The Patriot Post® · Parenting Adult Children Can Be Heartbreaking

Christmastime is that annual season when families gather together to celebrate our Savior’s birth. It’s also when family strife is most keenly felt.

My parents often say that they are only as happy as their saddest child. Nothing hits truer than when a parent is dealing with a child’s estrangement.

It has become a fad in modern-day culture to label parents — from the genuinely abusive ones to the slightly irritating — as “toxic.” In that spirit, children are encouraged — nay, egged on — to cut them off and go no contact.

Practically every year starting in November, this push to cut off family members begins. It doesn’t matter the level of offense, either. On the minor end, Mom might be pushing a little too hard for you to settle down, and Dad may have voted in a way that offends you. On the more major end, Mom and Dad may have told you that they don’t agree with your LGBTQ+ lifestyle choices and would rather you not push that propaganda during family dinner. In very few cases is that infraction serious enough that a child should draw a hard boundary and not see or talk to their parents.

Disclaimer: There are horrible parents out there who are actually destructive, toxic, manipulative, and abusive. Children are absolutely justified in drawing a hard boundary and cutting off those sorts of parents. However, most parents don’t fall into that category.

Estrangement has become enough of a problem that distressed parents are taking to social media to form support groups. The Wall Street Journal published an article recently documenting the backlash from mothers specifically who were done being “doormats” and no longer willing to coddle their estranged child’s hurtful whims. Moms do feel the separation more keenly than dads do. It may have something to do with the fact that, as women, we grew these people in our bodies and gave birth to them. They were physically a part of us for the beginning portion of their lives.

While calling an estranged child an “ungrateful little b*stard” might be a clue as to why some are in the predicament they are in, there are plenty of other reasons children go no contact. Many of them are unjustified.

For example, modern therapy is a primary driver of these “no contact” stints. For better or worse, many therapists have been telling their clients that their inner child was not treated the way they should have been, and it’s likely your parents’ fault. To heal that inner child, you must cut off those who hurt you. This has become such a pervasive technique that children are cutting off parents whose worst offense is that they didn’t respond correctly in a situation, which caused the child to explode with fury and frustration and end the relationship in the name of “healing their inner child.”

Author Abigail Shrier has written extensively about bad therapy and its detrimental effects on our children and their mental and emotional well-being. Iatrogenesis — or when medical help, in fact, causes harm — is the framework upon which Shrier sets her thesis. That thesis goes like this: Our kids aren’t growing up because they have been convinced they are incapable of doing so. A child, when given a label and diagnosis, believes that he or she is sick and, therefore, incapable of change. Labels have power, and therapists are more than happy to dispense them.

This tendency to promote self-victimization and label parents the villains is tied closely to the infiltration of Marxist ideology in our culture. Everyone has a level of victimhood except for the straight white male, who is the villain. Karl Marx hated religion because it provides people with a better foundation for their better angels to take root, and because it gives them hope for change. Furthermore, Marx knew that breaking down the family — the building block of civilization — would leave people rudderless and easier to control. If they have no family, the government naturally becomes their caretaker.

Now let’s add transgenderism to the mix. This especially cultish and toxic variation of Marxism demands that other people not only have to agree with someone’s delusions but also have to celebrate their mental illnesses. Parents are being cut off for not bending to their children’s belief that they were “born in the wrong body.” This is despite many parents saying that they love their children even if they disagree with them.

Finally, thanks to the Left, the word “toxic” has been so diluted that a child can call a parent “toxic” and mean that he or she is annoyed by that parent’s particular behavior or quirk. This ties into bad therapy and Marxism because labeling a parent “toxic,” even unjustly, provides justification for these estranged kids’ actions.

Of course, not all parents are innocent when it comes to their children’s resentment. Some Boomers are becoming notorious for being uninvolved grandparents. Many hold the view that since they already raised their own children, they shouldn’t have to help raise the next generation as well. For some of them, even if they do help out, there are serious strings attached. This uninvested grandparenting creates a lot of resentment. They are denying their children the village help that previous generations enjoyed, instead letting their offspring fend for themselves.

Many adult children are going through a bit of a second teenagehood. This is perhaps because they aren’t hitting those maturation milestones as quickly as they should be. They are delaying important steps in life that make them realize their parents really did have some great life advice and actually do know what they are talking about. My own mother was never more vindicated than when I had children of my own. Suddenly, she was the source of all wisdom, and maybe I needed a little bit of humble pie.

At the end of the day, cutting off a parent should be reserved for only the most extreme cases. Parents are not perfect; they, too, are learning as they go, even when their children are grown adults. The hardest part about parenting is also the most amazing. The older your children get, the more you have to let them go and allow them to be their own persons and create their own families. It’s terrifying but also beautiful.

At the same time, adult children are not necessarily paragons of virtue either. They aren’t completely blameless in this “no contact” game.

The strongest answer for loving imperfect human beings is giving each other grace — i.e., showing kindness, love, or favor to an undeserving person. In this season of Advent, we remember the incredible gesture of grace that God bestowed on mankind: that of his beloved Son. That example of divine grace should be what we all strive for in our interactions with one another. None of us is righteous, not even one. We are dead in our sins, wretched, and unworthy. Yet God, in His goodness, reached down, offering us life, light, and salvation through the death and sacrifice of his son, Jesus.