Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict

by Joshua Coleman

The difference between American families and families of other industrialized nations may stem from a style of individualism that’s unique to the United States. Sociologist Amy Schalet observed that American parenting practices are based on the idea that children learn to become adults by pushing hard against the parents’ limits around authority, sex, and alcohol consumption. She terms this “adversarial individualism” and contrasts it with Dutch parenting practices where teens are brought into adulthood by permitting sleepovers in the parents’ home with their boyfriends or girlfriends starting at around the age of sixteen, as well as drinking moderately with the family. While American parents believe that rebellion against the parental order is a normal, even expectable, set of behaviors on the path to adulthood, Dutch parents believe that teens should be eased into the world of adulthood with the parents’ knowledge and collaboration, a process she calls “interpersonal individualism.” These differences, Schalet notes, stem from contrasting national values—freedom in the United States, and gezelligheid (cozy togetherness) in the Netherlands. Whereas children in the US struggle to escape the chains of parental constraint, Dutch children expect that they’ll continue to rely on their parents even as they move into adulthood.