What’s Ripping American Families Apart?

NY Times ^ | July 29, 2021 | David Brooks

[daniel1212]

At least 27 percent of Americans are estranged from a member of their own family, and research suggests about 40 percent of Americans have experienced estrangement at some point. The most common form of estrangement is between adult children and one or both parents — a cut usually initiated by the child...children in these cases often cite harsh parenting, parental favoritism, divorce and poor and increasingly hostile communication often culminating in a volcanic event...

The parents in these cases are often completely bewildered by the accusations. They often remember a totally different childhood home and accuse their children of rewriting what happened. As one cutoff couple told the psychologist Joshua Coleman: “Emotional abuse? We gave our child everything. We read every parenting book under the sun, took her on wonderful vacations, went to all of her sporting events.”...

there seems to be a generational shift in what constitutes abuse. Practices that seemed like normal parenting to one generation are conceptualized as abusive, overbearing and traumatizing to another..."you can be a conscientious parent and your kid may still want nothing to do with you when they’re older.”...

Coleman...argues...the function of family has changed. Once it was seen as a bond of mutual duty and obligation, and now it is often seen as a launchpad for personal fulfillment...Some kids seem to think they need to cut off their parents just to have their own life. “My mom is really needy and I just don’t need that in my life,” one Ivy League grad told Coleman. In other cases, children may be blaming their parents for the fact that they are not succeeding as they had hoped...

Major depression rates among youths aged 12 to 17 rose by almost 63 percent between 2013 and 2016. American suicide rates increased by 33 percent between...

[tbw2]

Politics is increasingly a factor. Don’t talk to the infidel in-laws.

[kalee]

Sometimes you have to walk away to find peace.

[lepton]

What’s Ripping American Families Apart?

One word: Divorce.

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What this article is speaking about is not that.

It references children who through all appearances grew up happy, successful and nurtured, and then like a switch flipped, suddenly decided their parents are oppressors, toxic, or abusive and break off relations with those parents.

[lepton]

What about we are dramatically overthinking this situation, because being estranged from someone in your family is nothing new and probably hasn’t changed over the years...

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The article is about how it HAS changed over the years, and not the slow changes over a generation, but the rapid changes in just the past few years. Yes, there have always been the divorces, the alcoholics, and all of the other reasons for estrangement - but this is on top of that, and as noted, is often a surprise as there was no history of abuse or even heated contention. Growth rates of major depression in the young of 60+% in 3 years is more than just the normal things going on, or the behavior of parents.

[Responsibility2nd]

What this article is speaking about is not that.

 

The question (Headline) was asked "What's Ripping American Families Apart?"

I responded with the most obvious answer.  And the article DID speak about that... children in these cases often cite harsh parenting, parental favoritism, divorce and poor and increasingly hostile communication often culminating in a volcanic event... 

Certainly their are more problems, as the article goes on to explain, but to say the article does not speak about divorce is incorrect. Without divorce - these other problems would be a minor annoyance.

[Elsie]

The question (Headline) was asked "What's Ripping American Families Apart?"

The answer was written a LONG time ago...

Matthew 10:35 
For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

 

 

 

Luke 12:53
The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

[HarleyD]

My wife and I have experienced this first hand with our only son. Once he completed college he wrote us this very nasty email telling us all sorts of things that simply were not true. This came as a complete shock to both of us as we felt we had a wonderful relationship. My son married and he and his wife visited us one in over seven years. And then they spent a few hours with us and went to a wedding. We were used as a bed and breakfast. The most interesting part of this is they go to church and his wife has a degree in Christian counseling.

In the last seven years my wife and I have noticed how children treat their parents. The article numbers are probably on the low side based on just looking at some of the people in our circle. Those who "reconciled" to their children usually give in to their demands. Thus they're used as baby sitters (which is the only way they see the grandchildren) or they accept the berated attitudes heap upon them by their children in order to have a relationship (which is no relationship in my mind). We have decided that we will not pursue a relationship at the cost of our dignity.

Personally I think this is a sign of the end times that we are warned of in scripture.

2 Tim 3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.

At no other time in history can I remember such a thing occuring-especially on a global scale. I think it's a darkening of the mind before the final judgement.

[daniel1212]

" Personally I think this is a sign of the end times that we are warned of in scripture. 2 Tim 3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. At no other time in history can I remember such a thing occuring-especially on a global scale. I think it's a darkening of the mind before the final judgement. "

Indeed, except as regards "in history" "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5) Such dishonoring of parents is just one of the outright rejections or perversions of what God has ordained, as the devil works to create a world in which he can boast to God of conversion to him, of worship, of allegiance to the devil via proxy servants, culminating in the worship of the Beast. I would say however that this dishonoring of parents is mainly among the most Americanized, as the Latino culture - at least the parents - still manifest strong love toward parents from what I see, hosting them in their homes for weeks in the summer. However, the first generation parents have overall neglected the faith of their parents, and the grandchildren of the latter are being indoctrinated by the media and educational system to become like the liberals. Sad and tragic.