“It Was the Straw that Broke the Camel’s Back”: Exploring the Distancing Processes Communicatively Constructed in Parent-Child Estrangement Backstories

Despite its severity and prevalence, hardly any research addresses parent-child estrangement. Thus, in the present study we focus on the backstories of 52 adult children in the United States who engaged in communicative practices to distance themselves from their parent(s). Six themes coalesced into two backstory types: (1) continuous estrangement and (2) chaotic (dis)association. Regardless of backstory type, narrative beginnings consisted of accounts detailing parental maltreatment, abuse, and indifference. Continuous estrangement occurred when adult children were able to communicatively accomplish and maintain distance with their parent(s) in spite of the network/cultural pressures to reconcile. In other instances, adult children succumbed to pressures to reconcile and engaged in communicative behaviors to decrease the distance with their parents. These participants then entered into an on-again/off-again relationship, which ultimately ended with them attempting to create distance with their parent(s) over and over until they finally were able to maintain it (i.e., chaotic disassociation).