Is blood thicker than water? Should family always come first?
These clichés about the importance of family abound, despite the recognition that familial relations are oftentimes hard, if not downright dysfunctional.
But over the past few years, a discussion has emerged about a somewhat taboo move: cutting ties altogether with family members deemed “toxic.”
Called going “no contact,” this form of estrangement usually involves adult children cutting ties with their parents. It might happen after years of abuse or when a parent disapproves of a child who has come out as LGBTQ+. Or it might be spurred by political or religious differences. Even Vice President Kamala Harris has been mostly estranged from her father since her parents’ divorce.
Those in favor say people should disentangle from unhealthy relationships without shame, and that family should be held to the same standards as friends and romantic partners.
Those against say the bar for what constitutes familial trauma has become too low, and that some kids who cut off all contact are being selfish.
At the heart of the debate over the ethics of estrangement is a cultural attachment to the idea of family. The field of family estrangement is still in its early stages, but discussions of the collapsed parent-child relationship – its sources, its ethics, its consequences – can be found in literature across history. As I’ve encountered more articles, forums and social media posts devoted to family estrangement, I can’t help but see connections to Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” which I teach to my students as a tragedy about dysfunctional families.
The tragedy features characters who are cast out by their families, and while the work is over 400 years old, it offers uncanny insight into the logic of modern family estrangement.
Early modern family
In Shakespeare’s time – the English early modern era, which spanned from the beginning of the 16th century to the start of the 18th century – Protestantism reinforced the idea that people had special obligations to their kin.
As the English Puritan preacher John Foxe wrote in “The Book of Martyrs,” “Among all the affections of nature, there is none that is so deeply graved in a father’s mind, as the love and tender affection towards his children.”
In Foxe’s teaching, children were blessings from God who required nurturing, spiritual guidance and material support from their parents. Children, in turn, were obliged to honor and obey their parents who cared for them.
While this sounds simple enough, the early modern family was no less prone to dysfunction than the modern family.
Just like today, parent-child relationships were dynamic and evolved across the life span of the parents. As historian Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos argues, the family bond was not sustained by adhering to God’s commands, but through giving and reciprocation that was asymmetrical.
Parents could invest a lot into their children and get very little in return, and vice versa. Due to shorter life expectancy, many parents did not live to see their children come of age, and if they did, children rarely earned enough to pay their parents back for the cost of raising them. Thus, children might reciprocate in less material forms, such as through offering affection.
When a parent died, the children might receive some form of inheritance, but this was largely determined by class status, gender and the order of birth.
Shakespeare’s characters go ‘no contact’
“King Lear” features two storylines. Each relates to the disintegration of the family.
Is blood thicker than water? Should family always come first?
These clichés about the importance of family abound, despite the recognition that familial relations are oftentimes hard, if not downright dysfunctional.
But over the past few years, a discussion has emerged about a somewhat taboo move: cutting ties altogether with family members deemed “toxic.”
Called going “no contact,” this form of estrangement usually involves adult children cutting ties with their parents. It might happen after years of abuse or when a parent disapproves of a child who has come out as LGBTQ+. Or it might be spurred by political or religious differences. Even Vice President Kamala Harris has been mostly estranged from her father since her parents’ divorce.
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