Parents Fear ‘No Contact’ Estrangement Is Tearing Families Apart

Experts are warning that social media may be encouraging young people to make the life-altering decision to cut ties with their immediate families in a growing trend known as going “no contact.”

Darby Fox, a child and family therapist, told Our News Outlet that mental health professionals are seeing increasing numbers of millennials and Gen Z adults sever relationships with their parents.

Fox said the shift reflects a greater focus on mental health, gaslighting and personal boundaries. In some cases, she explained, people respond to perceived boundary violations by creating an especially firm barrier between themselves and their families.

Nikki Herdocia-Oria, a licensed marriage and family therapist and founder of Mindful Wellness House, said social media has helped fuel the no-contact movement while sometimes reducing a deeply complicated decision to a simple online label.

“No contact is a boundary, and a very significant one,” Herdocia-Oria told Our News Outlet. She said it should not automatically be portrayed as either empowering or cruel, adding that families should consider whether every other option has been attempted before ending communication.

At the same time, she acknowledged that the conversation has helped many people identify unhealthy family dynamics that earlier generations may have endured without challenging.

Kreed Revere, a coach who works on family estrangement and reconciliation, has experienced no contact from both sides of a fractured relationship. She cut ties with her own mother three times before her adult children stopped speaking to her roughly a decade ago.

“When my children became estranged, it happened without warning,” Revere recalled. She said her calls went unanswered, voicemails received no response and several text messages were ignored.

Her two adult daughters blocked her on social media in January 2016. Revere said they had not been close at the time and that she was also confronting significant anger in her own life.

For parents, Revere said, estrangement can be profoundly painful. “It is devastating on a very deep level,” she told Our News Outlet.

She said the experience can be particularly traumatic for mothers, many of whom build a substantial part of their identity around parenting. Losing contact, she explained, can leave them struggling to understand who they are.

Revere had also stopped speaking to her own mother twice during her 20s, followed by another six-year period of estrangement after the birth of her daughters.

Although Revere does not regret ending her relationship with her mother, she said she does regret the pain her mother experienced during that separation because she now understands it personally.

In her work with estranged parents, Revere said reconciliation remains uncommon, with most families not ultimately restoring contact.

Herdocia-Oria added that families frequently underestimate the emotional consequences of going no contact.

The decision may bring relief, she said, but it is also likely to involve grief.

Elise Maisonneuve, 43, has come to know that grief. Her mother struggled with addiction issues and decided to cut her off after a lifetime of pain. 

Maisonneuve told Our News Outlet that she went no contact with her mother three years ago, a year after her father died. 

When she realized her mother had lied about being sober, she made the decision to create some distance.  

‘Our society also doesn’t make room for ambiguous loss, the grief of losing someone who is still very much alive, which made it infinitely harder,’ Maisonneuve recalled. 

Krystle, 40, who asked that her last name not be used for privacy reasons, shared a similar story. She recalled coming home after studying abroad as a young adult and finding her mother ‘extremely impaired,’ launching what she described as ‘the beginning of a really difficult chapter.’ 

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After over 20 years of inconsistent communication, Krystle blocked her mother and stepfather. 

The decision came this summer when she asked her mother for some of her belongings and was met with a text that said: ‘You will get what you get when I’m dead.’

Krystle said: ‘I realized that maybe all these years I’d been searching for that relationship and hoping that she’d get help or hoping she’d get counseling, and I’m old enough now to realize a leopard doesn’t change their spots.’ 

Maisonneuve shared that she spent her childhood worrying about her mother and ‘parenting’ her own parent, until two years ago when she communicated that she needed space and would not be reaching out. 

She heard from her mother once since then. ‘Her response confirmed what my gut had been telling me for a long time but what my heart didn’t want to believe,’ Maisonneuve recalled. 

Since cutting her mother off, Maisonneuve said her chronic health issues caused by stress have eased. 

Krystle echoed that sentiment, saying of her mother: ‘Even though she’s alive, I’m mourning what I see as the death of her.’ 

Both Maisonneuve and Krystle shared their experiences on TikTok. In September, Maisonneuve posted a video showing how her life has changed since going no contact. 

‘The internet has opened up access to so much more understanding and seeing how other people live and operate their lives on a large scale compared to the boomer and Gen X generations,’ Revere noted. 

A recent study by Talker Research found that 38 percent of Americans went ‘no contact’ with a friend or family member in the last year. 

Younger generations are more likely to cut off contact, according to the survey, with 60 percent of Gen Zers saying they had, 50 percent of millennials, 38 percent of Gen Xers and only 20 percent of baby boomers. 

Therapists noted that although going no contact can be vital for those dealing with people in situations of abuse or substance use, they warn that it does not work for everyone and it should not be a decision taken lightly. 

Fox argued that a culture of no contact is not an overall positive for young people’s mental health because it eliminates the opportunity to work through difficult relationships. 

‘I think that from a psychological perspective or as a mental health professional, what we wanna encourage people to do is to control and regulate their own relationships as opposed to looking outward and saying everybody else is doing it to me,’ she said.

‘And social media in particular is an external driver. That’s an external force. And when we give ourselves away to that, then we’re powerless. We’re just acting out what someone else is telling us to do, and usually that’s not super healthy.’