so I am not estranged for my parents. I did not get into this by way of trying to personally work out something, which a lot of people do, and that's great. But I also was watching this, I think,

from a bird's eye view of like, wow, this has so many layers to it, that this is not just about how we view families as a society and as a culture and the role of the. And the role of the family. And I think within our political discourse today, that has taken on even more new flavors, right, of how people talk about this, which is where I kind of want to segue into that, you know, you argue, much like I do that, estrangement is a symptom, not the disease. And I'm wondering if you can speak more about how you came to that conclusion. Yeah. Well, you know, I think to sort of frame that question. It goes back to the public discourse and how it's discussed. So in the sort of panic endorsing, you know, conversations op-eds, I think about a variety of like New York Times

articles about estrangement, it's kind of framed as if it's one more example of the decline in the U.S. family. And I can talk specifically about the U.S. That's most, that's where my work is. although there's some great people in Germany doing work in a stranger too. But I think that if we can kind of use that as an example of what we call family panic in sociology, and what that means is that people kind of use the language of demise, you know, the American family as a political statement becomes then kind of part of the whole decline of American culture. And there's so many examples of this that I think your listeners probably can articulate. We think about like the panic around divorce, the panic around single motherhood, the panic around

same-sex marriage. All of these things become linchpins for political conversation. And I think to some extent, like get used as moral failing. And that is where we see stigmatization really come in. So if, if, you know, if, for example, getting divorced is a product of your personal moral failing, then it becomes really stigmatized and then, you know, there's lots of harm that can be done with that. And I think the same thing has happened with estrangement in part because it is really painful. And it, you know, and I think we start, you know, we're starting to talk about it more. And as we start to talk about it, it becomes a social problem. And that's just not really my perspective.

And I think yours either. Yeah. So to go to your question, I know this is a long, if you have all to it, but basically, you know, there's things that are going on in the family that are harmful. And if those things cannot be repaired, then estrangement is there's a panacea of potential solutions to problems. And it's one of those potential solutions. There's others. But it's not, you know, it's not a reason that the family is declining. It's not that people stop caring about families. That's certainly not true. Even, you know, the estranged adults I talk to care deeply about family. Oh, 100%. So much that they know that their standards are high and they want good family. And so I think that is a really important flip on the framing around the, you know, the meaning of estrangement and family life today. Yeah. I love your comparison to divorce because I find the rhetoric to be very, very similar. You know, especially when people sort of lament and have these fantasies about their grandfusses. parents of like they stayed married forever and they were so in love and people don't act like that in marriages anymore. And it's like, well, you're a grandmother, you know, she couldn't get a

house. She couldn't get a credit card. She had no way to leave. And so if we are measuring the success of any type of relationship on, you know, people who have no access to anything else, I don't think that that's a good standard for us to have about the health of families, marriages, etc. And so the the conversation has so many parallels to divorce and the ways that we should feel about marriage and about family and all of that, that you're right. You can see the, you can see the panic follow very distinct lines culturally that we've seen play out before. Yeah. And you also, in line with that, have a generational culture war, I think, happening in the public discourse, which is again being used to create division.

And what I mean by that is like, oh, the young kids these days, you know, are just, you know, don't care about family, estranging their parents. And again, I just think that does a disservice to what's actually going on. Totally. And I think, you know, you can speak to this in your own book. And of course, with I have spoken to thousands of adults who not, maybe not are currently estranged, but have been estranged for periods of time throughout their life. And we have, I've talked to people who are 70 years old, 65.

five years old. You know, this is not something that I am seeing that's happening specifically among people. And, you know, people even say that to me, like, oh, you're so young. I'm like, I'm not that young. I have multiple children and been married for a decade. Like, I'm really not that young. And so it's funny how I'm wondering, you know, what your perspective is on why it's being framed generally, generationally in that way. Yeah. Well, first of all, totally agree with you. in terms of that estrangement, number one, has been happening throughout history. It's not a historical trend. I'm doing some empirical work right now.

It's not published it, but I'll send it your way and I'll be able to talk about it. But trying to look at cohort changes in estrangement. And because there's this like, it's growing. It's an epidemic. I can tell you right now there's zero evidence that that's happening. Thank you. And so that's really frustrating for me as I'm also sort of moonlight as. a demographer, which is, you know, we're really interested in these population level trends. And so when

people talk about trends, like without empirical backing, it's kind of frustrating. So it's not really true. I think that the way, of course the way we're talking about it, the bringing into light, this is, this is happening. We don't really have great statistics on estrangement prior to really, like the 1950s. I think that's the earliest cohort that I can go back to. Part of the reason for that, I think, and this can be, you know, we can, we can talk about this or not, but I think that there's some historical trends that have made it more visible. Number one, people have way fewer children than they used to. And so historically speaking, if you have, you know, eight children and one of them moves away and you don't really have a cell phone, right? We're talking like the early 19th century,

the late 18th century prior. How are you in contact with them? You're writing letters. There's no real expectation that this relationship is sustained, especially with geographic mobility. So you have that to contend with. How do we measure estrangement in that context when the expectation is not to remain in context? Whereas today, that modal, you know, fertility rate is two, people have two kids. One of them is strangers, and it's massive. And it's a huge change in the family structure. So I think that that's a little bit of why today it seems like more people are estranging when in fact, It could be that the rates are similar. It's just that the family structure has changed so much.

I also think that the meaning of parenthood has changed across time and it become more salient to self-identity. So there's a lot of different things I think that are going on that might make us feel that estrangement is increasing. But we have to be really careful with measuring that. I think I've heard folks like psychologists talk about in my practice. I see more strange people than ever. That's not really a data point.

that we would find reliable for tracking a stranger rate. There's lots of reasons that could be, right? Referrals. You know, just the internet, all these kinds of things. So that's my like caveat to that. I completely agree with you. And I think it's like everything you're saying. There's so many threads I would like to pull on.

I have to almost like control myself to stay focused here. I share your frustration in the like trend epidemic language that I think relates back to what we were saying about some of that moral panic. I also feel, and I don't know if you notice this, that technology plays such a big role, especially in the performance of family and the amount of connection that we want to have with one another. So a lot of the adults that I work with speak to this reality that they cannot have distant relationships with their parents because their parents want to be in constant communication with them via text, Facebook, whatever it is, and that they also want to perform closeness through social media.

And I'm wondering if that's something you've run into in terms of how we view what estrangement is. So interesting. Yes. I think that some people would say they do maintain almost the surface level relationship with people via social media. in a way that keeps them bound in that relationship, but isn't a deep relationship. And I think intentional connection, and I talk a little bit about this in the book, is one of the themes that people want from their family. They want it to be meaningful.

They don't want just the superficial tie. Sometimes that's the tie that you have. And that's okay for some people, and it's not for others. But I think that the social media connection becomes a source of sort of problem, when especially the Facebook posting, I heard a lot about that from people who felt that their, their, their parent mostly liked, and this is their perspective. Okay, so, so like I recognize that and I want to just name that. But we call them family displays in sociology, that the parent was just displaying what they thought was an ideal family, but that when it came to the everyday experiences of connecting, that felt short, fell short. And so that just you sort of commenting on the Facebook piece that came up time.

time again as actually evidence of the disconnect between what they wanted in their families. Yeah, that's been my experience as well. And now I'm remembering the other thing I wanted to ask you about was I ran up against this as well. In your book, you talk about how there is no academic consensus on how to define a stringent. And I think this is what gets in the way of us even identifying how much this is happening and if it's growing. And I, I will tell you, for my book, I interviewed 57 adults who have been estranged at some, who identify as a strange from a parent, okay? Some of them were speaking to their parents every week and they still called themselves estranged.

And so I really asked people to like self-identify as a way to see what the spectrum was. And it was fascinating how there were people who avoided contact at all costs and people who viewed one phone call a week or some texting to be estranged? So, I mean, the way I, so I think you're completely correct. The issue with measurement is a real problem. I think if I could force cast the future, I think we're going to have the no contact group be quite distinct from the, because of the way you're describing it, the estranged group. Some of my work has tried to quantify this in the exact way that you're talking about,

which is to say we call them, um, socially negative relationships. So as opposed to a strange, like I have contact, maybe because I can't not. I live in the same town. Maybe you have to, you're co-residential, whatever it looks like. And that the estrangement, you know, someone can self-define as estranged if there has, have a really negative high conflict relationship or a very low close relationship. So the literature does define it in that way. I do think that's extremely disdemeanor. from the no contact group. They can all be in the estranged umbrella.

I think that's fine. You know, it's conceptually a little murky. But I agree. I think that's really tricky. It's, that's so interesting to hear because I, when I recruited, I think I had both estranged and no contact.

And there were people who I initially, like, thought I might interview that, that I ended up not because they had some contact. Now I kind of want to go back and talk to them or at least, I'll just read your book and find out. what their experiences are because I think that's really interesting. Yeah, it's, you know, it's fascinating, which has has brought me to asking people a lot about how they define

closeness within families, right? So I think that's because, and I've had conversations about this, like, with my husband of like, what he identifies as being close with someone actually feels quite distant for me because I grew up in a much more emmeshed, like, family system. that is Hispanic and kind of has these ideas about family where we all are kind of on top of each other a little bit more. But he still is close with these people just in a different way. And so I think that plays into how people define estrangement that they think if I talk to my sister once a month, we're basically estranged because I think that we should be talking every day. Yes. Yeah, that speaks to the expectations that we have, that define how we go about our family life.

And that's so important. I love that you're asking about that because when you ask people what, you know, they'll say pretty much the vast majority of people in that in a relationship, right? Like how they might say they're close. I mean, you ask them to define it. It's all over the board. All over the place. It's crazy.

And I think, yeah, I think the research is like, how often do you talk? You know, what is your emotional closeness? Yeah. How much do you agree on things? How much are they similar to you? I think that we can start. to do that, but it's in the early stages. So I appreciate that you're... Yeah, absolutely. That's something I would love to see, you know, more information on because

I find that it's such a wide variety of experience. And, you know, for me as a therapist, when I'm writing my book, I'm more looking at what are the personal experiences, narrative experiences versus trying to generate this like hard data. And I love to be able to combine the two and see how that plays out. The next thing, I really wanted to spend some time, talking about is the biological imperative that you talk about within relationships and how we talk about real family versus not real family. I'm wondering if you can explain that to the listener. Yeah. So at least in the modern U.S. context, biology reigns supreme in how we in general think about family life. And you can see this very clearly in the language that we use to describe

relationships. So you have biomoms. Like you have step moms, right? And I should say biomom isn't, you don't say that. You just say mom. And then you say stepmom. So that whenever we have a modifier in the language, we know that that means it's less than. And that's not my personal opinion. I do not think stepmoms are less than like bio moms just to be completely clear. It's more of how it's signified in the social order, in the pecking order, so to speak. I think that's deeply wrong. But as a person, that's my personal opinion. I think it implies inequality. And so we can see that across the board. Like, you know, I have half brother. Well, okay, so half of my biology is connected to him versus a full brother. Well, already, that's just really, again, create some hierarchy and the way we

think about language. That can be shown historically across time. I mean, we could think it's linked to all kinds of things. You can link it to the eugenics movements. You can link it to lots of different ways in which we think about biology. So biology is like central to our everyday life, even though we're not realizing it. And so what that does for us is it creates this kind of expectation that we aren't even aware of. I like using that analogy. I think I use it in this book of the fish in the water where you don't even know the water you're swimming in until you step out of it. And then you're like, oh, wait a minute, what was I in? And that is true of the. And that is true of biological imperative, which is to say that we have this expectation and belief by our,

you could think of social media, you could think of, you know, movies, TV, et cetera, that tells us that biology is what family is. We can see that in the way the U.S. Census defines a family. We can see that in all these kinds of ways that are just ingrained in our social order. Like, you know, you could think about that in terms of like, who gets the rights to your home who is the next of kin. These kinds of things are biologically related. Okay. So, so for for me, when I see that, like I don't have, you know, like a personal opinion about that. I think it's just really important to note that. And what that does is set up the expectation that these people are the central people that consist of your family. And in the case of considering estrangement,

that's a really, really hard narrative to break out of. How do you do that? When everything is telling you that that is what the family is. So for people who decide to estrange, they have to do a lot of work to almost deconstruct that belief system in order to kind of be okay with dealing with that loss. And I, you know, the people I talk to,

I'm assuming the people you talk to as well, like still talk about that. But I don't, I don't have a mom, right? Or I lost my mom. I want, you know, I wish my mom was still here, that social role, of biological connectedness, so critical to our understanding of family. Absolutely. I think that that really ties into kind of how we started this conversation

about the downfall of the American family, of having this underpinning of like who you are related to biologically is your family. It is the most important. And if we are going to start saying that that doesn't matter, you know, where does that take us? And I think we're aligned in the sense that it's not that it doesn't matter. Like, I think that there's certainly, you know, I have had children biologically, you know, that you've experienced growing a child in the womb. Like, you could definitely argue, I think me personally, like, that has made me feel a connection. But that doesn't mean that that connection can be sustained for life solely based on that. And it doesn't mean that a connection cannot be formed otherwise. Because to say that would

mean that my husband couldn't form the same connection with the child or an adoptive parent or a step parent when they do every single day. And we see that reflected in the data as well, that you can form that type of connection with a child and be that role without having that type of connection. And so I want people, I really want people to see that, that it's not that it's not important, but it's that you have to continue investing in these relationships. And I feel like, And you can tell me what you think about this, that for a lot of estranged parents, especially, that is where they get tripped up. It's almost like, I thought that if I had this child, that gave me this role in the child's life, and that was enough. And I have that role. And so that

means I'm afforded these privileges because of that role. Yeah. And I think that's a really, so I'll just say like that loss is real. And I think to some extent, as someone who, you know, I have a seven-year-old and it's a lot of work. Yeah, totally. Stop. And that's an important thing to recognize that. And I hear that from estranged parents a lot. Like, I did so much.

And it does break my heart a little bit because I think they're also, from a sociological perspective, sold that this is a tie that should be there no matter what. It's like they enter. And, you know, I can think about that myself, I had to do a lot of, to use the word again, construction around, well, like, my kid is his own person. Like right now, he's seven. So I hold all the power. But as soon as he transitions into adulthood, the dynamic changes. I will always be his mom. I hear that a lot, you know, from from a strange parents. True. We are always will be biologically connected. But when he becomes an adult, the terrain shifts. And I think that's so hard.

for parents. I really do empathize because can you imagine that experience of like assuming that this is going to be one way and then the person that you're connected to changes the game in your view. That's hard. That's really hard. And I think that's where a lot of the pain and anger and kind of, you know, what I hear comes from. So, so that's just to say that the biological tie, there's no doubt. Yeah, I thank you for clarifying that because I don't want to have it seem like it doesn't matter. it does. In fact, it gives a leg up on that physiological, psychological, hormonal, all these connections very, very important. They get primed into us. So you have a leg up there. And then what happens after, again, everyone is an adult? That is really where to me,

the powerful time of connection matters, where some of this, what I, you know, called democratized kinship really comes into play, is that in adulthood. I'm an autonomous person now. What is our relationship going to look like? Exactly. Exactly. And I want to talk some now about the democratized kinship concept. You know, there was a point that, a part that stood out to me in your book where Julian, I believe, was the character that you're naming. It says, all family needs to be chosen. And I thought that that was such a beautiful way of saying exactly what we're talking about. now that even if you are biologically connected, we need to choose each other every day. I know, like Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson talks about loving your family member like a cherished friend. And it

reminded me of that, you know, be choosing them. So I would love to hear you describe what democratized kinship is and kind of talk about the idea of chosen family, whether that's biological or not. Well, first, what a beautiful phrase, a cherished friend. I think that's really what a lot of people do crave. I know for myself personally and my friendships and my, you know, marriage and, you know, these things in my, in my family of origin, I feel that way too. Yeah. So I really, you know, I think that's really important. So when we're talking about this sort of renegotiation, renegotiation period when people start to develop their own ideas about what they want their relationships to look like. There's lots of models for relationships. And with the people that I

talk to for them, the experience was, well, I lived in my parents' culture for the time I was born until the time I left. And it wasn't until I left that I started to see that the that wasn't the only way that we could have family relationships. I met my friend's parents. I was like, oh, wait a minute, that's different. Or I went to college, or I started a job, or I met my spouse. And I learned that there were ways that I could interact and being family, being connection, that were actually like better for me. And that process then starts this renegotiation with the family of origin. And, you know, I'll speak for myself here. Like, I'm not estranged from my family of origin.

And I remember this happening when I went to graduate school. I very vividly remember, like, renegotiate. It was tricky, actually. Because I started to, like, push up. Yeah, you're like, and my parents were like, all right, okay. They could, they could handle it. And I think it did take us some years to kind of. Yeah, totally.

I think everyone goes through that in that period. That is such a precarious moment that I speak to a lot with estranged parents. It's like you can kind of make or break that period. If you allow your adult to differentiate and it can keep them close to you. Yes. If you can hold on and let it happen. But I think, again, going back to, I feel, you know, I feel that that's probably pretty hard. I haven't gone through it yet.

Again, my kid's little, so we'll see. But I think, like, if you're not prepared for that, it probably will feel pretty rough. And so when that's happening for the people I interviewed, they sort of started to articulate these four main ways that they wanted their relationships to be. And this was true of all their relationships. And I call it democratized kinship. This is akin to Anthony Giddens, who is a social theorist who wrote about marriage. He actually tracked this transition from almost like authoritarian marriages, right, where there's a patriarchal marriage early in our history in the United States to more. more of like companion at marriage, we're companions to what he calls the pure relationship. And that is like, we're both in it because we want to be in a good relationship. We want to better ourselves. We want to live our best lives, these kinds of things. And so I saw a similar transition happening in the parent-child type. And very, very vividly, like people talking about these four things.

They were sort of accountability and growth central. I mean, this is the domain of therapy. I feel like that's pretty basic for the therapeutic context, mutual respect. There is safety and there's intentional connection, which we have already talked about. And so, you know, there's probably more. But these are the four that I really identified across every single interview that if these four things weren't happening, then the tie started to really start to fray. And often it takes years, actually, to kind of. eventually sort of go no contact. And so in the book, I really kind of try to explain that it's not

just one thing. It happens over time and that over time people start to develop this desire to have all of their relationships look a certain way within the context of this democratized kinship. And the relationships that can't do that are, you know, have the potential for severing. Right. I think it's so fascinating that you and I without knowing each other and coming at this from completely different angles have sort of discovered the same things, you know, which is so exciting for me because I'm not a researcher and I'm sort of doing this, you know, from my own, the way that a therapist thinks about narratives and stories. And when I was reading, I was like, gosh, this is the exact same thing, you know, especially the accountability and change

piece. When we're talking about the relationships between adults and their parents, I have consistently found that it is not about past behavior. It is about past behavior continuing in the present and a lack of accountability and change. And so I get very frustrated when I hear a lot of a strange parents focus on the past and talking about like, I was loving. I was this, okay, what's happening today? And that's a big part of my book that's coming out is really like, how can you rebuild the relationship in the present? Because I find that that's what most adults are tired of. Now, they have agency. They have resources and they're not seeing any change. They have power they didn't have when they were a child. And so they're like, I'm out. And not that flippantly. I agree. It's,

it happens. I mean, gosh, over 15, 20 years was really what I was finding. Not in a short period of time. and many of them, like in marriages, held on for a decade after they realized this might be over. Well, I love that, first of all, I think that's an, yeah, amazing sign that we're finding similar things, I think, that suggests also, like, how consistent that is and how important that is. So I'm very excited for your book. Thank you. Thank you. You know, my perspective is much more on the, like, charting it.

And I think you actually might have some helpful things as a therapist to help. people deal with this and grow. So that's great. I think that, you know, the accountability piece is something that we can think about in the context again of marriage. So like you wouldn't say like, oh, you know, when we first got married, it was great. And therefore, I should always stay in my marriage. Exactly. So it's the same kind of thing. And I agree. Often the adults I talk to were so empathetic for their parent, they would often talk about, oh my God, their childhood is terrible. Yeah. Yes. And I, and I, I just, I see all this. I know why. And yet as an adult, they aren't able to get through that and change the way that I need. And so that's actually really

hard, I think, for a lot of the people that I talk to. And it sounds like the people that you talk to where you're just like, yeah, it's really about what's happening in the present moment. And sometimes people will bring up, oh, in childhood, this happened. But that's not, I never heard that that was the cause. It was always what's happening in adulthood. Yep. And it was never that the relationship was great today, but something bad happened in childhood, so they ended the relationship. I have never heard that one time. No. No, not at all. And I think that that's really, really telling. And maybe I should, I guess, I don't, I don't like the hope kind of framework. I was about to say that should give hope. But I think like what it says is that this isn't permanent necessarily.

Like, and I know that's a really complicated, like the reconciliation conversation is, is complicated. But I think like, you know, it doesn't have to be the way it is. Absolutely. I think it gives hope to parents who are parenting now as well, who may see these conversations about estrangement. You know, a lot of listeners of this show and the people I work with are very afraid of doing the same thing to their own children, right? And it's, It's a justified fear. But to hear that like, hey, every parent messes up and the only thing that you really wanted from yours was for them to acknowledge that, apologize, try to do better, that shows to me,

I think, how long lasting these relationships can be and actually how forgiving they are. I agree. I think that's exactly right. I want to touch on, if we can, some of the, I think religious and cultural underpinning. that happen in these conversations. I saw that, like my interviews, a lot of the people you interviewed spoke to some of these religious teachings that, you know, honor thy mother and father. How do you see that playing out in the estrangement world? Yeah. Well, what I'll say to that, I think it goes back to the sort of cultural logics that are circulating. This was the case that

often people drew on these religious phrases, even when their family wasn't very religious. So it became, like, I remember folks telling me, like, you know, my parents went to church very rarely, but during this period, they would often say things like honor they father, them, you know, and drawing that. So that's not to say that sort of people who are more invested in religion in their, in their childhood, in their parents, that that's the case too. But I found that actually like the vast majority of people were talking about this in terms of this religious discourse. I did interview people across a lot of different religious faiths. And I thought that that was very interesting that across any religious faith that this was something that they were taught.

What does that say? I think this is like an open question. I'm very curious about this. I have some thoughts, but I'm sure that you know, your listeners and maybe you have thoughts about this. Like, why does every religion actually do that? that? What is the purpose that that kind of maintaining parents and grandparents, you know, superiority? What does that do? And why are we doing it? So that really came up a lot. And the people that I talked to question that as well, it's hard to unpack it. I'm not a scholar of religion. And so I

feel like I kind of want that people will look into that in the future because it's not something that I'm super familiar with. But I did note it. I think it's really interesting. Yeah, absolutely. And that's not to say, you know, that this comes up for everybody that's practicing of every faith. I found that it was, like you said, same thing. A lot of people were using these phrases without even being very religious. And then you find more communities of religious extremism across sects where that was a predominant teaching in order to probably keep people within a certain system. Something that came up a lot for me with people who are estranged from a parent is that their parents were authoritarian. And that, I think, has been associated a lot with specific

religious groups. I don't know if you're familiar with Focus on the Family with James Dobson. So they've really pivoted recently to estrangement content for parents. Their Facebook page and their groups, I mean, it's all estranged parents. And it seems like they're just, they've moved from child rearing to like that. as being their focus now. A lot of people have sent me some of their stuff. And I find it so interesting that within these very authoritarian communities, they're still grasping for that in adulthood. And I think that's what's costing a lot of these parents their relationship with their children. Yeah. So when we think about like, you know, religious hierarchy, a lot, again, I don't want to, like,

cast the net too broad. But in the case of family, hierarchy actually is a central pillar of the organization and of the sort of belief system. And so if that is the case, you could see adult children estranging from parents is quite like undermining. Not only because, you know, historically speaking, religion is passed down and is, you know, how religions maintain themselves is by kind of keeping people in their religion through generational kind of mandates. So if that starts to fray, I can see why, again, going back to the family panic, for a group like that specifically, they would use that panic as a way to kind of try to keep people in the group. So that's super interesting.

I need to now go look at that. Absolutely. Yeah, I would definitely check it out. You know, I, since I started talking about a stranger and I've been on the receiving interval, a lot of anger, obviously, from parents. And some of the comments that I get most routinely is that what I'm doing is not biblical and it's demonic. And so I've always found that to be very interesting that there is a tenant within, again, I think more insular religious communities, not all, that feel that anything that says, hey, this shouldn't be happening in families might be a tool that is there for destructural. of what is, you know, biblical to them.

And look at the other examples of what's not biblical. I think that that's the really, that's the thread. Okay, what else? Yeah. Right? So not marrying at all, not having children, not being in a patriarchal marriage. Like, we could think of an example, divorce thing. Everything we said at the beginning really called under the same umbrella.

Yeah. Yes. The same cultural panic, the same flavor. It is. And I think like, think like I think that we can point to that and see the same threat. So what's the sort of yeah, sociologists would be like, okay, there's something going on here to what end, to what end? And I think like if we can put estrangement in the category like that, that's really helpful

for seeing it like maybe how do we just destigmatize it then? Absolutely. And when you notice the pattern that there are always, and we can see this across so many things in our world, right, that when you need an enemy, when you need a moral panic over something, we have shifted what that is for decades, you know, and it's like, what's going to be the next one when it rolls around? And I think right now, Estrangement is one of those things. I agree. Yeah. And it will be interesting to see what's next, but I think that's right. Yeah. The last thing I wanted to discuss with you that I think is such a big thing is the role of grandparents in the estrangement conversation. I noticed that several of your interviewees brought up estrangement as protecting their own children. And I'm wondering what

thoughts you have about parents estranging themselves from their parents and then the grandparents not being allowed in the child's life. Like what are you seeing when it comes to that? This one feels tricky. I think. So I, you know, one that invites a lot of opinions in anger for sure. Exactly. And I've seen, you know, just like perusing TikTok, I've seen a lot of anger. Again, I want to like say, like, I can understand why that's confusing and hurtful. But for the people that I talked to, some of them wouldn't have children. Like, they did not want to have children while they were in relationships with their families of origin. They felt very strongly. And then once these strange would happen,

they felt like they could. And they did. So you have that piece of it where, you know, there's this really strong desire not to reproduce the same sort of issues that you had in childhood and then protecting your kids from your parents. So it was both of those things. For people who didn't have children yet, they were like, oh, I can't do this because I'm not healed myself. And then once I estranged, I can. And then there's the other group that had kids. And actually having children, that was a moment where they realized they could really see clearly the impact that the relationship was having on them and then their kids. So there's some examples where people saw their parents interact with their child.

And they're like, oh, that happened to me. Very triggering for them, but really realizing I can be protecting my child. And I need to. And that actually did instigate some of the estrangements. And sometimes it also happened with spouses. This is another tricky category of people. Like the parents I've never seen. Like they blame therapists.

They blame spouses or partners. And I did not. What the empirical data showed is that it could be that entering a new relationship had something to do with the estrangement. Most with the people I talk to, it wasn't that the spouse said we got to cut these people out. In fact, not at all. What it was is that either it allowed, like the child, it allowed the person to see. the dynamic clearly and the harm that it was causing other people. Sometimes when people are doing harm to you, maybe you're used to it. So you're like, I'm not going to worry about it.

Or you do, but you cope with it. But when they saw it happening to their child or to their spouse, that was like a, you know, no, I can't allow this. And so that is the relationship between, I think, having children and also getting married and estrangement. But I think it's really important. I want parents to understand that. It's easy to blame, especially. a spouse or therapist. Same thing with therapy. I have had the same exact experience, you know, when it comes to the spouse and the grandparent stuff. And if I speak to this, like, personally, I find it very hard to believe that there is a large population of adults who are willingly saying, I don't want my kids to have healthy grandparents and I want a parent on my own. Just knowing how much

I rely on my in-laws and my parents to help me in a variety of ways with my children. I know how bad it would have to get for me to give that up. And I want to say, like, there are always outliers. And you know this. Like, there are always situations where these things are happening. What really gets to me is I believe that we are constantly preaching to, like, the few instead of the majority in a lot of these conversations and saying, like, oh, all these children are cutting off amazing parents because they're selfish and they don't want their kids to have grandparents. there has been, and you can definitely contradict this if this has been your experience, I have found no evidence of that on a large level.

No. At all. No, not at all. There's a lot of mourning about not having their child have. Yeah. That's very actually part of the pain. In the last chapter of the book, I talked a lot about the loss. And that is one of them.

Because, again, the grandparent is supposed to be a beautiful social role. So I think, no, I don't find that discourse to be accurate. I can understand why it's being discussed that way. But, no, the people that I spoke to, that was not their intention. And they wanted to have grandparents, but that wasn't, it didn't feel healthy. It didn't feel in line with what they wanted to do to protect their children. Absolutely. I think it's, it is heartbreaking no matter what.

And I think both of us, you know, as a segue, I think we both feel that it would be wonderful if everyone could have these relationships and they could be close and meaningful and all of that. Nobody wants this to happen. No, they're really important. I mean, another strand of my work is about the impact of relationships on health. We know that social ties are so important. But the problem is that when those ties are really conflictual, that's just as bad for your health. So we have this tension where we want these relationships. They're critical and they have to be good. And so this is where we find ourselves in the estrangement context. Yep, absolutely. Gosh. Well, I could truly talk with you about this all day. It is so nice to find,

you know, it's such an exciting feeling intellectually when you're reading something that somebody wrote and you're like, oh my gosh, yes. I've seen this too. It's really nice, especially because I am not in a research university setting. A lot of this is just kind of me doing it with people from a different perspective. So it's very exciting. I think that my audience is going to get a lot out of this. And I'd love if you could tell everyone where they can find your book

or anything else that they'd like to read of yours. Oh, sure. So, you know, the book, the Families We Lose comes out August 18th, which I think is the date of this release. So today, you all are listening to that. Already here. So it's out. And you can find it on, you know, basically any bookstore.

Barnes & Noble has it. You know, any other, it is on NYU Press. That's the press that you can purchase it. And, you know, I have a website. I think that's linked to this. You can co-find some of my research. If there's ever a paper of mine you want to read, just email me. And you can't, if you can't find it, I'll send it to you.

And I really, when you just want to say, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today, Renn. I hope that you all enjoyed this episode. The reframe I want you to sit with today is that maybe the thing to be anxious about is not the people who leave. It's the conditions that they're leaving. And Rind's work asks us to stop interrogating the child who went no contact and start asking harder questions of the family system that made staying impossible. If you're estranged right now, I hope you hear this clearly. You are not a statistic in a moral panic,

and the choice you made is your own unique choice in your family system, not a character flaw. If you are estranged, I invite you to get curious about the page everyone in your family was reading from, and whether you were on the same page, about what families mean to one another. RIN's book, Families We Lose, is out today. You can go and read it by clicking the link in the show notes. And as always, we would love to see you inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling

Home. You can join at Callinghome.com. We have groups for estranged family members as well as estranged adult children. Otherwise, I will see you for another Q&A episode on Thursday. Bye, everyone. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship

between you and Collingholm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below.