Last month, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a statewide initiative to address loneliness and disconnection among young men.
This followed California’s San Mateo County, which, early in 2024, became the first county in the nation to declare loneliness a public-health emergency. Daly City soon acted similarly. (Washington’s Thurston County also joined in naming loneliness as a social concern.)
As a lifelong Californian who works with parents estranged from their adult children, I’m heartened to see the West leading efforts to combat loneliness. But what about parents who are cut off from kids and grandchildren? This group of lonely people remains almost invisible.
According to Cigna’s 2025 Loneliness in America report, more than half of U.S. adults say they feel lonely, and older adults have a greater risk of negative effects, including depression. Often, they’re living alone or coping with illness.
For estranged parents, that isolation is compounded by stigma and blame. When people learn a son or daughter has walked away, compassion can quickly wane. The assumption is that if your child rejected you, they must have a good reason.
I hear from thousands of parents who live with this silent judgment. Many mothers and fathers spent years nurturing their families, only to be recast by adult children as villains. Sometimes the rewritten history is encouraged by a spouse or even a therapist.
Sometimes, the blame comes from our culture at large. What I call a “parental mistakes economy,” stirs up angst, guilt and, when it comes to estrangement, even false hope.
Webinars and online advice promise reconciliation formulas, while headlines hail “The Mistakes Parents Make.” Even when adult children go “no contact,” and parents try to reconnect, they’re frequently told they’re going about it all wrong.
The message is circular: If you’re estranged, it’s your fault; if you can’t reconcile, it’s your fault. This leaves already-hurting parents isolated. As scapegoats for the adult children who blame them alongside an echo of headlines and therapy-speak, their loneliness deepens.
We live in a time when cutting people off is common. Blaming parents may be convenient, but real families are complicated. Not every imperfection is “toxic,” and not every difference of opinion or values deserves the silent treatment.
There was a time when religious or political differences among family members were managed with an agreement to disagree. Adult children’s society enables the discarding of parents who aren’t learning the maturity that comes from holding their own values, but still allowing others the right to theirs.
Meanwhile, America’s older population is growing faster than any other age group.
Many are parents and grandparents whose lives once revolved around family gatherings, shared holidays, and the purpose that comes from nurturing others. When that bond is broken — and society tells them it’s probably their fault — loneliness becomes a kind of social exile. To estranged parents and grandparents, the upcoming holidays pour salt in that wound.
As California leads the country in recognizing loneliness as a public health crisis, the next step should be to look more closely at the vulnerable older population, aging without the care, support, or friendly interaction with the ones they raised.
Often, these parents have suffered years of emotional and financial abuse at the hands of adult children who exploit their love — frequently with the aid of undue guilt that’s manufactured in this blame-the-parent era.
Loneliness isn’t always about being alone but about feeling alone. Recent research estimates that parent-adult-child estrangement ranges between 10 and 27 percent, suggesting that rejected parents are far from alone. Yet the absence of understanding, the sting of automatic blame, and the fear of speaking openly about their pain make them feel that way.
There are always reasons for estrangement, but they aren’t always the ones most often assumed. Parents can do everything right and still raise a child who is mentally ill and refuses treatment, is a substance abuser, or is in some other way unstable, manipulative, or even dangerous.
The next time you hear of an older person whose adult children aren’t close, consider where your thoughts automatically go. Parents have less power over how their kids turn out than most want to believe.
That’s probably especially true in our divisive, hyper-connected world of social influencers. It’s scary to recognize that if this happens to other kind, supportive parents, it could happen to you, too. The situations are far more complex than the societal brush-off of parental fault implies.
Estranged parents deserve understanding and compassion. Even if they’re not included in special efforts like the governor’s recent recognition of the loneliness among young men, individual citizens can notice and care. When you hear of these situations, keep an open mind. Please don’t jump to conclusions that further isolate a person whose adult children have rejected them.
Sheri McGregor, M.A., is a San Diego native who recently moved to the Sierra foothills of Northern California. She is the author of the “Done With the Crying” book series for parents of estranged adult children.
