When the Chain Breaks: Understanding the Growing Estrangement Between Grandparents and Grandchildren in America

Tuesday, March 25, 2025.

It’s a scene no one imagines for themselves.

You raised your children, watched them grow, and waited for the second act of family life—the warm embrace of your grandkids, stories around the table, and the joy of being “Nana” or “PopPop.”

But the phone doesn’t ring. Holidays are quiet. Photos of your grandkids—if you see them at all—are filtered through social media or hearsay.

Welcome to one of the most silent and painful trends in American family life: grandchild estrangement.

The Rise of Estranged Grandparents in the U.S.

While hard data is limited, surveys and expert accounts confirm that millions of grandparents in the United States are cut off from their grandchildren—often without clear explanation or hope of reconciliation.

• A 2022 YouGov poll found that nearly 29% of Americans report being estranged from an immediate family member, and 5% specifically from a grandparent (YouGov, 2022).

• In a 2023 article from Psychology Today, therapist and estrangement researcher Dr. Joshua Coleman notes that “thousands of grandparents report being completely cut off from their grandchildren,” often due to ruptures with the parents (Coleman, 2023).

• A Gransnet UK survey found that 1 in 7 grandparents are estranged, suggesting the issue spans cultures, but manifests acutely in Western, individualist societies.

In my opinion, these numbers are likely underreported, given the intense shame and silence that often accompanies this particular form of estrangement.

Estrangement Is Not a “Phase”: It’s Often a Pattern

One of the most crucial—and uncomfortable—questions families must ask is this:

Is the estrangement from grandchildren a new fracture… or part of a longer lineage of breaks?

Psychologist Karl Pillemer, who conducted a groundbreaking study on family estrangement at Cornell University, found that most family cutoffs occur after long-standing patterns of unresolved conflict, boundary violations, or emotional neglect (Pillemer, 2020). In many, if not most cases, the estrangement of grandchildren is the downstream effect of an already frayed parent-child relationship.

In short: if a parent has distanced themselves from their mother or father, the grandchildren usually follow

This turns grandchild estrangement into a symptom, not a cause. It’s not that the grandchildren necessarily reject the grandparents ( although sometimes they may)—it’s mostly that the middle link in the chain has remained broken.

Common Causes of Grandparent-Grandchild Estrangement

While each story is unique, patterns emerge:

Parental Estrangement

This is the most common route. If a parent has gone “no contact” with their own parent, they often withhold access to their children—intentionally or as a side effect of separation.

Perceived Boundary Violations

This includes:

• Unsolicited parenting advice

• Disrespect of the parents’ rules or values

• Criticism or judgment (especially around lifestyle, politics, or religion)

Even when these actions are done with love, they can trigger defensiveness or resentment in adult children, leading to distance or cutoff.

Divorce and Repartnering

In blended families, ties to the “former” grandparent can fade. New partners may prioritize new familial alliances, and grandchildren can become pawns in adult loyalty wars. Ex-partners with dark secrets can also see alienating the ex-inlaws as pragmatic shame-containment.

Geographic and Emotional Drift

Sometimes there’s no major rupture—just the slow erosion of closeness due to distance, busyness, or emotional disconnection. Over time, the grandparent role is diminished to a shadow presence.

Cultural Context: The American Emphasis on Autonomy

In many cultures, multigenerational living and intergenerational obligation are the norm. In the United States, however, individualism reigns.

As Dr. Coleman writes:

“We live in a society that prioritizes personal happiness over familial duty. That creates a context where adult children feel both permission and justification to cut off parents who don’t feel safe or affirming.” (Coleman, 2021)

This cultural shift, compounded by the rise of therapy language (e.g., “toxic,” “boundaries,” “generational trauma”), means that intergenerational relationships are increasingly fragile—especially when past hurts have been minimized or ignored.

Is There Always a Villain? Not Usually. But Sometimes

Estrangement narratives often flatten into blame. But family systems are complex.

Some grandparents were deeply loving, but others well-meaning perfunctory shadows living hundreds of miles away. But in any case, grandparents sometimes become collateral damage in a child’s effort to escape a painful upbringing.

Others struggle with unexamined behaviors—a need for control, judgmental comments, passive aggression—that alienate their adult children without realizing it.

And some adult children are themselves reactive, self-protective, or influenced by external pressures (a partner’s grudge, or a therapist’s advice to go “no contact” without dialogue).

Family fracture is almost never about one moment—it’s about patterns left unspoken for decades.

What Estranged Grandparents Can Do (and What Not to Do)

If you are estranged from your grandchild, your instinct might be to reach out directly. But proceed with care—often a parent is still a powerful gatekeeper.

DO:

• Acknowledge past conflict with the parent, without defensiveness, if possible.

• Express longing without guilt-tripping: “I miss you. I love you. I’m here if you ever want to talk.”

• Consider writing a letter that accepts the estrangement, but keeps the door gently open.

• Consider is the juice worth the squeeze? What are the odds of rebuilding cleanly? Are there family members or an ex hostile to your efforts? In other words, don’t fret and hover. Don’t be annoying, needy, or neurotic. Watch your degree of intrusive thoughts and grief management. This is a long game of dubious outcome. Live your life.

DON’T:

• Pressure, guilt, or beg for access

• Use the grandchild to bypass the parent’s boundaries

• Blame, justify, or minimize—especially if previous behavior was hurtful. This is a long game. You must pace yourself. Especially if there are parents with personality disorders, or secret shame.

What Therapists Are Seeing: Quiet Despair, Lingering Hope

Therapists report that estranged grandparents often experience:

• Complicated Grief: Mourning someone who’s alive, but unavailable. This is very hard on an aging nervous system.

• Shame: Especially when peers celebrate grandparenthood as life’s crowning joy.

• Confusion: Many don’t understand what they did wrong—or feel punished for decades-old wounds. Slow down. Think more strategically. Cui Buono? Who benefits from the estrangement?

• Persistent Hope: A longing that someday, the phone will ring or a letter will arrive. Also exceedingly hard on the nervous system.

And sometimes, it does. Reconnection happens—but usually when the parent-child fracture is healed first.

Conclusion: Estrangement Is a Fractured Family Story, Not a Personal Failure

If you’re estranged from your grandchild, it’s not necessarily a reflection of your love or worth.

More often than not, you are standing in the wake of other and perhaps older generational fractures that have yet to be repaired. And in this age of Cultural Narcissism, that healing is often out of your hands.

To understand and potentially mend estrangement, the work lies not in “fixing” the grandchildren—but in revisiting the original rupture with their parents, however painful or humbling that may be.

And if that isn’t possible, or just doesn’t work, then the work becomes grieving with grace, and learning how to narrate your story without bitterness, for your own peace.

How bad is the American problem of Grandparent estrangement? it’s hard to measure, but here’s a clue..

If you’re having a hard time coping with your complicated grief, an intriguing alternative to boost your mental health in a very targeted way is but a click away.

In other words, for many, the answer is to walk away and love elsewhere.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss: Volume I. Attachment. Basic Books.

Coleman, J. (2021). Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict. Harmony.

Coleman, J. (2023). The lonely, fractured lives of estranged grandparents. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-rules-of-estrangement/202403/the-lonely-fractured-lives-of-estranged-grandparents

Pillemer, K. (2020). Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them. Avery.

YouGov. (2022). Poll: Family ties, proximity, and estrangement. Retrieved from https://today.yougov.com/society/articles/44817-poll-family-ties-proximity-and-estrangement