Maybe it's the third holiday in a row you've spent bracing yourself before a phone call. Maybe you've rehearsed what you'll say to a parent who never lets you finish a sentence. If you've started quietly wondering whether the relationship is worth what it costs you, you're not the only one asking. No contact with parents means deliberately ending communication with a parent, usually after other ways of managing the relationship haven't worked, and even considering it can come with guilt before you've made any decision at all.
This post walks through what no contact means, why so many adult children are choosing it right now, and how to tell whether it might be the right move for you. We'll also get into what the research shows about how common this really is, what tends to happen to these relationships over time, and how to go about it if you decide that's where you're headed.
Anchor Therapy is a counseling center in Hoboken, NJ with mental health therapists specialized in helping children, teens, adults, couples, and families with anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma, life transitions, and more. Anchor Therapy is accepting new clients and is now providing in-person sessions and teletherapy sessions to residents of New Jersey, New York, and Florida.
What Does It Mean to Go No Contact With a Parent?
Going no contact with a parent means deliberately ending all communication with them, whether that's calls, texts, visits, or messages through other family members. It usually comes after months or years of boundaries failing to hold, rather than one bad conversation. For you, that might mean temporary space to protect your wellbeing, or a permanent end to the relationship.
The word "estrangement" gets used interchangeably with no contact, though estrangement can also include relationships that stay technically in contact while being distant, cold, or limited to surface-level exchanges. No contact is usually the clearest, most complete version of that distance.
Why Are So Many Adult Children Going No Contact With Their Parents?
Adult children are going no contact with parents more often because they're more willing than past generations to name harmful patterns and prioritize their mental health over family obligation. A 2023 study in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that estrangement from a parent, especially a father, is far more common than you might think.
The reasons usually build over years rather than a single incident. Researchers who study this, including Cornell sociologist Karl Pillemer, point to a mix of factors:
Harsh or controlling parenting during childhood
Favoritism between siblings
Divorce and the loyalty conflicts it creates
In-law tension
Values that have simply diverged too far to bridge
That same study, which tracked more than 16,000 mother-child and father-child relationships combined (over 8,000 of each), found that about 26% of adult children reported being estranged from their fathers at some point, compared to about 6% from their mothers. Some of these dynamics show up early and never really let up; others intensify after a life change like marriage, a new baby, or a parent's declining health.
Cornell researchers have found similar numbers looking at estrangement more broadly. Their national survey found that roughly 27% of American adults have cut off contact with a family member at some point, and about 10% of people have specifically been estranged from a parent or child. So if this is where you're at right now, you're part of a much bigger group than it probably feels like. Sibling estrangement follows some of the same patterns, and if that's part of your situation too, our post on adult sibling estrangement gets into what that looks like specifically.
How Do You Know When It's Time to Go No Contact With a Parent?
You likely need distance from a parent when the relationship costs you more than it gives, and your attempts to set boundaries have been ignored, mocked, or punished. A single hard conversation or a rough patch usually isn't enough reason on its own. What matters more is the pattern: does the relationship improve, or does it just repeat?
In our clinical experience, the clients who come to this decision have almost always tried other things first. They've set boundaries and had them crossed again within weeks. They've asked for an apology and gotten a justification instead. They've tried limiting contact to see if less exposure helped, and found the same dynamic waiting for them at every visit or call.
Some clients come in already certain that no contact is the answer. Others just want help figuring out whether what they're feeling is a reasonable response to a real pattern, or something that therapy might help them work through differently. Both are legitimate reasons to bring this to a therapy session, and neither one means you have to decide anything before you feel ready.
A few signs the relationship has reached that point:
Boundaries you've stated clearly get ignored, argued with, or used against you later
Contact with your parent leaves you anxious, exhausted, or smaller than you felt before it
Your parent denies or minimizes things you remember clearly, so you question your own memory
Other family members pressure you to keep the peace instead of acknowledging what's happening
You've noticed your physical health, sleep, or relationships suffering around contact with them
Going no contact isn't the only option if some of these sound familiar. You might find real relief just from lower-contact arrangements or firmer boundaries. But if you've tried that and the pattern keeps repeating, no contact becomes a reasonable next step rather than an extreme one.
Consider What You Need, Not Just What Your Parent Wants
One of the hardest parts of considering no contact is separating your own needs from the expectations you've carried for years. You may find yourself asking whether your parent will be angry, whether other relatives will judge you, or whether you're being selfish for wanting distance. Those questions can become so loud that your own experience gets pushed into the background.
Try shifting the question from, “Am I allowed to do this?” to, “What do I need in order to feel emotionally safe and healthy in this relationship?” You can also consider what would need to change for contact to feel manageable again, like:
Your boundaries being respected
An acknowledgment of past harm
Less criticism or control
Consistent changes in behavior rather than promises
You don't have to convince everyone that your decision makes sense. The goal is to make a thoughtful decision based on your own wellbeing and the reality of the relationship as it exists today.
What Happens to Your Body and Mind When You Cut Off a Parent
Adjusting to what happens in the weeks and months afterward is often harder than making the decision itself, as your nervous system recalibrates after years of bracing against this relationship. Many clients describe relief right alongside grief, sometimes in the same conversation, which can be confusing if you expect the decision to feel like one clean thing.
That mix makes sense. Alongside the person, you're also losing the parent you wished they'd been, the version of the relationship you kept hoping might still happen. Grieving that imagined relationship is often harder than grieving the actual day-to-day contact you're stepping away from.
Guilt tends to show up even when the decision was clearly the right one, often because you were raised to feel responsible for someone else's feelings. Unlearning that pattern usually takes real time and support. If that guilt feels tangled up with a lifetime of managing a parent's moods or reactions, our post on emotionally immature parents and excessive guilt may put language to what you're feeling.
Will You Regret Going No Contact With a Parent?
You're unlikely to regret protecting yourself from a relationship that was harming you, though the process afterward is rarely simple. Research on estrangement points to something that might surprise you: it's frequently temporary rather than permanent. The 2023 study from earlier found that about 81% of estrangements from mothers and 69% from fathers eventually ended.
Reconciliation isn't guaranteed or even advisable in every case. Some relationships truly shouldn't be repaired, especially where there's ongoing abuse or no accountability from the parent involved. No contact can still stay flexible, though. You're allowed to revisit it as your circumstances, and your parent's behavior, change.
Making the decision deliberately, with support, rather than in the middle of a crisis with no one to process it with, tends to predict less regret.
How to Go No Contact With a Parent
Deciding What "No Contact" Means for You
No contact doesn't have to mean the same thing for everyone who chooses it. You might cut off every form of communication completely, or you might block calls and texts while still allowing contact through a sibling for major updates. Deciding what version fits your situation, before you announce anything, makes the boundary easier to hold.
It also helps to decide in advance how you'll handle predictable pressure points: holidays, a sibling's wedding, a medical emergency. You don't need a perfect plan for every scenario, but having thought through the most likely ones means you're not improvising under pressure later. Some clients keep a short, simple script ready for these moments, something calm they can fall back on without having to think on the spot. If full no contact feels too extreme right now, our post on the gray rock method covers a lower-contact middle ground worth considering first.
What to Say When You Set the Boundary
You don't owe your parent a detailed explanation, and in our clinical experience, a shorter, calmer statement usually holds up better than a long one. Something like, "I need space from this relationship right now, and I'm not going to be in contact for a while," says what's needed without inviting a debate about whether your reasons are valid enough.
Expect pushback, especially if your parent has minimized your concerns before. It usually means the boundary is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Some parents escalate into guilt trips or sudden outreach through relatives after months of silence, and our post on hoovering tactics walks through what's happening and how to respond.
A few things worth leaving out of that first conversation:
A detailed list of everything they've done wrong over the years
An invitation for them to debate whether your reasons are valid enough
A specific end date, if you're not sure yet whether this is temporary or permanent
The No Contact Trend: Why It's Not Always Forever
No contact with parents has become a much more visible topic in the last several years, partly because more adult children are willing to talk about it publicly instead of quietly managing it alone. Family estrangement itself has been around for generations, and what's changed is how openly people talk about it now.
Social media has also changed how you might process the decision. Where earlier generations may have gone through it privately, or not at all, you can now find entire communities of people who've made the same choice. That visibility can be validating, even when it doesn't make the underlying grief any smaller.
Stepping back now doesn't lock in what happens later. In our clinical experience, when clients do reconnect with a parent, it tends to go better once they've stopped waiting for an apology or an admission that they were right, and they're looking instead at whether the relationship in front of them is worth building.
You don't owe anyone a reconciliation, on any timeline. The door just doesn't have to be permanently welded shut the moment you step back.
Getting Support Through a No Contact Decision
At Anchor Therapy, we often work with clients who are somewhere in this process, whether they're still deciding, newly no contact, or years into it and reconsidering. Tolerating how it feels when someone you love is upset with you is usually harder than holding the boundary itself, especially when you were raised to believe keeping the peace was your job.
A therapist can't make that discomfort disappear, but having someone in your corner who isn't tangled up in the family dynamic makes a real difference. That's especially true if you're managing pressure from siblings or extended family to reconcile before you're ready, or if old patterns of guilt and self-doubt keep resurfacing months after you've made the decision. The American Psychological Association points out that estrangement is rarely easy or simple, and that psychologists can help you work through it.
Deciding whether to go no contact with a parent is rarely one clean decision, and you don't need it all figured out before you reach out. Our family counseling services are built for this kind of work, whether you're still deciding, dealing with the aftermath, or looking at the relationship dynamics underneath it. The therapists at Anchor Therapy see clients in-person in Hoboken, NJ, and virtually in New Jersey, New York, and Florida. Learn more about the people you'd be working with on our Meet Our Team page, browse more of what we offer on our home page, and get in touch through our intake form below.
Victoria Scala, LAC
is the Psychotherapist, Community Engagement Director, Office Manager, and Social Media Manager at Anchor Therapy in Hoboken, New Jersey.
IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR HELP FROM A PROFESSIONAL COUNSELOR TO ASSIST YOU IN MAKING POSITIVE CHANGES IN YOUR LIFE, CONTACT US
WORKING WITH US IS EASY
Fill out the contact form below.
Our intake coordinator will get back to you with more information on how we can help and to schedule an appointment. We will set you up with an experienced licensed therapist who specializes in what you're seeking help with and who understands your needs.
You’ll rest easy tonight knowing you made the first step to improve your life.
Having trouble with this form? Email us directly at info@anchortherapy.org with the information in the form.
Maybe you're the one who gets blamed no matter what actually happened, at home, at work, or even with friends. Something goes wrong, and somehow it lands on you. If that sounds familiar, there's a word for what's happening: scapegoat. A scapegoat is a person who's unfairly blamed for problems they didn't cause. Scapegoating shows up most in families, where it's often called being the family scapegoat.