Op-Ed: 1 in 4 adults are estranged from family and paying a psychological price (via latimesopinion)
Search “toxic parents” on Instagram, and you’ll find more than 38,000 posts, largely urging young adults to cut ties with their families. The idea is to protect one’s mental health from abusive parents. However, as a psychoanalyst, I’ve seen that trend in recent years become a way to manage conflicts in the family, and I have seen the steep toll estrangement takes on both sides of the divide. This is a self-help trend that creates much harm.
Today’s social justice values respond to this reality, calling on us to censure oppressive and harmful figures and to gain power for those who have been powerless. But when adult children use the most effective tool they have — themselves — to gain a sense of security and ban their parents from their lives, the roles are simply flipped, and the trauma only deepens.Certainly some extreme cases call for cutting parents out of one’s life, even if doing so comes at a psychological cost.
Other patients are parents on the other side of that dynamic, who feel betrayed and heartbroken. It’s hard for them to acknowledge or even recognize their aggression. In my experience, baby boomer parents are especially troubled. They perceive themselves as products of the 1960s social revolution; many of them rejected their own parents’ authoritarian style and followed a parenting approach that at least appeared to prioritize the children’s needs.
In this cultural moment, and especially because of COVID disruptions to young careers, adult kids are either becoming more dependent on their parents or are rejecting their dependency altogether. We’re in the era of millennials living in their parents’ basements, and also in the era of millennials cutting their parents out of their lives.
South Africa Latest News, South Africa Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Op-Ed: The non-victory victory in the Ahmaud Arbery case'The Arbery murder is exceptional not because what happened to him was unique but because it became a marquee case,' writes Erin Aubry Kaplan, a contributing writer to latimesopinion.
Read more »
Op-Ed: Latino communities can redefine American generosityPhilanthropy data too often ignore remittances to family members abroad and other forms of support that define Latino giving.
Read more »
Op-Ed: This Hanukkah, a broken menorah and a memory that may not existMy bookshelves are filled with theology, but this Hanukkah I'm still seeking answers to my grandfather’s old questions about what it means to be Jewish.
Read more »
Op-Ed: Gen Z students seem to dislike both political parties. What will make them change their minds?Op-Ed: Gen Z students seem to dislike both political parties. What will make them change their minds? (via latimesopinion)
Read more »
Op-Ed: This Hanukkah, a broken menorah and a memory that may not existMy bookshelves are filled with theology, but this Hanukkah I'm still seeking answers to my grandfather’s old questions about what it means to be Jewish.
Read more »