CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - The Perpetually Estranged Parent

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

In this episode, Whitney draws together hundreds of emails, letters, and social media interactions to create a profile of a specific type of parent she calls the perpetually estranged parent.Whitney 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 Club⁠⁠Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhitFollow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft⁠⁠Order Whitney’s book, Toxic PositivitySign up for updates on Whitney’s new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0oThis 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.

Welcome back to the Calling Home podcast. I am so glad you're here. Before we dive into today's topic, I want to remind you that if you're looking for deeper support on your family cycle breaking journey, you can join the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. This month, we're focusing on moving forward after estrangement. And inside Calling Home, we're having real conversations, sharing resources, and building community around this work. I'd love to see you there. But today we're talking about a specific type of estranged parent. This is the parent who rarely, if ever, repairs the relationship with their adult child. I call them the perpetually estranged parent. And understanding their patterns can help you make sense of your own situation and assess the potential for repair.

Now, I want to make some caveats at the beginning of this episode, some disclaimers, if you will. Not all estranged parents are abusive, and not all parents are fully at fault for the estrangement. Some parents experience temporary estrangement and find ways to grow, change, or repair. But there is a specific type of parent that I have encountered throughout this work who is unable to complete this repair work. And I've created this profile based on my analysis of emails, texts, social media posts, handwritten letters, and survey responses from estranged parents that I have collected over the last couple of years. I've utilized around 300 pieces of content for this episode to create this profile

in addition to my pre-existing knowledge about working on this topic. There are a couple of pervasive dysfunctional beliefs among perpetually estranged parents that seem to persist long term. The first one is that boundaries are hurtful. So a lot of these parents propose that people who love one another don't need boundaries. And if boundaries cause the parent pain, then the adult child is responsible for making them feel better, usually by getting rid of the boundaries. and boundaries are seen as control attempts rather than guidance or help for the relationship. There's also a lot of dysfunctional beliefs among this population around intentions versus impact. There's a double standard here.

So if the parent didn't intend to harm, they're not responsible. But if the child does something harmful, they absolutely intended it maliciously. And if the parent can't understand the child's reasons or feelings, they simply do not exist. Parental authority is also a big one. These parents feel that they are entitled to authority over their child for life. They simultaneously demand an equal adult relationship when they're being held accountable. but if their child does not comply, and I say child, but I mean adult child, does not comply, they label them spoiled, ungrateful, or defective. Apologies are also a very complicated topic among this group.

Any apology, no matter how hollow, requires forgiveness on the part of the adult child. An example of this would be, I'm sorry for everything I'm done. I guess I was the worst parent ever. That's an apology. It has the word sorry in it. It deserves forgiveness. Money and material goods are also a big topic here. Providing material things gives these parents rights over their child.

And gifts often come with strings attached and can be weaponized. at any time. One of the most common beliefs that I see among this population, and this has been reflected in other studies, when we're talking about estrangement between a parent and their adult child, the parent tends to believe that the problem is external. These perpetually estranged parents often believe this and promote this. And their most commonly cited reason among the parents that I surveyed was their adult child's mental health. A lot of others blamed their spouse or partner, divorce, and sibling rivalry. But there was a study done in 2023 where 79% of the estranged mothers in this study said that family members turn children against them. And only 18%

said that they might have been at fault for this rift between them and their child. So when we look at a lot of the comments and posts and videos and letters and stuff from estranged parents that they send me and others and that they talk about in their own groups, they do tend to really externalize this issue and put it on therapists, politics, whatever, anything but something that they did in the relationship. Now I want to talk about some behavioral patterns that I see among this group of perpetually estranged parents that are very unlikely to repair. They're very rejecting of boundaries.

So reasonable requests like I would like you to call before you come over or please do not use that word in front of my kids are framed as a tax on parental authority. There's also a lot of material absolution. So they'll use trips, lessons, gifts as evidence of good parenting that ultimately should cancel out any. emotional harm that happened outside of that material support that they provided. There's also a lot of denial of the past, even treating documented harm as just a difference of perspective, you'll see a lot of self-victimization as well among this population. So estranged parents who are unlikely to repair their relationship with their adult children will typically inhabit spaces like groups online, Facebook groups, forums, their own

TikTok accounts, and they will position themselves as a victim. They are a victim of their child, which yes, of course adults can be abusive to their parents. I'm not denying that. But among this group, they tend to always be the victim of something. Their spouse, parental alienation. There's a some nefarious third party like a therapist or a partner or a friend or a trend of people wanting them to become estranged. And so their kid just jumped on the bandwagon. It's always about that they had something happened to them from this third party that made their child not want to have a relationship with them. And if that third party was never involved, they would have a perfect relationship with their child's.

And there's a lot of talk around like people don't understand how hard it is to be a parent. No one supports the parents. No one agrees with the parents. Everyone is biased. All of that. The silent treatment is also a big behavior among perpetually estranged parents. They use silence as punishment and then reengage as if nothing happened in the relationship. And this is usually a pattern that has existed for quite some time.

Triangulation is also very, very common. They might recruit other family members as flying monkeys to enforce their perspective. But I also see this a lot in these groups and on social media accounts and in forums where there is a huge echo chamber. There is no challenging. In fact, they become irate if anyone asks them to. to think of another perspective. It's all about posting something and then getting like a thousand comments of like,

I agree, it's these therapists, it's this, it's that I was a perfect mother. You know, it's a constant reinforcement of their perspective and a real need for that. There's also a huge disconnect between public and private among perpetually estranged parents. So they may be able to maintain this facade of exemplary parenting while engaging in harmful behaviors privately. And they may even utilize people in their community that would say things like, oh, they were such a perfect parent. There was a story that I was sent, you know, about a mother who would always take her kids to swim lessons and art classes and martial arts. And at home, she was withholding food from them and hitting her kids. And this adult daughter was saying, like, people would gawk at how privileged I was.

They were always like, oh, my gosh, you're so lucky. You get to do all of these amazing things. But they had no idea what was actually going on in my house. And this is something that I hear a lot among adults who really see absolutely no resolution with their parent. because the parents, again, rely on this public narrative to totally refute everything that was happening in private. Now, there are a lot of extreme behaviors that happen in online communities among perpetually estranged parents. And these are things that I've observed with my own eyes. They happen on my page.

They happen in online communities. And again, not all estranged parents do this. By far and large, I think a lot of them do not. but members of estranged parent forums and those who are very active in these spaces have been observed joking about spanking, slapping, publicly shaming their adult children. They go to their children's homes, workplaces or grandchildren's schools uninvited, creating fake social media accounts to spy on their adult children. This is something that we hear about in our groups at calling home constantly.

hiring private investigators to find children who moved without contact info, demanding family members choose sides, and calling their adult children immature, spoiled, ungrateful, entitled, etc., unless they reestablish the relationship on the parents' terms. And these are the types of behaviors that you will see often in some of these insular spaces among parents who I don't think actually are working towards not becoming estranged from their adult children. This is a unique subgroup that is handling this issue in this way. I also picked up on a lot of very common language patterns among the perpetually estranged parent. And I think that these

phrases serve very deliberate functions. There are a lot of deflection and manipulation. So there's something that I've called the role-based exemption, and that is saying, like, I am your mother, I am your parent, so you should do X. There's also, we talked about self-victimization. There is this victim flip that happens whenever behavior is presented of, I guess I'm just the worst mom. After everything I've done, those kind of ways of trying to then engage their adult child in soothing them instead of continuing to talk about the issue at hand. there's also a lot of false equivalence, okay? And that would sound like both perspectives are valid.

We live those years very differently. I just don't see your side. And so instead of acknowledging the inherent hierarchy between the parent and the child, they want this to be a relationship of equals, but also engage in this role-based exemption and the child. and this hierarchical type of control. Boundaries are also seen as an attack, again, like we said, and this comes out in language like saying,

stop trying to mold me, you can't control me, your unmet expectations of me, that any type of I would like X from you gets labeled as an attack through the lens of control. There's also a lot of credibility attacks, and those will sound like fabricated trauma, revising history, revisionist stories, manipulation, change your definition of trauma, always trying to attack what is being said instead of looking deeper at the meaning or trying to

understand. Tons of non-apologies. These can sound very similar to the victim flip, right? And that would sound like, I'm sorry I don't meet your expectations. I think that was said a lot in the episode I did where I read letters from estranged parents. There's also a lot of source discrediting. So this happens often when these perpetually estranged parents are looking to a third party as the source for why this has happened. And you'll see this everywhere online. Once you see it in comment sections, you can't unsee it.

It's very common to say things like you've been brainwashed. Everything was fine until you went to therapy. Your wife is evil and turned you against us, things like that. So what does this mean for you if you have a parent like this? I think the perpetually estranged parent fits into a very unique box. Okay. And if you're hearing all these things that I'm saying and you're like, wow, my parent does all of those things.

I want you to think about like, do they do all of these things consistently, right? Do you see a lot of this behavior or does it only come up sometimes? Have you been able to have conversations with them otherwise? Do they feel like they are trying to repair? Or are they really just like focusing on surface level contact with you while still engaging in a lot of these other behavior? right? Because this pattern of behaviors that we see in the perpetually estranged parent makes it impossible for them to repair. If you view that all boundaries are a threat, you think that you are

always the victim. You do not view your adult child as a credible source of information or perspective on their own childhood or life. You're not. able to make apologies and you feel like you deserve authority over your child's life because of your role as mother, father, parent, it's fundamentally impossible for the two of you to actually engage in the repair process because repair requires you to see your child as a person, as a human being that has their own perspective, feelings, values, thoughts, and beliefs about their childhood and their experience with you. If you don't believe that, then anything that comes out of their mouth or out of your mouth as the adult child listening to this is not going to be heard.

There's just going to be more attempts to discredit that, engage in that role-based exemption, and attack your credibility. If a parent believes that they play no way, role at all in the estrangement, then they typically believe that they play no role in the repair. And when you think that you have no power to repair this relationship with your adult child, then it is very, very easy to make yourself the victim to put all of the onus of responsibility out onto the child and say, you need to fix this with me. because I didn't do anything wrong. And then we can again get back into this,

the parent is always the victim. They are not going to take responsibility. And they are going to maintain their role in the hierarchy as parent, while also demanding an equal relationship with their adult child. And so that's why this group of parents is so unique. because I think that they're not actually very interested in repair. They're interested in maintaining the status quo. They want their adult child to come back to apologize for what they did

and then to reenter a dynamic where they are here and the parent is here. The parent has ultimate authority. There are no boundaries. There's no need to apologize. And the parent is the only credible. source on what happened in the past and what is currently happening in the present in that relationship. And when the adult child refuses to do that, the perpetually estranged parent says, well, there's nothing else I can do that because this isn't my fault. I can't fix it.

I didn't do anything wrong. These boundaries are ridiculous. I am the parent. This is not how things should go. They're challenging my authority. And honestly, they're wrong and they're lying. and they're exaggerating. If that is your mindset, then the only engagement that you are going to have with this concept of estrangement is sort of sitting in the mess, right? Going to groups and forums and pages and accounts where those beliefs get consistently reinforced over time. And you're going to continue viewing content through the lens of, here is another therapist who just wants to promote estrangement. Here's another adult who is not grateful for their parents and is unappreciative and entitled and, you know, they're a bully, et cetera. Here's another great

parent that did everything that they could and their adult child just rejects them. And if that is the only lens through which you want to see this issue, it's going to feel really good. to see a lot of content out there that just continues to reinforce that perspective. And then you never have to engage in the messy, painful part of all of this, which is looking deeper at what happened in your relationship between you and your child to allow things to get this way. And again, I always say this. It's not about who's at fault, whose memories are right.

it's the ability to like humble yourself and sit back and say okay if i was the parent here or 18 years of this child's life i hold this position of power i like this position of power in fact i utilize it all the time when i say things like i am your mother i'm your parent you can't talk to me like that um look at all i did for you that means that you understand that you have some power right the perpetually estranged parent actually really likes that power and utilizes it except in the case when it's being used to use that power to be a leader right and to maybe have to sort of make themselves smaller and say like i want to hear how this feels for you and what this is like for you They can't utilize their power in that way because it's too vulnerable.

And I really think this is what separates the parents who are able to fix things with their kid or who have a momentary, you know, break in the relationship or who just are kind of going through a rough patch is that they can see how much power they have. And they use that power for good. And they use that power to try to move them and they're, child into a new type of adult relationship rather than saying, I'm the parent, I get to call the shots, I have all the power, and that means I want to just keep you under my thumb. Those parents cannot repair. And I talked about this in my episode about authoritarian parenting

that if you view your adult child through that lens as being someone that you have a right to control that you have a sense of entitlement over their decisions and their life and who they marry and the job that they choose, everything that you do is going to run through that filter. And a lot of those types of parents become perpetually estranged when estrangement happens because if I am the authoritarian and I have all of the power over my adult child, I feel like I'm giving up some of that power if I listen to them. And I allow them to have a voice and to be an equal in this relationship. And I don't want to lose that power where the parents that actually repair are able to say,

we are both individual adults here with our own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, history, and understanding of what happened. Both of us have our own perspective. I as the parent tend to hold more power. in this relationship, given the hierarchy that has existed for our entire life together as long as we've known each other. And with that, I'm going to use that power to model to you what a healthy relationship looks like and how to listen and understand unrespect boundaries and all of that. And I think ideally, of course, this is happening slowly across the life cycle between a lot of

parents and their children. Their children are every day as they age, getting a little bit more autonomy and freedom in the relationship and the parent is slowly pulling back. But for those who have always clung to this hierarchical relationship and this power, their child becoming an adult is an extremely disruptive event. And the perpetually estranged parent never gets over that. they stay stuck in that position where I should have the authority and the control. And I think that's what leads to a lot of these behavioral patterns. That's what leads to them rejecting boundaries, thinking that material possessions excuse harm, denying the past, them becoming the victim, trying to get people to come in and support them

and give them more power through like that triangulation or the flying monkeys or external support in these groups. And then also using what happened in the public to deny what was happening in private. And so again, this is not all estranged parents. I think a lot of parents have the ability to be really woken up by the loss of their child in their life, make changes and do something different that happens with with adults. But for this specific subset of the population of a strange adult children and their parents, these parents tend to stay perpetually estranged if they are engaging in some of these dysfunctional beliefs, behavioral patterns, extreme behaviors, and language patterns. And so if you listen to this episode and you're like, wow,

my parent uses this language, they have this type of behavior, and they have almost all of these dysfunctional beliefs. It might be a time for you to step back and realize like, hey, maybe I'm dealing with something a little bit different here. I'm not interacting with a parent who is in good faith trying to repair with me. I'm seeing a lot of defensiveness and a lot of signs of like, I'm the boss, you have to listen to me and I'm not going to change this. And I think the most consistent finding across this group of perpetually estranged parents that I have seen in everything that I've read and all the

conversations that I've had is an absence of accountability. There's no specific acknowledgement, no genuine apology, no commitment to behavior change, and no ongoing respect for the child's And when adult children, probably like most of you listening, find validation and support through therapists, groups, friends, communities, perpetually estranged parents, instead of being glad that their adult child is getting help and support and trying to join them in that and seeing it, they attack these sources rather than recognizing that there's someone out there that is listening and helping their adult childs. If any of this resonated with you, I want you to know that your experience is valid.

I think that we need to talk more about this specific group that is a little bit different from maybe your typical estranged parent or certainly from estranged parents that are able to repair with their adult children. And recognizing these patterns is just about giving you clarity so that you can make the right choices for yourself and move forward. And there are a lot of different options available to you. If you would like to go deeper into this work, join us inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. We focus on a different topic every month. And this month, we're focusing on moving forward after estrangement. And I'd love to have you in the conversation.

We also have groups twice a month for estranged adult children and adult children of emotionally immature parents. So if you liked this episode, there's a lot there for you. And if this episode helped you, please take a moment to like, subscribe, and leave a review. It really does help people find the show and find this community. And just a reminder, I am on maternity leave until the end of May. So there are only new episodes every Tuesday. I'll see you next week. 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 Holmes Terms of Service linked in the show notes below.