"I Won't be Home for Christmas": Accomplishing and Maintaining Family Estrangement

Abstract

Despite both scholarly and laypeople’s beliefs that family relationships are nonvoluntary (Baxter et al., 2009; Hess, 2000), Conti (2015) contends that family estrangement could be as common as divorce in some segments of society. Family estrangement occurs when at least one family member voluntarily and intentionally distances him/herself from another family member because of an ongoing negative relationship (Scharp & Dorrance Hall, 2017). Similar to other contexts (e.g., divorce, family member marginalization, military deployment, or even going away to college), family estrangement is a process (Scharp & Dorrance Hall, 2019). Unlike some dissolution processes, estrangement does not have a binary outcome (i.e., together or not), but rather should be thought of as a continuum; meaning people can be more or less estranged (Scharp, Thomas, & Paxman, 2015). The following case study focuses on a woman named Sophie and her best friend Riley, who are at different points along this estrangement continuum. TRIGGER WARNING: This case study describes severe child abuse and cases of intimate partner violence. Although all names have been replaced with pseudonyms, the majority of events are based on real people’s lives and experiences.