Blog #12 | A 4-Part Series on Navigating Difficult Relationships with Adult Children Part 1: When Love Feels Rejected - Understanding Why Adult Children Pull Away

The Painful Reality

Does this sound familiar?  You feel you gave everything to raise your children, and now they seem distant, critical, or even hostile. Phone calls are strained, visits are rare, and you feel like you're walking on eggshells. You're not alone—research shows that an astounding 1 in 4 Americans are estranged from family members, with family estrangement on the rise (YouGov/NPR, 2023) ¹. It’s natural to feel heartbroken and confused when your adult children create distance.

Why This Happens

The Independence Struggle: Your adult child may be pulling away to establish their own identity. What feels like rejection is often their way of proving (to themselves and others) that they can function independently. Studies show that autonomy development is a critical task of emerging adulthood, and conflicts often arise when parents struggle to adjust their involvement levels (Pew Research Center, 2024).

Unresolved Issues: Sometimes adult children harbor resentment about childhood experiences, even things you thought were minor or that you handled the best you could at the time. And let’s face it, we all make mistakes as parents.  Sometimes they can be big mistakes.  I’ve been there.  If our own mothers did not have great parenting skills, chances are we may have missed the mark at times.  But even "good" mothers can experience difficulties with adult children.

Research shows that common causes for estrangement include miscommunication, unresolved conflict, betrayal of trust, unmet emotional needs, and differing values and lifestyles (Talkspace, 2025)

Life Transitions: Marriage, career changes, or becoming parents themselves can shift their priorities and emotional availability.

Different Communication Styles: The way you show love (advice, checking in, wanting to help) might feel overwhelming or controlling to them. Studies show that parents and adult children often have mismatched expectations about communication frequency and involvement levels (PMC, 2015) ⁸.

The Grief of Changing Relationships

It's normal to grieve the close relationship you once had. You may feel:

• Rejected despite your best efforts

• Confused about what you did wrong

• Lonely and excluded from their life

• Worried about their wellbeing

• Guilty about past parenting decisions

First Steps Toward Healing

Stop Taking It Personally: Their need for distance isn’t necessarily about you being a bad mother.  Often it is more about their own developmental needs.

Examine Your Approach: Are you offering help they didn't ask for? Giving advice when they just wanted to vent? Being critical of their choices?

Give Them Space: Counterintuitively, stepping back often helps them feel safer to reconnect on their terms.

In Part 2 of this series, we’ll talk about learning to know when to step back.  Thank you for reading my blog. I hope this information was helpful.  If you would like to talk about this privately, click below to book your free 30-minute consultation. Thanks for reading my blog - I hope it helps! Cheryl