One of the things I enjoyed most about this past holiday season was my mother’s absence. From my childhood until I severed ties with her in my forties, Christmas with her was a torment. She had always excelled at humiliation, gaslighting, tirades, and other forms of emotional abuse. But these hardships felt even more acute during a season which extols the supportive family bonds my siblings and I never knew.

There’s no research on how many other people have had similar holiday experiences to mine, but it’s safe to say there are millions of us. And lately we’ve been getting noticed. Starting in the early 2020s, commentators from Reddit to Vogue to the New Yorker have proclaimed or decried estrangement as a “trend.” Recent evidence backs up the contention that stepping away from relatives is on the rise.

A 2020 survey of over 1,300 Americans by Cornell sociology professor Karl Pillemer found that 27% were estranged from at least one close relative. Five years later, a you.gov poll of almost 4,400 Americans put that figure at 38%.

This numerical increase has been mirrored recently by high-profile, pre-holiday examinations of estrangement by Oprah Winfrey on her podcast and by Pillemer and Mel Robbins in the New York Times. The arrival of #nocontact in the mainstream media’s spotlight has drawn fire from both sides in what has become a heated debate.

One side argues that most people who step away are unwisely breaking a vital human bond because of their fragile egos, outsize sense of entitlement, and/or sheer impulsivity. This side also blames the estrangement uptick on cultural forces like TikTok and Instagram, the rise of “therapy culture” which pathologizes normal family tensions, or the polarization that increasingly impacts many facets of........

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