Humanity

Family estrangements are fundamental to the human story, starting the day that God tossed Adam and Eve from the garden. Likewise, in Greek mythology, there’s Electra, who murdered her mother to avenge her father, and Tantalus, who cooked his son and fed him to Olympian gods.  Then Abraham who almost killed his son Ishmael as a sacrifice just when he puts the knife on his neck , God stopped him and replace the sacrifice with a lamb.

Marriage may fall ,partners drifting away from each other, romance turn to boring life and a nutshell routine,  family cut-offs have led to painful, shattering ends: King Henry II was forever on edge fielding challenges and betrayals from his sons; Mozart’s marriage left him estranged from his father, the controlling, nagging, unbearable Leopold;  This king also killed most of his wives and broke the catholic law by marring his wife sister after killing here , that’s why he discovered the Anglican church to separate from the catholic  and make his own rules.

 The American founding father Benjamin Franklin broke from his son, William, who supported the British king. Then there was the rift between Ronald Reagan and his activist daughter, Patti; and between Barack Obama’s, Jr and Sr. the list goes on.

Estrangements between siblings are especially brutal. The sisters and Hollywood stars Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine engaged in a lifelong feud. Julia Roberts helped to fund a custody battle against her brother and fellow actor, Eric. From Cleopatra to Genghis Khan, the powerful have murdered or cut off their siblings as a matter of routine.

I’ve seen breakups in my own family. My brother and his wife, I tried hard to make them back but few years later they are departed, I blame my brother behavior for losing such a wonderful and beautiful woman. I bought them a house  and helped them so much but at the end all the money I spent didn’t help at all . When you lose respect you lose the passion and romance.

The statistics on family estrangement vary by study but are always sobering. In 2015, the psychologist Richard Conti of Kean University reported that more than 43 per cent of the 154 students he surveyed had experienced a family estrangement.

 More recent statistics come from Karl Pillemer, a family sociologist and gerontologist directing the Cornell Family Reconciliation Project. In his latest book, Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them (2020), he reports that among a representative sample of 1,340 Americans aged 18 and older, 27 per cent were estranged from a relative – including 10 per cent estranged from a parent or child, 8 per cent from a sibling, and the remaining 9 per cent estranged from a smattering of cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and other relations. Half of these estrangements had gone on for at least four years. Looking only at immediate families, Pillemer estimates that nearly 20 per cent of American adults are in a state of estrangement right now.

This cold stat shows the human suffering caused by estrangement. ‘Being rejected by family, or deciding to leave, can be one of the most traumatic experiences in a person’s life, ‘writes the social work researcher Kylie Agllias in Family Estrangement: A Matter of Perspective (2016). ‘Adult children are maligned for estranging an older parent, or parents shamed for casting out a child,’ and sibling estrangements are ‘often overlooked altogether’.

Thankfully, a group of therapists and social scientists are forging a road back. One of them is the American psychologist Joshua Coleman, author of the forthcoming book  Rules of Estrangement. His interest in the field was sparked after his own daughter, then in her early 20s, cut him off. ‘It was the most painful, disorienting thing that I’ve ever had to go through,’ he tells me. He consulted a series of therapists who gave him ‘terrible, counterproductive advice, from telling me to point out all the good things I’d done for her to demanding she talk to me’.

 None of it worked so Coleman came up with a plan of his own: he would see everything through his daughter’s eyes and take responsibility for her complaints. It took a while, but the strategy was effective, and his daughter took him back. ‘We are now very close,’ he says.

A complementary perspective comes from Pillemer. ‘Can’t live with them, can’t live without them,’ he says of families after decades of research. Despite the cheery view of family depicted in media, in reality ‘most people have an ambivalent experience’, he says. As part of the research for his earlier book 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans (2012), Pillemer asked the elderly about life lessons they valued most. ‘A surprising number … talked about family estrangements as the most disruptive [and] distressing’ events of all, he says.

Finding almost no existing research on the topic, Pillemer stepped into the breach, launching a series of studies including a national survey­ and in-depth interviews. These people, who’d been through estrangement, were ‘despondent’, says Pillemer. But as the interviews continued, he ran into a minority who had successfully reconciled after 10, 20 or even 30 years. ‘For them it was so powerful, it was such a transformative experience’ that Pillemer shifted his focus to them, culling their wisdom into his new book Fault Lines.