What Estranged Mothers Get So Wrong

In my practice and in my day-to-day life, I repeatedly and frequently hear about the distress of mothers who are estranged from their adult children. In most of these unfortunate situations, it is the adult child who has initiated the estrangement. There have been many articles published about the psychological consequences for mothers whose children refuse to have contact with them. A recent article by Schoppe-Sullivan (2023) et al. approaches this problem from a unique and extremely interesting perspective. Their study focused on the way mothers think about the causes of the cut-offs. This study included 1,035 mothers who were estranged from one or more of their children. They completed an online survey of attributions for the cut-offs.

The survey included the following attributions:

• Family members turning children against them. This included the children's other biological parent, other family members, the children's spouses or partners, and grandchildren.
• Adult children's mental health, which included addiction and anxiety, depression, or personality disorders. Additionally, it included addiction or alcoholism.
• The mother's personal issues such as having been neglectful, physically abusive, or emotionally abusive.
• Value disagreements including the adult children's sexual orientation, sexuality or sexual behaviors, religion, and other behaviors. It also included the mothers' sexual orientation, religion, sexuality and sexual behaviors, and mothers' other values.
• Divorce and remarriage, which included the divorced partner turning the children against them, children blaming the mothers for the end of the marriage, and children being displeased with the mothers' new partners.

The results were extremely interesting and quite different from adult children's complaints about the mother, which included:

• A lack of boundaries.
• Personality disorder.
• The mothers needing therapy.
• Physical abuse.
• Emotional abuse.
• Neglect suffered during childhood.

The mothers tended to blame the estrangements on external factors rather than looking at their own roles or behaviors that led to the estrangement. Almost 80% of the mothers believed that other family members turned the children against them. They were most likely to believe that it was due to the child's partner or spouse. The second most likely culprit was the children's other biological parent. Finally, this was followed by assigning blame to the other family members and grandchildren. Additionally, almost 80% of the mothers believed that their children's mental illness caused the cut-off. Approximately 64% of the mothers believed that the estrangement was brought about in part by the children's alcohol or other addiction issues. Significantly, smaller percentages of the women attributed the estrangements to differing values, or their own behavior including emotional or physically abusive behavior, or some sort of neglect. In summary, the mothers took little responsibility for their own role in the cut-offs, attributing the estrangements to the behavior and influence of their own kids and significant others in their children's lives.

The results of this study have important messages for therapists and estranged mothers and adult children. Clearly, mothers and children are not understanding each other. For any possible reconciliation to occur, mothers must begin the process of understanding their own role in the estrangement. If there is any possibility of reconnection, mothers and their children must listen carefully to each other and even define their concerns clearly. It is possible that mothers' definition of abuse and neglect differs from that of their adult children. It is also possible that as children try to achieve independence, mothers get concerned and violate boundaries without being aware that what they are doing instead is pushing their children away.

The push-pull dynamic that ensues can be quite stressful. Additionally, some of the mothers' external attributions may, in fact, have played a role in the estrangement. This too, should be examined. As the authors suggest, it is important to avoid a right versus wrong attitude and instead be open about what the dynamics in a cut-off actually are.

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