Part 1: Why are so many Mothers and Daughters estranged today?

Today, there is an alarming increase of young adult daughters cutting off contact from their mothers, and we need to find out why they are making this heart-breaking decision. In 1997, when I started working as a mother-daughter therapist, estrangement was rare. Becoming estranged was reserved for the most abusive relationships and made after a lifetime of struggle for healing and connection. Today’s sharp increase in mother-daughter estrangements is being led by daughters in their twenties and thirties, and mothers are often blindsided and confused by their daughter’s decision.   

We owe it to mothers and daughters to understand why this is happening because mothers and daughters of all ages need each other. Research shows that mothers and daughters need each other for their emotional wellbeing, and that emotional growth and development is best done within the mother-daughter relationship. This means that today’s estrangement trend is harming both the mother’s and daughter’s emotional wellbeing and development.

Another reason this trend needs to be understood is because of the incalculable pain and suffering that it is creating. Estranged mothers and daughters are hurting. Mothers and daughters are emotionally wired to feel connected to each other. So, the more we understand about what is causing this trend, the more information we have to stop this harmful trend and heal the pain it is causes.

And finally, as the Mother-Daughter Attachment® Model (MDAM) explains, this trend is a canary-in-the-coalmine that is warning us that something is harming women today. Mothers and daughters do not relate in a cultural vacuum. How a mother and daughter relate is influenced by the way their family, culture, and society treat, or more accurately, mistreat women, which includes sexist gender role expectations that women are expected to abide by. This means that today’s estrangement trend is a call-to-action for a deep look at women’s lives and how society is harming women.

Before we unpack this worrying trend, I want to discount the Covid pandemic for being the cause. The Covid pandemic is an easy explanation for almost anything these days, especially since it put intolerable strains on mothers especially as they became responsible for home-schooling isolated children. But my observations do not fit this single cause explanation. I started to notice this trend years before the pandemic started and I haven’t seen it subside. Rather, I am seeing too much evidence that the trend is increasing. The pandemic also doesn’t explain two key observations that I and many of my graduates from my professional training course have made.

My first observation is that there are a handful of ‘diagnostic labels’ that have become popularized within society, the media and social media, and the therapy profession that criticize and blame mothers, and daughters are using these labels to justify their decision to become estranged. Listening to estranged mothers and daughters talk about their relationship and through reading social media forums, it is eerie how often these terms are being used, often without explanation, evidential corroboration, or an understanding of the complex dynamics between mothers and daughters.

My second observation that I and many of my graduates have made is that most estranged daughters were seeing an individual therapist at the time they became estranged. It is extremely concerning to hear estranged mother or daughter after estranged mother or daughter tell the same story of how the daughter was in individual therapy when she decided to cut off contact from her mother. As a mother-daughter therapist, it is shocking to observe this theme, and it makes me ask what is happening in therapy offices. As part of this investigation into what is causing today’s estrangement trend, we must understand how therapists are colluding with, or maybe even causing, today’s estrangement trend. And we need to work on creating a safer therapeutic environment for women, mothers, and daughters, where connection and understanding is fostered, rather than disconnection and emotional distance.    

This is the first blog in a four-part blog series released on Medium, where I examine the two observations that I, and my graduates, have made about today’s estrangement trend. The purpose of this four-part blog series is to shine a much-needed light onto this harmful trend, and to find answers as to why this trend is happening and what it is warning us about.

In the second blog, “Part 2: Do terms like ‘mother wound’ explain or mother blame?”, I examine my first observation about the popular ‘diagnostic labels’ that daughters are using to justify their decision to cut off contact from their mothers.

In the third blog, “Part 3: Is therapy colluding with or causing mother-daughter estrangement?”, I examine my second observation about how estranged daughters are often seeing an individual therapist when they decide to become estranged from their mother. This cannot be a coincidence! In this blog I ask the most-needed questions about what is happening in therapy offices for mothers and daughters, and how does therapists’ training collude with or cause today’s harmful trend.

In the final blog, “Part 4: Mother-daughter estrangement trend explained”, I reveal the conclusions that my observations and explorations have led me to, and what this trend is warning us about. Estranged daughters are our canary-in-the-coalmine! They are warning us that something is harming women, and in this final blog I suggest what we must challenge and change for women.