Beyond Blood Ties: How Adult Children Reimagine Family After Estrangement

• In Event: Reimagining Families: Singlehood, Childfree, and Chosen Families

Abstract

Parent–child estrangement, defined as the intentional and voluntary physical and/or emotional distancing of a child from one or both parents, challenges dominant cultural assumptions that family bonds are enduring across the life course. Increasingly framed as a “silent epidemic,” estrangement is commonly understood in the literature as a negative familial outcome associated with loss, grief, and stigma for all involved parties. As a result, existing research has focused largely on the prevalence, causes, and risks of estrangement, with limited attention to what follows estrangement and how adult children redefine and reconfigure family in its aftermath. Drawing on 26 in-depth interviews with estranged adult children in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, this study shifts analytic attention from why estrangement occurs to how adult children reconstruct their everyday lives, rework understandings of family, and build new relational configurations following estrangement. Preliminary findings suggest that estrangement is not experienced solely as relational rupture, but also as a process through which adult children actively reimagine family. Participants described establishing new family forms by prioritizing emotional safety and chosen connections, engaging in intentional cycle-breaking parenting practices, and centering intimate partners and in-laws as sources of support and models for alternative ways of “doing family.” By foregrounding estranged adult children’s narratives of family-making, this research contributes to sociological understandings of family as an ongoing relational accomplishment and highlights estrangement’s potential for enabling new relational possibilities beyond blood ties.

Author

• Aryssa Hasham, University of Toronto