‘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.

Estrangement increasingly defines modern family life, even among relatives who share the same space. seb_ra/Getty Images

“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: estrangement.