The Changing Rules of Affection Between Grandparents and Grandchildren—and the Rise of Family Distance
The Problem of the “Child-Led” Relationship
I used to cringe as a child whenever my big, Hungarian grandmother was visiting from El Paso, Texas because I could always count on her leaning in to grab a hug or plant a wet kiss on my cheek. I loved her dearly, but I would often squirm in response and wipe my cheek off as soon as I could.
The idea that my mother or father would frame her actions as a violation of my body autonomy or their failure to intervene as a failure to teach me about the importance of setting limits would never have occurred to them as parents.
However, this is exactly the situation faced by so many grandparents today. For example, a recent article in The Atlantic: Grandparenting on Eggshells highlights the fraught relationship faced by grandparents. As the subtitle of the article observes, “Many parents are teaching their children that they don’t owe their relatives hugs—which means new rules for everyone.”
The article quotes Dr Becky who writes, “Grandparents might interpret the rules as ‘rejecting or rude’ but parents are merely trying to teach kids that “connection and love do not require you to ignore your own needs.”
When Consent Culture Becomes Estrangement Culture
While I agree with the premise that children should never be forced to ignore their internal signals of discomfort, I also think we’re missing something essential—and increasingly costly—in the way these conversations and professional advice are framed.
As someone who works with estranged families every day, I see how easily concepts meant to protect children can morph into narratives that divide generations, pathologize normal family behavior, and ultimately justify long-term distance or permanent cutoffs.
Below is where I believe this framing—common in contemporary parenting writing—quietly reinforces a cultural environment that makes estrangement more likely.
1. Recasting Ordinary Family Rituals as Violations
Families have always socialized children into rituals of connection. Across cultures, anthropologists consistently find that part of parenting includes teaching children how to greet, how to reciprocate warmth, and how to acknowledge elders. These rituals aren’t forms of coercion; they’re the glue of social life.
In the book Do Parents Matter: anthropologists Robert and Sarah Levine argue that parents around the world don’t simply “follow the child’s lead.” They teach values, etiquette, self-regulation, and, yes, responsibility to others. Sometimes that involves some guilt—an emotion that, developmentally, helps children understand that their actions have meaning in the lives of other people.
When we assume that a grandparent’s desire for a hug should mostly be considered primarily from the perspective of being a potential threat to the child’s autonomy and boundaries, we reinforce a worldview in which children learn that if they’re slightly uncomfortable, the relationship itself must be suspect.
A more balanced message is both possible and necessary:
You never have to hug anyone—but you do have to be kind, acknowledge people, and understand that your actions have emotional consequences.
That is not coercion; that is socialization.
2. Turning a Generational Difference Into a Moral Fault Line
A subtle narrative runs through these conversations: grandparents are insensitive or “behind the times,” while parents possess the updated, trauma-informed truth.
This is exactly the moral hierarchy I see driving estrangement.
Older generations become the embodiment of harm; younger generations become the arbiters of psychological correctness.
Once that framework takes hold, even minor frictions can be reinterpreted as psychological injury. And when the child becomes an adult, this becomes the narrative raw material out of which estrangement is often justified.
3. Centering the Child’s Feelings While Erasing the Grandparent’s
.One of the odd paradoxes of our current parenting culture is that we teach children their emotions matter deeply—while we often teach them, implicitly, that other people’s emotions do not.
In the realm of estrangement, ignoring a grandparent’s gifts is considered acceptable parenting because violating the adult child’s “no contact” boundaries trumps the obligation to teach the grandchild appropriate responses to gifts from loving, decent grandparents.
Other cultures remind us that guilt, in moderate amounts, is not an instrument of oppression but a mechanism of empathy and social cohesion.
As historian Steven Mintz recently wrote in his Substack, “American institutions have been built around a single model of healthy development—one that prizes verbal self-expression, individual autonomy, and freedom from family obligation. When they encounter people shaped by different values, they don’t recognize an alternative approach.”
