Family & Education

‘Going No Contact’: How Can We Counter the Trend of Family Estrangement?

Family estrangement is becoming more common, but it carries long-term emotional costs for everyone involved.
‘Going No Contact’: How Can We Counter the Trend of Family Estrangement?
Estrangement increasingly defines modern family life, even among relatives who share the same space. seb_ra/Getty Images
Jeff Minick
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“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
That’s the opening line in Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina.” It’s an eye-catcher, but one wonders if he’d write those words if he were living in 21st-century America. Distinctions marking unhappy families may still apply, but more and more of those families share one thing in common:
Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.