How do people “redo” family after an estrangement from the family they grew up in?
This was the central question of a study by Rin Reczek of The Ohio State University. Estrangement can end more than relationships: It can disrupt holiday traditions, connections with extended family, and a person’s sense of belonging. With all of that taken together, there can be a strong need to create an alternative family.
To explore how people reestablish a family network, Reczek recruited participants through news articles mentioning the study and a post on a Reddit forum for estranged people. In the final tally, they interviewed 68 adults who were estranged from at least one member of their family of origin. Participants were, on average, 38 years old and had been estranged for 7.51 years. Reczek asked about their experiences of estrangement and how their ideas about family had changed, then analyzed their narratives for themes.
What did Reczek find? Many participants redefined family by placing greater weight on choice than on biology. One participant expressed: “Just because you’re biologically related to them doesn’t mean you have any obligation to them … And just the fact that we’re related doesn’t mean that I really feel anything toward you.”
A second, less common shift involved finding a sense of family through symbolic connections with deceased ancestors. This theme surfaced for five participants, all of whom were Black or Native American. One interviewee reflected: “This is a little bit more metaphysical, but I really feel a deep connection to a couple of specific ancestors on each of my sides…One of them is my grandfather… And then the other one is my maternal great-grandmother.”
Participants also changed who they counted as family and what they expected those relationships to provide. Reczek identified three ways they did this.
First, participants built safe and trustworthy relationships with friends, housemates, community members, and their own children. This theme was especially salient for LGBTQ participants. One interviewee remarked: “I never really had trust in my family. They’ve never been those people…my friends—I trust them … which in my mind feels like what family should be.”
Second, some participants found parental support in surrogate relationships with older coworkers, community members, and friends’ parents. These elders offered one-way, unconditional support that the interviewees hadn’t received from their parents. As one participant put it: “I now feel like I have a pseudo mom. … She’s not a perfect pseudo mom … but it’s like one of the most beautiful things I’ve experienced.”
Third, some participants strengthened relationships with extended relatives with whom they had remained in contact. Although estrangement from one family member can destabilize other family ties, these participants preserved parts of their kinship network by keeping up with selected relatives. One interviewee explained: “I’m the one visiting great-aunt so-and-so, great-uncle so-and-so. I’m gonna show up at all the cousins’ [children’s] christenings, and this and that and the other. I’ll go to everything.”
The findings of this study suggest that estrangement doesn’t have to leave only an emotional void. By reframing what makes someone family, participants found relationships in which they felt safe and belonged. In other words, they redid family.
