Amid a reported surge in estrangement between parents and adult children, debate is intensifying over whether therapy sometimes helps mend family relationships or contributes to their collapse. The dispute centers on what critics call “cutoff culture,” while experts stress that experiences vary and some separations involve serious abuse.

Nearly four in 10 Americans are estranged from at least one close family member, according to a 2025 YouGov poll involving 4,395 U.S. adults. That includes 24% estranged from a sibling, 16% from a parent and 10% from a child.

Two recent large scale surveys examined more than 5,200 U.S. parents estranged from adult children. Among them, 1,014 said their children began therapy within the year before the estrangement, while 515 reported that their adult children said therapy influenced decisions about the relationship.

Another 1,254 parents said their child had received a mental health diagnosis. However, the surveys were not peer reviewed or nationally representative, and they relied on parents’ accounts of their adult children’s experiences, limiting conclusions about therapy’s role.

Richard Blake, Ph.D., a Texas psychology researcher focused on anxiety and family estrangement, calls the trend an “overcorrection” in society. “There is a lot of debate online about whether it's happening or not,” he told Fox News Digital.

Blake said he hears from both estranged parents and adult children who claim therapists supported ending contact. He said the central questions are how frequently this occurs and when ending a relationship is appropriate.

Laura Wellington, a Connecticut mother estranged from her adult daughter since 2024, believes therapists can play a role in family fractures. Still, she acknowledged limits to that criticism, saying, “But that doesn't mean there aren't some really good therapists out there.”

Wellington, known on social media as “Doormat Mom,” believes some therapists focus too narrowly on one person’s experience instead of considering the broader family situation. She said therapists have approached her to ask, “What did we miss?”

She supports parents apologizing when they have done something wrong but believes therapists should examine the broader circumstances surrounding an estrangement. Richard Blake also said differences in values can fracture families even without severe behavior such as violence or abuse.

“People are cutting people off because of divergence in values,” Richard Blake said. As an example, he cited an online comment from someone who wrote, “I cut my parents off because they didn't condemn ICE enough.”

Richard Blake emphasized that ending contact can be warranted in cases involving physical or sexual abuse. He described emotional abuse as a murkier area, arguing that the term is sometimes applied more broadly in therapy and online discussions involving politics, religion and language.

He also believes expectations for parents have shifted. “Therapy has sort of raised the bar of what is good enough parenting,” he said, adding, “There's just a massive sort of overselling in therapy of how much your parents affected you.”

At the same time, Richard Blake said parents must listen when adult children try to communicate. He described adult children’s frustration over feeling unheard as genuine and said his criticism applies only to a “small subset” of therapists who may see family cutoff as an appropriate response to conflict.

For ordinary family conflict rather than abuse, he warned that ending contact can carry serious longer term consequences despite providing initial relief. He also challenged the assumption that removing a parent will necessarily resolve underlying mental health struggles.

Lucy Blake, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist in the U.K. who studies family estrangement, offered a more varied assessment. “I think people can find therapy very helpful if their therapist has an understanding of estrangement, so some appreciation that it’s rarely one relationship that’s affected when there’s an estrangement,” she told the American Psychological Association.

Lucy Blake said therapy can help when clinicians understand factors such as abuse or mental health challenges. She has also heard from people who found therapy unhelpful when therapists lacked warmth, validation or an understanding of the grief and loss accompanying estrangement.

For families still communicating, experts said a neutral third party could be productive when everyone is willing to participate. Richard Blake said mediation involving a therapist or professional mediator is worth trying, although joint therapy may no longer be possible after someone ends communication and requests no contact.

Wellington agreed that therapy involving parents and adult children together could help if both sides want to repair the relationship. “You can have a different opinion,” she said. “You can also have a relationship with your parent who has the other opinion, and that's OK.”

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