Parental estrangement. What do you secretly think?

100% agree. I wouldnt jump to any conclusion as who was to blame, why, what happened etc. It could be either, or a mixture of both.

I agree with this.

i know 3 families where adult children are estranged,

family 1 parents were shit, one an addict the other enabled it, neither adult children speak to either of them

family 2 one parent cheated on the other by having a long term affair, neither child want anything to do with the cheat.

family 3 both children are estranged tas dad been abusive to mum and generally being a crap dad.

parents were to blame for the breakdown of both these relationships.

Having lived through this myself, with a bio child and a stepchild, both times I know I’d/we’d done nothing wrong, so I’d not be quick to jump to conclusions about anyone else.
With my bio there was no falling out, child just preferred their dads money and lifestyle. I wanted them to be happy and let them go. Contact was minimal for a few years. It’s fine now. Stepchild has a personality disorder, refuses treatment, steals/lies/manipulates, is violent, and doesn’t like being told no. Our heinous crime? We asked them to either sign on, or get a part time job. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Their choice was to walk away from that ‘awful’ boundary.

Before Mumsnet I might judge. But since it seems, parents, children, in-laws and siblings can’t do anything right according to some I wouldn’t think too much of it now.

In the absence of information, I would not be biased either way.

I know a couple who are estranged from both their adult sons. The woman is their birth mother but the man is her second husband - not the children’s parent but their dad (her first husband) died and her husband bought both sons up as his own from primary school age. This couple only became estranged from their sons when the sons had married and had children of their own.

This couple claim not to know why their sons don’t want anything to do with them. I’m guessing they do and don’t want to share, which is fair enough and their prerogative.

However I can’t help but wonder what has happened as both sons have chosen not to be in their lives. I also can see that the woman could be controlling and high maintenance.

I think the answer to your question is that people will naturally wonder about what’s happened between the family members and will assume that the parents were somehow lacking - and seek out evidence of what might have happened in their own dealings with the parents by looking at their behaviour.

I must admit that I fear the very worst and my brother has agreed to be executor of their will which is spiteful towards the estranged children. I fear that he will discover things he’d rather not know about these people once they die and be left upset.

I think outside of clear cases of abuse/neglect, it’s a really difficult and nuanced issue.

Presumably that it's all the parent's fault.
However unless you accept a) the blank slate theory of human personality b) believe that noone except parents have any impact ( which has been demonstrated in studies to be untrue) it's a lot more complicated than that.
It's a frequent "gotcha" tactic in these ' discussions' tho'

I don’t think the people who are the cause of an estrangement can be expected to be reliable narrators of the story. If they couldn’t be accountable in the most precious relationship in their lifetime, they certainly aren’t going to be accountable in relationships with neighbours, friends from yoga, whatever.

I agree with this.

What they are saying / not saying and the why is going to have me considering if I want to befriend this person because if they are content treating their own children whom they raised (or probably didn’t) a certain way, what is stopping them from doing the same to me.

What's your point?

I wouldn't judge. You just don't know who is at fault or if it's a dynamic of two difficult characters clashing.

I'm fairly LC with my parents because I've always been the scapegoat child. I spent years striving to succeed in various aspects of my life but my role as the disappointment/rebel has been cast in stone for decades. If i won a Nobel prize my mum's only comment would be something like "your hair looked a mess at the presentation". Whereas my sister could do a shit on the floor and my parents would get the neighbours round to admire it. There was no falling out but I drifted away for my own self protection. I don't think they are that bothered but I'm sure people ask about me and they probably say something like I'm cold and uncaring and can't be bothered to visit very often (and it may well look like that to be fair).

It depends how they explain it. If they said they had no idea how it happened or what went wrong then I’d absolutely assume they were at fault.

If its just one child it could be either, could be both. Multiple I'd be inclined to think it was the parents

It's always hard to judge unless you were actually present, but usually if someone has no idea as to why their child cut them off or they blame someone else "turning their child against them" then it's their fault.

My cousin and her mother are NC. I would say both are incredibly self centred, toxic people but as the adult throughout the majority of the relationship I would hold the mother responsible. And it's hard to know if my cousin would be so self centred had her mother not been

Estranged from 1 child and I wouldn't think anything. People don't always get on and personalities can clash. Estranged from 2 and I'd think you are the common denominator.

NC with my mother. She tells everyone she has no idea why, "she made some mistakes but tried her best, as a struggling single mother" and I'm just spoilt or ungrateful or mentally ill.

One of her 'mistakes' involved me being abused by a paedo (her new boyfriend) from 7 years old.

Another 'mistake' nearly killed me and I still have nightmares about it decades later.

There's more, but you get the idea. She'll deny everything and go ballistic if I ever dare tell people. So no-one knows and I'm estranged from most of the family.

An otherwise rational daughter not being in contact with elderly parents frankly i would assume she had very good reasons.

This. Much more likely to be the parents of more than one sibling has issues with them.

By far the most common scenario I see professionally is dad losing contact after divorce as kids take mums side.

Second most common is son not being able to maintain relationships with new family and old so he stops bothering with his parents.

I have seen a couple of cases of parental alienation, where one parent has slowly convinced the child that the other parent doesn’t care and/or is a terrible person.

so on the whole I can see situations where neither parent nor child are in the wrong. The parent is actually a decent person who has done their best, but the child has been manipulated into believing a different version of the truth.

it’s very hard as a child to realise the parent you trust and love has used you to get back at the other parent.

i agree with this.

for most people, the idea of cutting off a loving parent who has supported them and cherished them from the moment they were born is unfathomable. in fact, most people would rather put up with awful treatment for decades than cut their parents off.

i think if someone’s made that choice the chances are the parent has had a very detrimental effect on the child’s wellbeing in some way and the child felt it was something they had to do.

There is a situation in my wider family with estrangement of 3 children.

The parents will have people believe that they are faultless and have been badly treated. But the truth is the fault lies entirely with them and they just can’t self reflect enough to understand their own toxicity.

Sadly they will end their lives not reconciling and I often wonder if deep down they know they are at fault.

They tell a convincing tale to all their friends but the truth is a different matter. So I would ALWAYS assume that there are three sides to every tale, and never believe only one side.

Hmm I wonder what shaped their difficult personalities…

I don't have an axe to grind because my children are still young and I get on well with my own parents.
My thoughts about parental estrangement are that both parties are responsible for the situation. I base this opinion on the fact that I have a fair number of friends, acquaintances, colleagues who are NC with their parents, and they all are difficult personalities. I'm sure there are cases where the children are genuinely nice people and the parents awful (and vice versa), but I've yet to come across them.

I think as an adult you need to stop blaming your parents. What happens after 25 (although I’d argue 18) is on you. The vast majority of parents do their best. Obviously some fail miserably and are just generally shit. But then if you choose to continue engaging with shit as an adult that’s also on you.