Family Estrangements How They Begin, How to Mend Them, How to Cope With Them

Chapter 1 Why are families growing apart? "Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not reject it merely because it comes too late." --Justice Felix Frankfurter Are there more estrangements today than in the past? While there are no statistics on the subject, considering how easily I found people who have had an estrangement or are in the midst of one, it appears to be an escalating problem. We can only speculate on the reasons why. There have always been rifts in families, but they seem to be more numerous, more intense and more hurtful than ever before. Sisters aren't speaking to each other since one sister took the silver when Mom died. Two brothers rarely visit because their wives refuse to talk to each other. A son alienates himself from his family when he marries the woman who hates everyone that was ever in his life before she was. A daughter never sees her mother because she can't stand another guilt trip. A family banishes a daughter for marrying outside her race or religion. A son repudiates a divorced father when he reveals his homosexuality. And so it goes-a variety of conflicts, misperceptions, petty grievances, prejudices and jealousies that can lead to one unhappy outcome: estrangements. Today we are facing a rapidly changing family relationship landscape. Every assumption made about the family structure has been challenged, and once-narrow boundaries have been stretched to include single mothers raising out-of-wedlock children and gay couples having or adopting children. If the so-called conventional family is having trouble maintaining good relationships, imagine what problems can and do arise in less traditional situations. Looking back, we can see that fault lines in our family structure were widening throughout the last 40 years of the twentieth century. The cracks did not become evident until the early 1960s, when the divorce rate began to rise so sharply that it doubled by the mid-1970s. According to a 1999 Rutgers University study, divorce rates have risen 30 percent since 1970, the marriage rate has fallen faster, and only 38 percent of Americans consider themselves happy in their married state, a drop from 53 percent of happily married people 25 years ago. Today, 51 percent of all marriages end in divorce. How Americans managed to alter their concept of marriage and family so profoundly during those 40 years is the subject of a great deal of scholarly investigation and academic debate. In a New York Times magazine article (May 2000) titled "The Pursuit of Autonomy," the writer maintains that "the family is no longer a haven; all too often a center of dysfunction, it has become one with the heartless world that surrounds it." Unlike the past, the job that fits you in your twenties is not the job or career you'll have in your forties. Even the spouse you had in your 20s will probably not be the spouse you'll have after you've gone through your midlife crisis. Starting with the 1960s, four sweeping societal changes have exerted an enormous influence on the traditional family structure. Many of these changes led to positive results, including but not limited to a strengthened social conscience, women's rights, constraints on going to war and a growing tolerance for diversity. But there has been a price to pay. Not only have these societal changes altered the structure of the family, but converging together, and as an unintended by-product, they fostered family alienation, exacerbated old family estrangements and created new ones. These major shifts in our American society were: *the Me Generation of the 1960s, *the women's liberation movement, *the states' relaxation of divorce laws, and *the ever-increasing mobility of American families. Me, Me, Me! The Me Generation of the 1960s perpetuated the notion that we are first and foremost entitled to happiLeBey, Barbara is the author of 'Family Estrangements How They Begin, How to Mend Them, How to Cope With Them' with ISBN 9780553381962 and ISBN 0553381962.