“Mum had been on thin ice for a while,” Joe tells me. The 29-year-old decided to go ‘no contact’ with his mother a little over a year ago, but, as he explains, the cracks had been there for some time. For starters, she was racist and homophobic – which Joe, who identifies as queer, could never quite come to terms with. “I would have an excuse for all of her faults. Her racism was her age; her being estranged from my brother meant she needed me…” he explains, adding that he knew deep down that these “excuses” for her behaviour didn’t really stand up.

Things came to a head when Joe’s mother became romantically involved with “a racist ex-copper” who would “use slurs and mansplain everything.” When Joe expressed to his mother that he felt uncomfortable around her new partner, she implored him to “try” for her sake. Then, last December, his mother’s partner physically attacked Joe, prompting him to call the police and flee the house. “Mum saw it all unfold, but told the police she saw nothing.” Joe’s brother came to collect him, and he has not seen or spoken to his mother since.

Over a year on, Joe feels confident that he made the right decision. “Sometimes I have this gendered image in my head of a sweet old woman, lonely, with an itch to reunite,” he muses. “But that image isn’t real.”

Joe is not alone in cutting ties with his mother; research shows that one in five UK families are touched by family estrangement and its consequences. On TikTok, over 30,000 videos have been posted under the ‘estranged’ hashtag, while on Reddit, the r/EstrangedAdultKids subreddit currently gets 48,000 weekly visitors, up 47 per cent since 2024. It’s become an even hotter talking point in recent years, with a number of high-profile family rifts playing out in full view of the public: Prince Harry has reportedly had minimal contact with his father and brother since his 2020 exodus from the royal family, and, more recently, Brooklyn Beckham ignited a media firestorm after publishing details on Instagram about his decision to cut off his mother and father.

According to research by (now defunct) estrangement charity Stand Alone, “key differences in morals values and religious beliefs” can be a huge risk factor for estrangement. This chimes with 28-year-old Samira*, who cut contact with her “really religious, Muslim” family after she began dating an atheist while at university. After three months of dating, Samira decided to tell her mother about the relationship – and she didn’t take it well. “The next nine months were pure hell,” she explains. Her mother insisted that Samira’s partner had to convert – and if he refused, the relationship would have to end, or else Samira faced being disowned. “We’d lie in bed together crying, not wanting to break up, but not wanting to blow up my family.”

Samira’s mother then actively began meddling in the relationship in an attempt to rend the pair apart. “My mum would ring him and tell him that if he loved me, he’d stop talking to me,” she recalls. The situation escalated when one Christmas, Samira’s mother seized her phone and sent her to stay with her aunt in a last-ditch attempt to manipulate her into breaking up with her partner. “They still couldn’t stop me, so I still went to see him,” she says. “While I was there, I got an email saying that my mum had left all of my stuff on the doorstep in bin bags, and to pick it up or else she’d send it to the charity shop.”

In my own research, adult children do not estrange lightly. It is rarely impulsive

While there’s limited data on whether estrangement is on the rise, some experts believe that it is becoming more common. Either way: it’s fair to say estrangement is no longer quite as taboo as it used to be. But how did we get here?

In recent years, norms have shifted. “Culturally, we’ve seen a significant shift away from unquestioned family obligation, with more emphasis placed on autonomy, emotional wellbeing, and individual fulfilment,” says psychologist and psychotherapist Dr Sam Barcham. “Our tolerance for difficult relationships has arguably lowered.” This chimes with Samira. “I think more people go to therapy now, which might help to untangle complicated feelings and help people to understand what they really want – even if that’s no contact,” she says. She’s not wrong: a report released by the American Psychiatric Association found that Gen Z are much more likely to have gone to therapy than their predecessors.

It’s worth acknowledging, though, that many young people have not encountered psychological concepts or terms through traditional counselling with a trained professional, but via social media, where things are often watered-down or misunderstood entirely. “Therapeutic language has undoubtedly gone mainstream, particularly through social media, and like any tool, it can be used well or poorly,” says Dr Barcham, adding that terms such as “boundaries,” “gaslighting,” or “toxicity” can often be misused online. “In those contexts, cutting people off can be presented as the most empowered or psychologically healthy response, without much discussion of repair, negotiation, or relational responsibility.”

But she stresses that estrangement is not merely ‘a Gen Z thing’ driven by TikTok pop psychology. “This narrative risks obscuring what actually happens for many people who go no contact,” she says. “In clinical practice, estrangement is rarely impulsive. More often, it is the end point of long-term emotional exhaustion.” Dr Lucy Blake, a psychologist at the University of the West of England and an expert in familial estrangement, agrees. “There is no evidence that today’s young adults are more ‘quick’ to estrange,” she says. Instead, she explains that “we now have more sophisticated research on child abuse than ever before”, with emotional abuse now understood to be just as detrimental to wellbeing as other forms of abuse. “So yes, understandings are shifting – but not because younger people are oversensitive.”

Sometimes, reconciliation can be possible. Samira, for example, reconnected with her family after several years of no contact. Things have not been easy. “After my boyfriend converted and we got married, my family let me in again,” she explains. But she’s conscious that they’re still the same people who caused her so much anguish. “Sometimes they still say things that crush me and remind me that they’d love me more if I was someone else – someone more Muslim, who’d made different choices and married someone else,” she says. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever get over what they did. But I try to focus on the positives that they bring to my life.”

In other instances, estrangement is permanent. Joe has made peace with the fact that he will likely never have a relationship with his mother again, and has thrown his energy into fostering community in his “queer circles”. This tracks with Dr Blake’s advice for those in similar situations. “If you’re experiencing estrangement, gather your troops, those who treat you with kindness, respect, and care,” she says. “It can also be helpful to seek support from others who have had similar experiences. Feeling understood and less alone might well make a significant difference given how stigmatised and painful experiencing estrangement can be.”

Joe has also been taking solace in art. “I’d recommend Magnolia and other Paul Thomas Anderson movies to everyone that has experienced this,” he says. My own recommendation is a quote from Tolstoy, which can act as a comforting a reminder that no matter how hellish your family dynamic is (or was), you’re not alone in navigating a uniquely fucked-up situation: “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

*Name has been changed