Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict
Joshua Coleman, PhD
Mar 2021 · Sold by Harmony
4.5star
4 reviews
Ebook
256
Pages
family_home
Eligible
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About this ebook
A guide for parents whose adult children have cut off contact that reveals the hidden logic of estrangement, explores its cultural causes, and offers practical advice for parents trying to reestablish contact with their adult children.
“Finally, here’s a hopeful, comprehensive, and compassionate guide to navigating one of the most painful experiences for parents and their adult children alike.”—Lori Gottlieb, psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Labeled a silent epidemic by a growing number of therapists and researchers, estrangement is one of the most disorienting and painful experiences of a parent's life. Popular opinion typically tells a one-sided story of parents who got what they deserved or overly entitled adult children who wrongly blame their parents. However, the reasons for estrangement are far more complex and varied. As a result of rising rates of individualism, an increasing cultural emphasis on happiness, growing economic insecurity, and a historically recent perception that parents are obstacles to personal growth, many parents find themselves forever shut out of the lives of their adult children and grandchildren.
As a trusted psychologist whose own daughter cut off contact for several years and eventually reconciled, Dr. Joshua Coleman is uniquely qualified to guide parents in navigating these fraught interactions. He helps to alleviate the ongoing feelings of shame, hurt, guilt, and sorrow that commonly attend these dynamics. By placing estrangement into a cultural context, Dr. Coleman helps parents better understand the mindset of their adult children and teaches them how to implement the strategies for reconciliation and healing that he has seen work in his forty years of practice. Rules of Estrangement gives parents the language and the emotional tools to engage in meaningful conversation with their child, the framework to cultivate a healthy relationship moving forward, and the ability to move on if reconciliation is no longer possible.
While estrangement is a complex and tender topic, Dr. Coleman's insightful approach is based on empathy and understanding for both the parent and the adult child.
“Finally, here’s a hopeful, comprehensive, and compassionate guide to navigating one of the most painful experiences for parents and their adult children alike.”—Lori Gottlieb, psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Labeled a silent epidemic by a growing number of therapists and researchers, estrangement is one of the most disorienting and painful experiences of a parent's life. Popular opinion typically tells a one-sided story of parents who got what they deserved or overly entitled adult children who wrongly blame their parents. However, the reasons for estrangement are far more complex and varied. As a result of rising rates of individualism, an increasing cultural emphasis on happiness, growing economic insecurity, and a historically recent perception that parents are obstacles to personal growth, many parents find themselves forever shut out of the lives of their adult children and grandchildren.
As a trusted psychologist whose own daughter cut off contact for several years and eventually reconciled, Dr. Joshua Coleman is uniquely qualified to guide parents in navigating these fraught interactions. He helps to alleviate the ongoing feelings of shame, hurt, guilt, and sorrow that commonly attend these dynamics. By placing estrangement into a cultural context, Dr. Coleman helps parents better understand the mindset of their adult children and teaches them how to implement the strategies for reconciliation and healing that he has seen work in his forty years of practice. Rules of Estrangement gives parents the language and the emotional tools to engage in meaningful conversation with their child, the framework to cultivate a healthy relationship moving forward, and the ability to move on if reconciliation is no longer possible.
While estrangement is a complex and tender topic, Dr. Coleman's insightful approach is based on empathy and understanding for both the parent and the adult child.
Ratings and reviews
4.5
4 reviews
Onyx “The Sparrow” Tomlin
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November 12, 2023
It was a good read, but I'm only estranged from one parent and I will not be heading back into an unhealable nightmare and traumatize myself more. This book is good but remember lines must be drawn, and if they are drawn, then protect them because you made them for a reason.
Toby A. Smith
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May 15, 2021
More parents are estranged from their children than ever before. RULES OF ESTRANGEMENT helps to explain why and offers concrete ways parents may be able to heal that estrangement. In the last generation, societal attitudes and effort around parenting have dramatically changed. Today, Millennials in the U.S. face more obstacles to achieving the traditional hallmarks of "success" (both professionally and personally) than previous generations. Previous expectations that children have a responsibility or duty to their parents have diminished. Instead, today's adult children have been raised to believe that focusing on their own individual values, goals, and desires gives them the best chance of happiness. Consequently, if a relationship with one or both parents stands in the way of that happiness, that relationship SHOULD be cut away. Peppered with lots of anecdotes from his own therapy practice, psychologist Joshua Coleman offers ways for parents to work on their relationships with estranged children, with the goal of having SOME degree of relationship rather than NONE. His approach puts most of the responsibility for healing the rift on the parents, which may be hard for some parents to handle. And the advice he offers is not easy to follow. But the book offers a reasonable explanation of why estrangement has become more common and how parents can channel their reactions (anger, sadness, guilt, etc.) into more potentially productive avenues. It's very readable non-fiction and if nothing else, the book helps parents feel better about themselves and shows they are not alone in being estranged from an adult child.
1 person found this review helpful
About the author
Joshua Coleman, PhD, is a psychologist in private practice and Senior Fellow with the Council on Contemporary Families. A frequent guest on NPR and Today, his advice has also appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Chicago Tribune and other publications. A popular conference speaker, he has given talks to the faculties at Harvard, the Weill Cornell Department of Psychiatry and other academic institutions. Dr. Coleman is co-editor with historian Stephanie Coontz of seven online volumes of Unconventional Wisdom: News You Can Use: a compendium of noteworthy research on the contemporary family. He is the father of three adult children, has a teenage grandson and lives with his wife in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also writes music for television which has appeared on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Lethal Weapon, Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, Longmire, Shameless, RuPaul's Drag Race, and many other shows.
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