By Louise Mathews
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!
— King Lear, Act 1, scene 4
As I was looking up another word for a Voices article, I noticed the Word of the Day for Mother’s Day in the Cambridge Online Dictionary was “ghosting,” that is, a way of ending a relationship with someone suddenly by stopping all communication with them. How fitting, I thought for the 13 percent or thereabouts of mothers and fathers whose adult children no longer communicate with them. I know, because my husband and I are among them.
It’s been nearly three years since we have seen our daughter, and slightly less time that we have not heard from her. Her ghosting behavior started long before, when we would not hear from her for months. She always came back, though. This time, probably because she moved to New York City for a job and possibly an alternative lifestyle, she has written us off.
Her last text stated that she hadn’t forgiven us yet. Neither her father nor I know what it was that we did or did not do that requires her forgiveness and her silence.
This phenomenon is more widespread than we would like to think. It didn’t start recently, though the explosion of technology has massively fertilized it. We can go back to Chapter 15 of the Gospel of Luke and read about the son who took his portion of inheritance and abandoned his family. Those were different days, and when the son had squandered all of his resources and was living with pigs, he could not rely on government programs or NGOs to feed him. Rather than starve, he went home.
Today, according to “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt, many young people abandon their parents and families for the virtual world. Since the advent of smartphones 19 years ago, immersion in social media and the online environment has caused a sharp rise in the rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harm among young people. The culture in which they have grown up encourages alienation if family members have different political, religious, or social views.
One of my nieces ghosted her parents when President Trump won the 2024 election. This is a young woman with a doctorate in psychology. Only the death of her maternal grandmother brought her back to a relationship with her parents.
There are many reasons and scenarios why adult children abandon their families. Rev. Sharon A. Wildey outlines many of them in her book, “Abandoned Parents: The Devil’s Dilemma.” Sometimes, adult children are leaving a dysfunctional family or family trauma. Sometimes, a third individual such as a new wife or husband, pulls the adult child away from parents.
Reading helps with the intellectual side of loss, but coping with the grief of estrangement requires human compassion. Parental Alienation Anonymous is a fellowship modeled on 12-Step programs where members “give and receive comfort and understanding through a mutual exchange of experience, strength, and hope.” Groups meet in Beaufort at the Lowcountry Outreach Center on Lady’s Island Drive on Thursday mornings and Friday evenings.
Numerous resources are available for grieving and confused parents online as well. PA-A.org is one.
Holidays like Mother’s Day can be particularly stressful. I am fortunate to have a supportive husband, a large extended family, friends and neighbors, a great church community, and an adoring dog. Life is good. Still, there is a part of me that yearns for a relationship with the one person who does not want to know me.
I have accepted that the person our daughter has become is not the girl we knew years ago. She is independent and capable. That she has chosen not to have a relationship with her parents does not mean that we cannot go on with a happy life. I know our lives would be happier if she were in them, but she’s not. That is a situation only she can change.
For the thousands of parents still struggling with children who have chosen to disappear, you are not alone. Know there is hope and help. Seek it.
Louise Mathews retired from a career in community colleges and before that, theater. A 13-year come-here in Beaufort, she has been a dingbatter in North Carolina and an upstater from New York.