‘I was just cut out of my daughter’s world’: The silent crisis of family estrangement

Debi Richens and her daughter have always had a close relationship.

“She was the sweetest, loveliest girl you could ever wish for in your world,” says Debi. She still has fond memories of summer holidays with relatives in Devon and her daughter had great relationships with Debi’s parents and siblings.

But things changed overnight when her daughter left her husband and left the family home when she was 14.

“For the first few years I was desperately walking on eggshells trying to build a relationship with him,” she says. “I was grieving, I was in a bad emotional state, it was literally like climbing Everest and constantly sliding back.

“There were no safety issues, no police involvement, no mental health issues, no social services; I was just disconnected from my daughter’s world.”

Although the two still see each other occasionally, and Debi supported her daughter throughout her pregnancy in 2014 and visited her in the hospital, they remained estranged.

Her daughter, who had been struggling with a strained relationship for several years, led to a comment made about her wedding dress publicly criticizing her on social media and ultimately not inviting her mother to the ceremony.

“I was so emotionally distressed I cried for three days,” she says Independent. It’s been ten years since they last spoke properly.

It is not uncommon for relationships between mothers and daughters to deteriorate; in fact, family alienation appears to be increasing dramatically in both the UK and the US.

A YouGov poll conducted in August of last year found that 38 percent of American adults were estranged from a family member, most commonly 24 percent from a sibling, 16 percent from a parent, and 10 percent from a child. While more than two-thirds of people separated from their child or grandchild said they would be open to reconciliation, only 35 percent of children said they would be willing to re-establish a relationship with their parent.

Root causes of division among family members may include difficult divorces, conflicts over finances, nepotism, differing political beliefs, and problems with blended families, as well as alcoholism or sexual abuse.

Stand Alone, the charity that supports estranged adults in the UK, found that more than a quarter of British people know someone who is no longer in a relationship with a family member.

But experts have warned that the rise in family alienation could be due to social media and people’s inability to engage in difficult conversations.

Family separation expert and UK Chartered Counseling Psychologist Dr. Sam Barcham said the number of young people cutting ties with family members appeared “disproportionate”.

“The younger generation is probably more open and there is more dialogue around issues of toxicity, narcissism and ‘cut’ culture,” he said. “We can’t discount people’s traumatic experiences to some extent, but I think social media has become an echo chamber of things.

“It can perpetuate unhelpful messages and ways of thinking, and I would encourage people to seek professional support in a healthy and supportive way. Of course we have people going through difficult experiences, but I think social media can complicate things and create a false reality,” she said.

A search for the phrase ‘disconnected from family’ on social media platforms such as TikTok will highlight hundreds of videos of young adults and teenagers sharing their stories of ending contact with “toxic” relatives, with many detailing their own stories in the comments section.

The issue of family alienation has also increased with the public’s interest in celebrity dramas. In January, Brooklyn Beckham made headlines around the world after launching a rather public attack on his parents, David and Victoria, stating that he did not want to reconcile with his family, whom he accused of giving a distorted version of the events surrounding his marriage to Nicola Peltz-Beckham.

In recent years, the estranged relationship between Prince William and Prince Harry has also fueled public discourse, with the Prince publishing details of their feud in his memoirs. His wife, Meghan Markle, was also estranged from her father, Thomas Markle, after paparazzi took photos of her ahead of the royal wedding in 2018.

However, some well-publicized feuds have ended in reconciliation, most notably with Oasis brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, who reunited for a worldwide tour in 2025 after an acrimonious split in 2009.

But for Debi, reconciliation still feels a long way off. After communication with her daughter finally broke down, she devoted herself to supporting other families experiencing similar situations and is now a trauma coach specializing in family alienation.

“I work mostly with mothers and grandmothers and we’ve seen a huge increase. There’s a huge resentment in society and this ‘disconnected culture’ that’s rising online.”

“There are thousands of people going through this; mothers, fathers and grandmothers being excommunicated from their adult children’s lives for the most bogus and ridiculous reasons.”

Despite the challenges of the last 20 years, Debi said, “My door is and will always be open to my daughter.”