The "No Contact" Estrangement Crisis Nobody Is Talking About

One-third of Americans over age 18 report being estranged or going no contact with friends or family this holiday season, and 25% of us are estranged from a parent. They call it a silent pandemic, but it's not really so silent anymore. There are whole movements on TikTok and Instagram celebrating the choice to cut off your family. The hashtag toxic family reached 2 billion this year on TikTok. It's some of the saddest Christmas season coverage I've ever seen. We could call it the no-contact Christmas crisis.

It's deeply personal and acutely painful because almost everyone is or knows someone who is estranged from family members. Families have always been a pain point precisely because family has to do with our roots and our identity. Estrangement has, in ages past, been seen as a tragedy and a failure on the part of one or both parties. Granted, abuse and trauma are urgent reasons why going no contact can be the healthiest. But, as clinical psychologist and author of Rules of Estrangement Joshua Coleman notes, the bar for qualifying as trauma today is much lower.

He has seen adult children cut off parents for negative comments about sexuality or partners, for failing to accept certain boundaries, or increasingly, even for political differences. I didn't lose my father to illness or an accident. I lost him to red pill. What went wrong? Did half of America suddenly become toxic? Did American parents spend the last 35 years developing acute narcissism and driving their kids to end it all? Why is no contact Christmas trending on social media and in every major news outlet, from the New Yorker to the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times?

After all, it seems clear that nobody wants it to be this way. But we have crossed into new territory. Can we do anything about it? I think we can. But first, a word from our sponsor. Did you know that the Catholic Church recommends a powerful way to protect your home and everyone within it from evil? Holy Heroes has your complete kit with everything needed for the traditional home blessing, plus this recommended protection. Here's what's unique about this home blessing and protection kit.

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And now, back to No Contact Christmas. Family estrangement is a growing problem. The numbers are astonishing. As I mentioned up top, one in three American adults report being estranged from their family. Investigative journalists at Skeptic looked at who is actually severing ties, when genuine abuse, trauma, or physical danger are not the cause. Two factors stand out, age and politics. Gen Z and millennials are the most likely to go no contact. Liberals across all age groups are more likely than moderates or conservatives to sever ties.

2024 is often identified as the breaking point, the election that split families for good. A recent Harris poll confirms that 61% of those estranged by choice say politics is the largest cause. So, why is this happening now? Politics and religious differences have always been painful and have even led to bloodshed. Just watch Ken Burns' The Civil War or read up on the wars of religion.

Today, it kind of seems like the progressive vision of an ever more tolerant, open society has failed, and we're trending toward that Civil War vibe again. Differences that should be surmountable—who you voted for, what church you attend—are Are now, for principled liberals, in the same category as abuse or toxicity? The easiest answer is that young liberals are applying the norms of social media to the norms of real life. Another layer of explanation is that today, liberal Gen Zers and millennials have weaker pre-existing family ties in the first place, shaped by divorce culture or past instability.

Across the Western democracies, adult children of divorce ...hold more leftist political positions, and thus are more likely to see estrangement as a normal, healthy act of self-actualization. Add to that the fact that liberals tend to embrace the belief that family ties are arbitrary. Rather, a good life, first and foremost, requires protecting my mental health. As Dr. Coleman explained to Oprah... There's been a radical change in the way that we think about... The old days of honor thy mother and thy father, respect thy elders, families forever, has given way to this much more of an emphasis on personal happiness, personal growth, my identity, my political beliefs, my mental health, so much so that today, protecting my mental health is the single most common thing that I see in every single letter from every estranged adult child.

Has this been exacerbated or has this increased? Because of social media. Oh, there's no question. Absolutely. Yeah. Because you've got two billion hashtags, toxic family, and everybody's got a, you know, if you line up and you're an estranged parent, you're going to get onto a Facebook site. If you're an estranged adult child, you're going to probably get onto Reddit or something like that, and you're going to get support for your perspective. But these aren't people who actually know your parents or know your adult child.

They're going to kind of tell you what you want to hear. So, there's this very inflammatory reaction that people have as a result of it. And partly that happens because we've become so divided as a society. People are kind of looking for their tribes, because their tribes are, you know, they don't have them anymore. We're lonely. We have rising rates of mental illness. But your tribe used to be your family. Your tribe used to be your family, exactly. And it still could, if we figure out how to talk to each other.

Still another factor is the reality of social contagion. If you see your friends doing it, or even just your favorite social media follow, You are more likely to do it, too. All of these factors taken together, political divisions, social media, weakened family bonds, social contagion, add up to the perfect conditions for an estrangement epidemic. But it doesn't really satisfy me. A sociologist's scoreboard gives us a lot of facts and factors. It makes me maybe more sympathetic to my estranged family, but it doesn't turn into empathy.

Until I consider this. Most people don't cut off their parents or friends because they've conducted a sober philosophical audit of your convictions. They do it because something in them feels shaken or unsafe or betrayed. Septim Ring Sally did not cut me off just because she thinks I'm wrong about tax rates or gender theory. In her mind, I violated a moral world. That she thought we shared. And once that internal world cracks, people panic. They withdraw, and they protect the story they're living inside.

That doesn't make her a villain, and it doesn't let me be a martyr. It makes her human. It makes us both human. And that's where this becomes less about trends and statistics, and more about the quiet, painful ruptures between actual people. Behind every no-contact announcement is someone who loved, expected, and hoped, and then felt disappointed, and finally embittered and bereft of love. And when that love suddenly goes missing, of course, Of course, it hits close to home. It is our home.

Suddenly become strange and foreign, cold and hostile. It's not just sad, it's frightful, and yes, traumatizing. Once we shake off the initial shock, it can send us in directions we never would otherwise have considered, just to protect the part of ourselves that still hurts, to protect ourselves from that trauma ever coming close to happening again. So to you, my estranged sisters and brothers, here's what I would say if I could.

You have legitimate grievances. You feel betrayed. For one reason or another, you thought we were on the same side. We owed it to each other, as family. We both had the highest ideals for our family. We both wanted friendship. Friendship is the closest we can get in this life to the highest good, and our bonds with our parents and siblings are, in the normal course of things, our first goods. Our parents gave us life. And that simple fact grounds our shared conviction that when we reach adulthood, our parents ought to be our oldest friends.

It's the same with our brothers and sisters. We should be friends, and now we're not. These rifts in the family feel like rifts in ourselves. Friendship requires a common life and shared ideals. For adult children going no contact this Christmas, you feel those ideals were betrayed, and you blame your family. In families, when we're young, parents carry the responsibility to provide a home, a community of thought and action, and unconditional love. When we grow up, we share in that responsibility ourselves.

Friendship in families requires shared beliefs, not just shared memories. And you thought we shared something. Then, maybe because we voted for the wrong person or spoke too publicly about it, you realized we didn't. Maybe it blindsided you. The bottom line, you found the betrayal too grave to forgive. Worse, maybe it wasn't political at all. Maybe it was gradual. The fatal disease of family love, paraphrasing Samuel Johnson here, is gradual decay or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint and too numerous for removal.

I was mean to you when we were kids. I took the room you wanted on vacation that one summer. I made that joke at your expense. We grew apart slowly, without forgiving the small offenses along the way. Many no-contact Christmas kids on social media talk about feeling just exhausted by their MAGA families. I'm just so tired.

So then, when I voted for Trump, you found that the relationship just wasn't worth saving. Not for someone like me. The same thing happens with the church, which you may also be estranged from. You know instinctively what the church should be, and somewhere along the line, a church man or woman failed you. So you say, screw dad, screw the church. You're mad that dad wasn't a good father, or your mom wasn't emotionally there for you. You're mad that your parish wasn't full of saints.

The good news is, we both want the ideal. But there's a difference between flawed relationships and toxic ones. Real abuse sometimes requires total separation, but no friend's giving will spare you from human flaws. I can't make you want to reconnect, but consider this. One friend cannot replace a mother.

A lover cannot replace a father. A chosen family cannot paper over and replace your given family. If politics and religion have made your dad seem less human, consider the fact that he is, in fact, human, especially in his flaws.

No matter how you got here, I want you to know the door is always open. Your given family isn't something you can erase. Grapple with it, decry it, call it to your idea of repentance, tend to it like a wound if you must, but cut it off.

Only if you've come to hate a part of yourself more than I could recommend. Because, in any case, you'll feel the pain as deeply as anyone who first provoked you to reach for the knife. Am I being too graphic? I don't think so. After all, no contact happens the same way violence happens, when we stop talking. When we let time, distance, or TikTok politics dehumanize the people we know all too well as flawed, suffering humans. Here's the reality of life, though.

If you are estranged from your family because of political or religious beliefs, something will eventually humanize us again. For many, tragically, it will be a shared death of a parent or a child or a spouse. It could be a funeral. It could be a wedding.

But for my part, I hope it's this Christmas. These moments, birth, death, marriage, the returning seasons and holidays, are the fulcrums of human life. When we meet again around them, I hope we can take a step toward making our world more human again. If there's an opening, a crack in the wall, gently extend your hand. Rehumanize the holidays. Use food, games, music, and non-political movies. to rebuild common life together. Don't rush into deep conversations. When you do go there, look for the good in the other and don't assume bad intentions.

And have hope. Most people grow and mature and mellow out with age. Healing becomes possible. Act the way you want to be. Talk to the person you most dread seeing. Make it about them. Blaise Pascal, that master observer of the human condition, wrote, Learn of those who have been bound like you. Follow the way by which they began, by acting as if they believed. And ask yourself this, when this life is over, what will you want to have? Did you get what you wanted?

What did you want? I think for all of us, it's this, to call ourselves beloved and feel ourselves beloved on the earth. Not Hallmark movie love that is fake, and I would run away from it too. I mean the cold, shivering infant god man on the Love. The frightened Joseph love who flees to save his wife and child. The love that makes roses bloom in winter. That's a love worth fighting for and suffering for. And isn't that what Christmas is really all about?

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