Parental estrangement. What do you secretly think?

[Orphlids]

I’m interested in outsiders’ views on estrangements between parents and their adult children. If you’ve met, or were to meet someone, and then discovered they were estranged from both their adult children, what would your initial thoughts be, assuming you knew nothing more about how the estrangement came to happen?

UABU - you wouldn’t think negatively about the parent. You’d be prepared accept the adult children were perhaps unpleasant, or difficult people. You’d feel sorry for the parent.

UANBU - you’d suspect the parent’s poor behaviour was more likely to have caused the estrangements, and you might view that person with suspicion.

Which is closer to your view? I’d be interested in any thoughts, if you’d like to comment in further detail.

That might be how it looks from the outside with my auntie, but
So much happened with my cousin growing up, actually the bloody least she could do was re-Mortgage her house to buy my cousin a home

you don’t know the rest of her behaviour towards her daughters do you? maybe they get weekly drunk phone calling rants at 2AM, maybe she frequently made untrue comments about other people in their life to try draw a wedge between them and other people, there could be a whole host of toxic behaviour you have no idea about. yes potentially you are right but maybe they also had good reason. a mother can be financially supportive but also emotionally manipulative and use it as a weapon to guilt etc

Sorry but I don’t buy this. People don’t turn into monsters because their parent is too generous and loving. There are probably things you don’t know. And their father (or his absence) would also play a part.

Sometimes this ‘doormat’ or ‘marshmallow’ parenting is lazy and self serving to the parent.

It’s hard work to keep boundaries and put in consequences / discipline - these are essential for developing children into a functioning adults. Not to do so is negligent and leaving your DCs vulnerable. Counterintuitively it doesnt engender respect for the parent because the DC doesn’t feel emotionally safe / held.

possibly true, but we just tolerated things more, tried to navigate it
Cutting parents off comes with it's own set of problems, especially when there are siblings that do talk to them.
It was abit if a joke when we went round to my granny's sometimes. She was quite critical and my mum used to say we won't stop long.
She had good points too though, most people do. My mum would never have cut her off.
It's very complicated.

It hurts so much, not seeing your child. And the guilt is huge, as my child won't see my husband either, knowing it's on me.

How did it feel to you as a child to see your mother criticised in front of you?