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Nobody knows!

But I’m a professor and I’ve a book to sell!

Karl Pillemer, a professor at Cornell University and author of Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them, found that in 2020, 27% of Americans over the age of 18 were estranged from a family member. That’s more than a quarter, although the actual proportion could be much higher because many people are still reluctant to discuss such a personal and stigmatized topic. Although there is a lack of long-term research, Pillemer believes estrangement rates are increasing in the United States and other Western countries, especially in white and non-immigrant people under the age of 35.

15 thoughts on “Nobody knows!”

  1. Dennis, Pointing Out The Obvious

    Although there is a lack of long-term research, Pillemer believes estrangement rates are increasing in the United States and other Western countries, especially in white and non-immigrant people under the age of 35.

    So, you have no data. Answer? Pull something out of your ass…

    What we know is different is that today we have social media and a large number of people on social media have a compulsive need to share everything with everyone. Family estrangement used to be a family affair. Not anymore.

  2. Wouldn’t surprise. My mother didn’t talk to her sister for 65 years & her brother for 45. The other brother was fortunate enough not return from a mission in his Wellington in 43. Although there’s every chance he could be hiding somewhere, I s’pose. Close family? Not a lot.

  3. Come to think of it, my father’s family were so estranged they only ever met at funerals.

  4. Out of interest. I’ve just been looking at the ads that appear down the right hand side of this page. Not one of them takes one to what’s depicted in the ad. Obviously all my ads are spanish targeted but do you get the same result? Or is outright deceit just a dago talent?
    (No. Adblock’s set to allow on Tim’s site. I know he meeds the revenue. But one wonders; what’s the point of carrying ads readers will quickly learn not to click on.)

  5. BiS

    The ad i keep on seeing is for “A Big Black Queer Musical”

    Not sure what algorithm brought that about.

    My father’s family never spoke. Many of them couldn’t stand their dad and never went home after their mother died.

  6. If it wasn’t for my wife there’s plenty of family members I’d most probably never talk to or see again, I suspect that’s true for a lot of people.

  7. Friends of my father were afflicted with a grown up son who wouldn’t move out. And wouldn’t pull his weight at home. So they ran away – to Majorca and settled there.

  8. Currently, when I last checked, all my children and grandchildren are talking to me but I have a couple of nieces who have been having a longterm snitch.

    I apprecaite the late aunt who declared “Let them cool in the skins they’ve heated in.” Found it to be the only way to live in my somewhat dysfunctional family.

  9. Come to think of it, my father’s family were so estranged they only ever met at funerals.

    Yup. Pretty much describes my family. Last saw my brothers at Dad’s funeral and before that Mum’s. If invited to the funeral of either of my brothers, it would be mostly to ensure the bastards are dead.

    At least we don’t hold our sibling rivalry lightly. My middle brother threatened to kill me more than once over some perceived slight. Should have been locked away as a teenager.

  10. “white and non-immigrant people …”
    Everyone in the Americas is an immigrant or descended from an immigrant: so who are the non-immigrant people?
    Does he believe that humanity evolved separately in Africa and America but somehow all the fossil records in the “western hemisphere” got eaten?

  11. Left-wingers will cut anybody out who leans to the right/racist/fascist/homophobe/transphobe. At a rate three times the rate of cuts in the other direction.

    I still talk to all my family, we just don’t hold grudges.

  12. . . . especially in white and non-immigrant people under the age of 35.

    Well, good to know black families are stable and keeping in touch but – does having shot your bro in the face (and little sis in the crossfire) over a dissing / turf dispute get counted as estrangement?

  13. I find there is nothing more claustrophobic than a close family. I would hate to belong to one of those clans which are forever gathering en masse. Just because you have a blood link does not mean you have to like someone.

  14. My ex posted a pic a week or so ago of a sculpture she’d picked up.
    A jolly woman wearing an apron with “Friends welcome (relatives by appointment only)” printed on it.

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