Parental estrangement. What do you secretly think?

My Bff has a daughter who cut her off when Ff left the father.
The father is a vile manipulative narc.
The daughter was already difficult & spectacularly rude & ungrateful with her mother.
Ff had made massive sacrifices to allow her D to achieve professional sports athlete level.
The cutting off sent Bff into terrible depression. Fortunately she got ADs & a good psychologist, & she is OK now, but daughter is still 99% silent.
The pain can be debilitating

I wouldn’t leap to any conclusions. If I described on here how my parents responded to me telling them I was being sexually abused in childhood, and how my mother reacted when I brought it up forty years later because I still didn’t understand what she did then, Mn would chorus ‘Go NC’. But I choose not to, though I’ve reduced contact. She’s not going to change.

With the people I know, they tend to be quite similar to the parent they are estranged from. Similar issues on both sides.

It really is. I’ve been called “cold and harsh” for stating that imo my grandparents were my Mum and Dad. Nobody would ever criticise a child adopted at 7 for seeing the people that brought them up as their parents, but because I was taken by grandparents (and our situation was so dire that my school and my siblings school basically coordinated to allow my grandparents to snatch us then date my parents to try and get us back) then it’s cold to consider them my parents.

I think the fact I’m not bitter or angry confuses people. I had a lot of therapy during my first pregnancy and am in a very good place.

In fact I find it almost amusing, albeit in a very sad way, that I’m seen by some extended family as the young weak one (I’m the youngest of 4 - the very late mistake) as I was the only one who refused to see him. Despite the fact his appearance and the drama around it made zero impact on my life beyond me saying no I apparently “clearly” couldn’t cope. Since his appearance and death two of my siblings have hit alcohol and/or drugs and both spent time in hospital and my sister is about to get married for the third time in 10 years. But I’m the one that didn’t deal with it well…

I will add to what I said above though in that, 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.

The reason I am NC with my mum is that she facilitated a convicted paedophile’s contact with my children knowing that he was engaging in abusive behaviour with other children (so was obviously a risk to them and all children because she’d seen it with her own eyes).

If you ask her neighbours or her friends from the golf club why we are estranged, they’ll tell you it’s because Dh and I stole a six figure sum from her and when she refused to allow us to take more, we cut her off from her grandchildren. 🙄 I know because one of her lifelong friends has been in touch with me to tell me and shared the email with me, so I have it literally in her own words. No mention of the paedophile though. 🤔

If they were a genuinely nice and decent person , I’d reserve judgement. Listen and yes, be prepared to accept that the kids might be the problem.
However , I’ll admit that things like “I have no idea what I did “ or similar, particularly coupled with “I gave them this, I did that” instantly get my spidey senses tingling.

^ This. In my experience most people judge the daughter. Unless they themselves have been there.

As a society there is still a bias that women will put up with anything from their parents, regardless of how poor they were.

Equally, as someone said to me recently the issue for outsiders is they only ever see one chapter of the book, they haven't read the whole thing. If the chapter they have seen is charming, erudite and lovely they won't understand there are darker elements to the story and find it very hard to come to terms with that. So I guess it depends on which "chapters" people have seen.

I am NC with my family, so my perspective is obviously going to be biased. But before that happened, I knew two families where there was estrangement. In both cases, I either knew or suspected that the reason for the estrangement was the parent’s atrocious behaviour.

In one case, my friend chose to have a home birth when her parents didn’t want her to have one. She was a 30 something married woman fully able to make sensible decisions about her body with a low risk straightforward pregnancy and her home birth was fully supported by her midwife team. Her parents heard she was in labour, drove 5 hours to her house, and started banging on the door and tried to kick the door down and assault her and her Dh. They have always been controlling nutters, this was the last in a long line of bonkers behaviour, but I think this was finally when the cookie crumbled and she was like, no more.

The other, I knew the parent but not the children. Apparently, the story goes, his wife caused parental alienation and the daughters got angry at him because their mum told them he wasn’t paying any maintenance when in fact he was paying like £2000 a month (earns £250k + bonuses). So she turned them against him and they cut him off. I always thought it seemed like a funny story. Like he tried too hard to get everyone to believe it, if that makes sense, and I just had a feeling it was a big lie. It came out several years down the line that the reason his wife divorced him and the reason his daughters had no contact with him was because he wasn’t paying any convicted of sexually abusing them. It all made complete sense after that (and obviously he’s not someone I have anything to do with either after that).

I can’t think of any families with estrangement where the fault lies anywhere other than completely with the parents, my own situation included.

The only reason I maintain the semblance of a relationship with my 80+ mother is precisely because of the judgement I read on here about elderly parents and how they must have loved you, she’s your mum etc and I assume that in real life the same would happen. She’s a terrible mother but very middle class and wealthy so maintains a very different persona with her community. If I cut her off entirely my ego couldn’t take the battering it would get from her friends so I am grey rocking like a master. @JustAnotherWhinger has articulated beautifully exactly what I know will happen if I cut her off. (I’m very sorry this has happened to you and you are much braver than me).

I'm sure this thread was originally posted a few months ago! 🤔

Anyway, I'd always judge the parent involved if the adult children are estranged. Always

Yes it's amazing how everyone tropes out the old 'but they are your mum/dad etc' like that is a free pass to treat people terribly & not be called out for it. I say this over & over to my friends & family I am in contact with: you reap what you sow when it comes to relationships. It's not about revenge or bitterness for me it's about being boundaried & realising my life has been so much calmer, safer & free since I cut off contact. Wishing you peace xx

I suppose it would depend on my personal knowledge of the people in question, the parents or their adult children.
That scenario has been my only experience of this, and my response has been equivocal. As in hmm… can see why that might have happened…. But nothing more than that. And emphasis on the ‘might’.
I do know someone (not a relation of mine) who could well be a somewhat tricky in-law. But they are handled very well by their wise relation-by-marriage.

I don’t think anything, secretly or not. Someone else’s personal business is just that, and I don’t presume to know the ins and outs of it.

I have a great relationship with my parents, but I’m not so lacking in imagination that I can’t conceive of someone else having a different experience with their own.

I've got adult children. I'd be more likely to blame the adult as I've always had a good relationship with my own adult dc but my aggressively mentally ill mother bullied and abused me and my father.

I think people do judge as they have had such decent parents that it's completely unimaginable to not have contact with them. I've not spoken to my parents for 27 year's due to a childhood of neglect, domestic abuse & alcoholism, I don't share this with anyone & it's been so long that I don't think about it but I am aware that if people do ask me they judge me.

People absolutely judge if you are NC with your parents.

I have heard “oh I could never - you only have one mum and one dad” so many times in life. Even when people know you are NC because your parents were hideous people - violent and neglectful - there is still an assumption that you should give a chance.

My earliest memory is my father asking me what my favourite Christmas present had been, then putting that toy on the fire because I’d been too nosy, I was 3. I remember the smell of burning flesh when my brother was burned by the iron for being cheeky. My P1 teacher (who had tried to get SW involved) staged a prize raffle so I left for a school holiday with a backpack full of mini boxes of cereal and non/perishable snacks (that I knew I had to hide) so I wasn’t starving.

Despite that when my father was dying with cancer a few years ago (I was removed by ny grandparents at 7 and hadn’t seen him at all even in passing since I was 14) I have had family members fall out with me because I refused to see him. As I’m the one that stood fast and am now not spoken to by my siblings and aunt people assume I was the issue.

Based on the people I know: definitely the parents. Even the one person I know who could be considered the problem (created a lot of drama and unpleasantness through drug abuse) his behaviour was absolutely rooted in the way he was (or wasn’t!) parented.

My brother and I are both nc with our mother for the exact same reasons - childhood abuse that culminated in her being a risk to mine and my brother's children. She was unable to recognise or prioritise the needs of the child needs over her adult wants. Her behaviour was so dangerous and damaging that it wasn't safe to keep her in our lives at all for the children's benefit and ours.

You really shouldn't assume.

Have you posted this before? There was a similar thread a couple of months ago.

For both children not to speak to their parent, I would definitely assume something had gone on in childhood and that the parent had not behaved in the best way. As pp have said, children who are raised in a loving, supportive family don’t cut their parents off.

Interesting question, as DH has a great relationship with his son, but is NC with his daughter (he has tried to improve things for years, but she's just hard work)

Interested in this as I’m currently doing through it and it’s pretty awful. My DF has decided to become NC through no overly obvious reasons. Has been a strained relationship for some time but I’ve worked hard to maintain it as best as I can and he has not been easy. I went though I really traumatic year last year and he pretty much decided then would be the optimal time to go NC. I’m still hurting.

My husbands dad left them when he was 11 and sister 13. He'd been unfaithful and went to live with the ow. He tried to make an effort to see his children but my DH's sister was in her teenage years and rightfully very hurt by his actions and told him to fuck off. He did, he still saw my DH but never his daughter.

My DH had sporadic relation with him up until his death, so did I when I came into the picture. He wasn't a bad man but made dreadful choices spurred on/led by a really truthfully wicked 'step mother' but ultimately he was weak and abandoned his daughter and made his son's relationship with him awkward.

I do wonder and wondered what he said to people asking him about any children and what his own justification was for totally cutting out his daughter. In his mind he probably justified it with her not wanting to see him but he made zero effort after what he had done so you can't put that on a child.

Depends, if i met someone and they were estranged from their daughter, i would assume it was fault of the parents.

If i met someone who was estranged from their son i would assume it was the fault of the son, or if i'm honest assume the mum and DIL dont get on and she has encouraged son to go no contact.

Despite how it's portrayed in much media, I don't think people estrange thenselves from parents for petty reasons or because a partner or therapist manipulated them to do so or whatever. It tends to happen for very good reasons.

I am sure there are some situations when the parent has genuinely done nothing wrong and the child is just narcissistic or something, and obviously sometimes abusive partners will demand estrangement from parents, but those are edge cases.

Well we all know what the assumption around here is.
Apparently younger people can never, ever be selfish or unreasonable.
And no, I'm not estranged. Just aware that heroes and villains is too easy a resort.