by Rachel Haack MA MFTI
1. Postmodernism and Critical Theory in the Family System
Postmodernism taught us to question authority and dismantle universal truths. Critical theory taught us to look for oppression and power in every relationship. Both were useful lenses at first, until they became the only lenses.
Today, these frameworks have trickled all the way down into the family, where dynamics are no longer just relational but political.
Parents are recast as oppressors. Children as liberators. Love becomes suspect, and forgiveness looks like betrayal of the self.
Books like Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and online influencers preaching “go no contact” have popularized this moral framework of hierarchy and harm. Once you interpret ordinary imperfection through a lens of oppression, the only moral response becomes disconnection.
2. Social Contagion and the Amplification of Ideas
Before smartphones, ideas spread through communities slowly: by conversation, print, and lived experience. Now they spread virally, without friction or context.
We’ve seen social contagions before: diagnostic trends like “multiple personality disorder” in the 1980s or the surge of “recovered memories.” Today, similar dynamics are playing out around “toxic parents,” “narcissistic mothers,” and “cutoff as healing.”
On TikTok and Instagram, creators share stories of liberation from their families, often rewarded with validation and applause. The more sensational the story, the more viral it becomes. And soon, estrangement itself, especially “no contact”, becomes not just a coping choice but a cultural script.
3. The Portable, Always-Connected World
In 1960, a college student might have called home once a month (collect!).
Letters were the norm. Distance was assumed. Love wasn’t measured in response time.
Now, the digital tether has changed our expectations entirely. Parents and adult children can be in contact multiple times a day, and when they’re not, it feels like something’s wrong.
This 24/7 accessibility has raised the relational temperature for everyone. We’re over-connected, overstimulated, and overwhelmed. Most adults are managing hundreds of micro-relationships through text, email, and social media. The guilt of not keeping up, of failing to “stay in touch”, becomes exhausting. And sometimes, that guilt turns into avoidance or conflict.
We’re living in what I call the age of too much para-connection, where everyone feels both crowded and lonely.
4. Concept Creep, Safetyism, and the Pathologizing of Discomfort
Over the past decade, psychological language has exploded into everyday conversation. Words that once had clinical meaning: trauma, abuse, narcissism, gaslighting, boundaries – are now used casually to describe any form of emotional pain or frustration. Psychologists Nick Haslam and Jonathan Haidt have called this phenomenon concept creep: when the definitions of harm and trauma expand to include ordinary stress, discomfort, and disagreement.
At the same time, a new cultural ideal has emerged, what Haidt and Greg Lukianoff call safetyism. Safety, once meaning freedom from physical danger, now includes freedom from emotional discomfort. To be “safe” means to never feel hurt, anxious, or misunderstood.
This shift sounds compassionate, but it has quietly redefined what we consider harmful. Normal friction in relationships: differences in temperament, misunderstanding, conflict, even the enduring “perpetual problems” that exist in every long-term bond – are now reinterpreted as forms of emotional danger.
When discomfort itself is seen as harm, repair begins to look like self-betrayal. Rather than learning tolerance for relational tension, we pathologize it. And soon, the ordinary pain of loving another imperfect human being starts to feel like something we must protect ourselves from, rather than something we can grow through.
5. The Reinforcement Loop: How Therapy Culture Confirms the Cutoff
This new sensitivity to harm is reinforced by the professionals and influencers shaping our public conversations about relationships. The dominant narrative says that no one cuts off contact with a parent without perfectly good reasons. The logic goes like this: because estrangement feels so unthinkable, it must also be justified.
Therapists and creators often tell their audiences, “You’ve done everything you could,” or “No one goes no contact lightly.” The implicit message is that disconnection is the only rational or healthy conclusion to a long-standing relationship problem.
In clinical spaces, this message is amplified by a moral pressure that runs deep in the helping professions. To challenge a client’s decision to cut off contact is framed as “causing harm.” To explore reconciliation is seen as enabling abuse. Therapists are warned that if we don’t affirm a client’s self-protective decisions, we risk becoming “excusers of abusers.” I receive messages such as “Yikes. This is dangerous.” to an instagram post addressing the nuance of estrangement.
Naturally, that strikes fear into the heart of any well-meaning clinician who wants to do right by their client. To imagine that our empathy could itself cause harm is paralyzing. And so, out of caution, many practitioners stop short of exploring repair or differentiation, even when disconnection may be premature or unnecessary.
What results is a therapeutic culture that affirms estrangement as inherently empowering: but rarely asks whether empowerment might also come from growth, dialogue, or courage in the face of discomfort.
6. The “Pure Relationship” and the Consumer Self
Sociologist Anthony Giddens coined the term the pure relationship—the belief that a relationship’s legitimacy depends on emotional satisfaction alone. It should be warm, mutually beneficial, and affirming at all times.
That idea, combined with our culture’s obsession with optimization, has quietly reshaped our relational ethics. We now evaluate our relationships the way we evaluate products: Does this still serve me? Does this make me happy?
When something feels hard, the impulse isn’t to repair, it’s to replace.
We live in a hyper-individualistic, portable, meritocratic, consumer world. We can move cities, change jobs, and find new communities with a swipe. The result is a growing inability to tolerate the inevitable discomforts of enduring relationships: the very tensions that make us grow up, soften, and mature. We don’t have to learn to live within our village: we can find a new one instead.
Estrangement, in this context, isn’t just a breakdown of love; it’s the logical conclusion of a culture that has made comfort and self-expression the highest virtues.
7. Luxury Beliefs and the New Village of One
Sociologist Rob Henderson coined the term luxury beliefs to describe ideas that signal social status but often carry hidden costs for others. In this context, the belief that cutting off “toxic” family members is always healthy functions like a luxury belief: it’s most easily embraced by those who can afford to lose their families and replace them (often with paid support networks).
Many modern cutoffs occur in families with greater resources, where autonomy is financially feasible. Our standard of living has made it possible to outsource almost every form of relational interdependence. We no longer need the messy village of extended family to survive; we can simply hire one.
If our in-law is irritating, we can pay for childcare.
If our mother’s help feels overwhelming, we can hire a postpartum doula.
If a relationship feels complicated, we can opt for convenience.
In this way, affluence enables avoidance. It allows us to curate our social lives around comfort and control rather than tolerance and reciprocity. The more economically independent we become, the less dependent we are on the people who stretch us.
And sometimes, that independence itself is a gift handed down from the very family being rejected. Many of the young adults now severing ties with parents do so after those same parents helped fund their education, co-signed their first lease, or quietly absorbed the cost of early adulthood. The support that made autonomy possible is later reinterpreted as control. Once financial reliance ends, the relationship can be rewritten through the language of freedom: They can’t control me anymore.
It’s a striking irony of privilege—the estrangement enabled by security. When you no longer need your family to survive, you also lose the incentive to work through what makes them difficult. And so, we drift further into what might be called the luxury of disconnection—a life where we can meet nearly all our needs without ever having to practice forgiveness, patience, or repair.
8. So What Do We Do With All This?
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all of this, to feel like you’re standing in the tide of something too large to resist. You can’t fight the world. You can’t change a culture on your own. You can’t go to battle against the zeitgeist without burning out in despair.
So here’s what I suggest: When things feel big, focus on the small.
You don’t have to fix the world. What we can do is adapt: by creating small, consistent acts of connection with those closest to us. Reorient to your values and live them out in the relationships right in front of you.
If you’re disheartened by the fact that we live in an individualistic, portable, meritocratic, consumer world, start by noticing where that shows up in your own relationships. Begin to reclaim the village around you.
- Can you stay in relationship when it’s hard?
- Can you practice forgiveness even when it isn’t reciprocated?
- Who are you quick to write off—and who might you reach out to instead?
Nobody changes by being lectured into connection. We learn by observation and osmosis. Culture shifts not through argument, but through example.
So ask yourself:
- Am I making it easier or harder for people to connect with me?
- Do people feel seen in my presence?
- Is there one small thing I can do differently in this relationship today?
That’s how change happens—not through revolution, but through micro-shifts. We don’t have to fix a generation or a cultural moment. We just need to live our values with quiet conviction in a world that spins around us.
Because while you can’t stop the tide, you can build something steady enough to stand in it.
If this resonated with you, share it with someone who’s also trying to make sense of our disconnected age. The more we talk about it—and live differently inside it—the more repair becomes possible. Also, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, as it allows me to keep offering my articles for free to those in need. Thank you!
Taking The Helm 