The ‘no-contact’ epidemic: Why so many adult children are cutting off their parents

The “no-contact” trend has exploded in recent years. Popularized primarily on social media, it refers to adult children deliberately cutting off all communication with their parents or family members (often at the instruction of a therapist), typically to protect their mental health from perceived toxicity or because of ideological differences.

This isn’t some fleeting fad either. According to a New York Post survey, 38% of Americans have gone no contact with a friend or family member; Reddit’s “EstrangedAdultChild” community has skyrocketed in membership in recent years; and TikTok has roughly half a million posts (with well over a billion total views) featuring #nocontact.

Severing ties with one’s family has become an epidemic.

On a recent episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey addressed this movement through a biblical lens.

Allie argues that the no-contact trend is a branch of “therapy culture,” which tends to elevate the self above all else.

“[No contact] is one particular manifestation of what I call the cult of self-affirmation, which tells you if you learn to find fulfillment and love and satisfaction within yourself, if you go on this road of self-discovery, you will go so deeply inside yourself that you will unlock the manifestation of all of your dreams,” she says, noting that this mindset and practice have ties to the New Age as well.

But Jesus, Allie says, clearly instructs us to take the focus off of ourselves.

“Remember Jesus’ words: If you want to find yourself, you lose yourself. If you want to live, you must die. If you want to gain what I offer you, you must lose all of these things,” she says.

But the mindset behind the no-contact movement is the antithesis of Christ’s instruction.

“It’s not that you have to deny yourself; it’s that you have to deny others. If you want to gain, it’s not that you have to lose yourself in what you have. You have to lose others,” says Allie, calling it “the worshiping of the god of self.”

Allie acknowledges, however, that boundaries are sometimes necessary in a parent-adult child relationship.

“If you’re talking about actual harmful, hateful actions and words, OK, like that’s one conversation to have,” she says. “The problem with this is that this category of justification for going no contact is so large, and it encompasses everything from petty offense to political disagreements to not liking your parents’ tone to your parents in your mind just being too judgmental.”

“There are so many reasons that are covered under this that I think are awful reasons to cut off your parents,” she adds bluntly.

So what’s the Christian response to the no-contact movement?

To answer this question, Allie begins by playing an old clip of Charlie Kirk addressing the issue of having difficult parents.

“Even if your parents share values and views and a worldview that you do not have, you are biblically obligated to honor them, which means to spend time with them and to love on them and to go visit them. … If you are incapable in this case of honoring your earthly father, you will never honor your heavenly Father,” he declared.

Scripture corroborates this repeatedly. Allie displays several verses that explicitly instruct children to honor their parents.

There are no caveats to this either.

“There’s nothing there that says [honor your mother and father] as long as they’re still nice to you, as long as they agree with you, as long as they’re not emotionally immature, as long as they don’t do anything to you that makes you angry … as long as you can’t think back in your life to any time that they didn’t treat you fairly,” says Allie.

But she acknowledges that this is no easy journey — especially for those whose parents were genuinely abusive or neglectful.

“It takes a lot of the power of God to say, ‘Even if you didn’t treat me well, I am going to treat you well,”’ says Allie. “That’s what Christians are called to. That is the radical kind of love that the world who says they know what love is does not understand.”

We are called to this sacrificial, unconditional love, she says, because that’s the kind of love Christ extends to us.

“Even when we were spitting on Him and mocking Jesus, even when our sin placed Him on the cross, He said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,”’ says Allie. “That’s the craziness that Jesus brought forth.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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