It would be really, really nice if the author actually defined the term “estrangement” formally somewhere in the article. It seems to be written for parents up

It would be really, really nice if the author actually defined the term “estrangement” formally somewhere in the article. It seems to be written for parents upset that their adult children are maintaining what the parents see to be unduly strict boundaries between themselves and the children. The title suggests this is a new thing, to an American audience of all people. This is the trope that launched a thousand American plays, movies, and TV shows. The author finds need to note that divorce seems to make things worse. The self-estrangement of the parents from each other leads, as an apparent surprise to the divorced couple, to the acceptance of estrangement as an acceptable action by the child themself. How little self-awareness must her parental clients have? “Sometimes the steady current of our movement toward children creates a wave so powerful that it threatens to push them off their own moorings; it leaves them unable to find their footing until they’re safely beyond the parent’s reach. Sometimes they need to leave the parent to find themselves.” If anyone wants more insight into this phenomenon, there were a few hundred books written in the late 60s through the 70s on this theme. Every TV talk show must have had at least one program a week on the topic when the first-born Boomers were setting out on their own. Heck, the Beatles even wrote a song about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She%27s_Leaving_Home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She%27s_Leaving_Home “We are all flawed.” What should be the boilerplate final sentence in any psychology article.