A Pushback on Estrangement?
Maybe in the UK
I got the following email from a UK parent who’s a professor and also estranged. I found her observations interesting so I'm re-posting them here with her permission.
Hello Josh,
Thank you again for the Christmas Day webinar; I think it got many of us through.
Hopefully you won’t mind this share but I thought it may be fodder for newsletter etc thought.
Here in the UK estrangement happens as much as perhaps most Western countries. However, there is an escalating coverage of the issue in the media now, which results in a perhaps quite different reaction to the US (I’m unsure on the latter). That is, very angry responses by others, who are shocked that young adults are estranging their parents for trivial reasons.
I mentioned before that it came to the fore with Prince Harry and Meghan via the Oprah interview. The entire nation perhaps shut the door on Harry because he was ‘spineless’ by allowing Meghan to narrate their story. Other celebrity families were thrown in the spotlight here, to the same reaction (the footballer David Beckham being estranged by his son, because of the new billionaires’ daughter’s demands).
This weekend this has been all other the place. I didn’t know who these people are but there appears to be a running theme to the reasons for estrangement in these cases (including Meghan’s father): if the parents of the (usually son) are not ‘fit’ enough — meaning, thin, photogenic, social climbing, Instagram ready — and are just normal like most of us, the bride doesn’t want them in her photos. It cascades until the wedding day, and follows from there.
My point in this email is only to suggest there appears to be a huge social media element to an awful lot of these cases, which of course ‘influences’ the regular young adults. Parents not fitting in to the destination wedding photos etc.
I’m sharing the below link because the story isn’t front page because of those involved. It is because people are so shocked that young adults are doing this to the parents who don’t ‘look right’. In this instance of an Olympic swimmer, mothers getting up at 4 am 7 days a week before going to her day job to ensure training for years, now cut off. His father a bricklayer likewise isn’t an appropriate parent — too working class.
The comments are the reason I’m sharing. You can see, if you’ve a quiet day over the holiday period, how this isn’t going over well at all.
Which means more parents will be in desperate need for a therapist like you.
I do find it enlightening and even helpful to know most people really just do not find it acceptable.
Comments? I read them all but typically don’t respond given time constraints. Either way, keep them civil.
Celebrity, glamour but no Mum and Dad as Adam Peaty marries Holly Ramsay
Having grown up in the 70s, estrangement was met with encouragement to reconnect. It happened. Today, we have social media influencers and so-called therapists with their own personal issues. Very different reaction today. Can every parent be a narcissist? I hope this epidemic reverses itself. There are no winners here.
I think the thing that puzzles me more than anything, is that these adult children ( and I do mean children) complain about being traumatized while inflicting the deepest traumatic wound imaginable on the people who love them most. Do not tread into Reddit waters, as the chum is thick and the feeders are as sadistic as you'll find. No empathy, no compassion, no conscience. And the same, old, redundant script.