Parents Fear America’s Rising ‘No Contact’ Trend With Their Kids

Experts are warning that young people are increasingly being encouraged online to make the devastating choice to cut off their immediate families in a controversial trend known as going “no contact.”

Darby Fox, a child and family therapist, told the Daily Mail that mental health professionals are seeing growing numbers of millennials and members of Generation Z end communication with their parents.

“I think it comes out of a time where we’ve had a lot more mental health focus on people saying that they’re being gaslit or that someone is crossing their boundary, and so they’re putting up a pretty hard boundary,” she said.

Nikki Herdocia-Oria, a licensed marriage and family therapist and founder of Mindful Wellness House, said social media has intensified the no-contact trend while often reducing a deeply complicated decision to a simple choice.

“It’s a boundary. It’s a very significant one, and it shouldn’t automatically be viewed as either empowering or cruel, but the important question really is – have we tried everything first before we do no contact?” she explained.

At the same time, she acknowledged that the conversation has helped many people identify unhealthy family dynamics that earlier generations may have simply endured.

Kreed Revere, a coach specializing in family estrangement and reconciliation, has experienced no contact from both sides. She cut off her mother three times before her own adult children stopped communicating with her about a decade ago.

“With my kids, when they estranged, it was very abrupt and they had said nothing to me. I had been trying to call them and they didn’t answer. I’d leave a voicemail, no response. Send a couple of texts, no response,” she recalled.

In January 2016, Revere’s two adult daughters blocked her on social media. She acknowledged that they were not close at the time and that she was dealing with considerable anger of her own.

“From the parents’ side of things, it is devastating. Devastating. And I mean that on some very deep levels,” she said.

“Especially for mothers, and that’s who I mainly work with in my coaching practice – it’s a complete loss of identity. They lose all sense of who they are. It can be very traumatic.”

Revere had also stopped speaking to her own mother for two periods during her 20s, followed by another six-year estrangement after she had her daughters.

“I do not regret the estrangement from my mom, but I do regret the pain that my mom experienced during the estrangement, because I know what that feels like,” she said.

Revere said that, in her work with estranged parents, most families do not ultimately reconcile.

Herdocia-Oria added that families are often unprepared for the emotional consequences of ending contact.

“There is gonna be relief, but also grief,” she said.

Elise Maisonneuve, 43, has come to know that grief. Her mother struggled with addiction issues and decided to cut her off after a lifetime of pain. 

Maisonneuve told the Daily Mail that she went no contact with her mother three years ago, a year after her father died. 

When she realized her mother had lied about being sober, she made the decision to create some distance.  

‘Our society also doesn’t make room for ambiguous loss, the grief of losing someone who is still very much alive, which made it infinitely harder,’ Maisonneuve recalled. 

Krystle, 40, who asked that her last name not be used for privacy reasons, shared a similar story. She recalled coming home after studying abroad as a young adult and finding her mother ‘extremely impaired,’ launching what she described as ‘the beginning of a really difficult chapter.’ 

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After over 20 years of inconsistent communication, Krystle blocked her mother and stepfather. 

The decision came this summer when she asked her mother for some of her belongings and was met with a text that said: ‘You will get what you get when I’m dead.’

Krystle said: ‘I realized that maybe all these years I’d been searching for that relationship and hoping that she’d get help or hoping she’d get counseling, and I’m old enough now to realize a leopard doesn’t change their spots.’ 

Maisonneuve shared that she spent her childhood worrying about her mother and ‘parenting’ her own parent, until two years ago when she communicated that she needed space and would not be reaching out. 

She heard from her mother once since then. ‘Her response confirmed what my gut had been telling me for a long time but what my heart didn’t want to believe,’ Maisonneuve recalled. 

Since cutting her mother off, Maisonneuve said her chronic health issues caused by stress have eased. 

Krystle echoed that sentiment, saying of her mother: ‘Even though she’s alive, I’m mourning what I see as the death of her.’ 

Both Maisonneuve and Krystle shared their experiences on TikTok. In September, Maisonneuve posted a video showing how her life has changed since going no contact. 

‘The internet has opened up access to so much more understanding and seeing how other people live and operate their lives on a large scale compared to the boomer and Gen X generations,’ Revere noted. 

A recent study by Talker Research found that 38 percent of Americans went ‘no contact’ with a friend or family member in the last year. 

Younger generations are more likely to cut off contact, according to the survey, with 60 percent of Gen Zers saying they had, 50 percent of millennials, 38 percent of Gen Xers and only 20 percent of baby boomers. 

Therapists noted that although going no contact can be vital for those dealing with people in situations of abuse or substance use, they warn that it does not work for everyone and it should not be a decision taken lightly. 

Fox argued that a culture of no contact is not an overall positive for young people’s mental health because it eliminates the opportunity to work through difficult relationships. 

‘I think that from a psychological perspective or as a mental health professional, what we wanna encourage people to do is to control and regulate their own relationships as opposed to looking outward and saying everybody else is doing it to me,’ she said.

‘And social media in particular is an external driver. That’s an external force. And when we give ourselves away to that, then we’re powerless. We’re just acting out what someone else is telling us to do, and usually that’s not super healthy.’