How would YOU cope if your child cut you out of their life?

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Oscar Wilde once warned that children begin their lives loving their parents, then grow up to judge them. If so, surely there is no harsher judgment of a parent than to be deliberately cut out of a childs life for ever.Yet this is what Claire, a well-spoken, professional young woman has done to her mother. She hasnt spoken to her for two years and has no intention of doing so again.Her decision is not the result of any life-changing moment of betrayal which has forever turned child against parent. Rather, Claire simply doesnt like her mother any more and decided her life is better without her in it.

Estranged: More and more children are cutting off contact with their parents rather than attempting to repair a troubled relationshipAnd that, proclaims this confident 22-year-old, is how her life is going to stay from now on: a mother-free zone.I dont think our relationship can ever be mended, she says. Our personalities clash and we are simply not good for each other. She knows how to push all my buttons and I just dont need the aggravation in my life. I have moved on and I will never go back.As a mother of three daughters, I can only begin to imagine how wretched Claires mother must feel at this rejection. Even by her daughters own admission, her sin wasnt egregious. The estrangement happened after Claires mother failed to support her daughter sufficiently when she split up with her first boyfriend.

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When we broke up, I was devastated, Claire says. But when I went home, Mum told me to pull myself together and stop acting like a child. I wanted a hug and sympathy, but she made me feel like an idiot. Something snapped inside me and I gathered up my possessions and left.
I have always ! held tha t family relationships are the ties that bind us. But when Claires ties unravelled, she insists she felt liberated, not forsaken. I have only felt truly comfortable in my own skin since I had the courage to leave home and stop seeing my parents, she says. Psychologist Dr Ludwig Lowenstein believes this generation have been empowered to judge their parents. He hears from up to six parents a day, a third of them women, asking advice because they fear estrangement from their children. There are no official statistics to show that the problem is increasing. But numerous leading psychologists claim it is, and online chatter suggests it is. We know loneliness in old age is a terrible problem, with as many as one in ten of our elderly (over-65s) left without any form of family contact for weeks on end. This may not be evidence of sudden estrangement, but it is proof the ties that bind families together are no longer holding fast.

'My parents make me unhappy, and it is my right to protect myself and that means keeping them away' Research in the U.S. shows familial bonds are breaking down there, too: The American Journal of Sociology published a report in 2006 which showed at least one in 25 people have stopped contact with at least one family member for months or years.And there are plenty of celebrities who make parental estrangement seem normal or even glamorous: Angelina Jolie, Drew Barrymore, Tori Spelling and Jennifer Aniston have all been estranged at one time or another from a parent. Documentary maker Elizabeth Vagnoni has set up an online forum for parents experiencing estrangement, on which are heartbreaking tales of children who refuse contact with their parents and wont let them see their grandchildren. Some parents seek grief counselling, while others fall into depression and even contemplate suicide. Not all of the websites forum members are from divorced families: Many on my site report estrangement even though they are an intact family, says Vagnoni.Often, parents have been marr! ied 40 y ears. According to my online survey, 45 per cent of those parents with estranged children are married, 22 per cent divorced and 22 per cent re-married, sometimes more than once.For decades, therapists have been interested only in the pain parents cause children when the relationship breaks down. Now a few are beginning to focus on the suffering parents endure.

Famous example: Angelina Jolie didn't speak to her father Jon Voight for years after he once publicly criticised her behaviourPsychologist Joshua Coleman is leading the way. Parenting has undergone a radical transformation in the past four decades, he says.
We have brought up a generation of independent, even narcissistic children and they are judging their parents like never before. It used to be the children who needed to win the love and respect of their parents. Now, it is the other way round. Coleman also blames the predominant cultural belief that the way children turn out is the fault of their parents.
David, 28, blames his parents for his low self-esteem, which he feels is at the root of his alcoholism.Mum and Dad are always complaining I havent done well enough after all the chances given to me, he says, showing me a photo of himself graduating from Oxford.
The Londoner, recently married, who works in advertising, says: My mum used to leave messages on my phone with helpful career suggestions, theimplication being things werent working out as well as shed expected for me career-wise. She was always making helpful, derogatory remarksabout my hairstyle, my clothes or my flat...it just wore me down.
'Then, when they thought my wife wasnt good enough for me, I exploded. Id had enough. They make me unhappy, and it is my right to protect myself and that means keeping them away.

'My daughter has told my grandchild I am dead. I cannot tell you what that does to me'David has talked to his therapist about! his par ents. But he has never been able to talk directly to them about why he has shut them out of his life. Perhaps their crime was to want too much for and from him. Their punishment is to have nothing of him at all.Christine Northam, a counsellor for Relate, says parenting today can be harder than it has ever been. Mutual respect has to be at the heart of this, she says. They need to be sure they relate to their children on an adult-to-adult basis. The generation now in their 20s are likely to be more free-thinking and independent. Parents have to move with the times.
Relate offers family counselling which Christine says can prevent the risk of estrangement. Open communication is the key to good relationships in life, she says.No one understands this better than Sarah Rafferty, from Yorkshire, who hasnt seen or spoken to her eldest daughter Rachel, 27, for six years. She still cries herself to sleep at night because of the rejection, particularly as she has never seen her only grandchild.When she had her baby, that was the hardest time I cried all night, Sarah says. All I have ever wanted is to be a mother and grandmother, and she has denied me that. I think she takes pleasure in that. I cannot imagine we will ever be reconciled there is too much hurt on both sides.
The most awful thing is I have been told by a friend that Rachel has told her daughter I am dead. I cannot tell you what that does to me. I tried all my life to be the perfect mother.

Family feuds: Jennifer Aniston, left, and Drew Barrymore have both fallen out with their mothers at some point in their lives
Sarah, whose husband is a policeman, cannot fathom what she and her husband have done that is so terrible they have been cut out of their daughters life. Rachel had an idyllic childhood and ! the prob lems only surfaced in her teenage years, when she became very clingy to her father and Sarah felt pushed out. It was as if Rachel was trying to drive a wedge between her father and I, and hurt our marriage, Sarah says. She was constantly critical of how I looked and what I wore and told me I was too fat. It hurt me terribly and we drifted further apart.But it was Rachels decision to drop out of university and move in with a boyfriend that triggered the estrangement.
Rachel came home, collected her clothes and all her books and piled them into the car we had bought for her. She didnt even kiss me goodbye. I tried to call her, constantly leaving messages. I have no idea what I am supposed to have done to hurt her. She wont speak to her father either.Joshua Coleman says if estrangement sets in, parents should never give up hope of winning their children back.

WHO KNEW?

Around one in 40 people are estranged from a family member As a child, I was taught by an inspirational music teacher who never saw her daughter. We, her pupils, used to feverishly imagine what crime she must have committed. When, as an adult, I received a letter from her telling me of their reconciliation, I felt shame for my childish imaginings. My former teacher had never been guilty of anything. Her letters had finally melted her daughters heart. Jane Stewart, 49, from Kent, understands how precious and precarious a mother-daughter relationship can be. Twice-married Jane, who works in PR, first fell out with her rebellious teenage daughter Laura when she was 14. There was the normal teenage rebel behaviour, with shouting and door slamming, Jane says. Then my marriage to her stepfather ended. I remember shouting at her: But its what you wanted! I needed her to help around the house and a lot of our arguments centred on her lack of help. I suppose I hoped she would be around for me more now I was on my own.Id lie awake in bed, desperately needing to sleep, wondering where she was, only to hear the door bang at 4am.The argumen! ts conti nued and Laura finally walked out for good in the middle of her A-levels. We had an almighty row about her not helping I remember her scrabbling around in the loft looking for a suitcase while I shouted: Get lost! Youre not coming back! She moved in with her boyfriend, who was ten years older than her.But a year later, they were reconciled.I did think at one point I might lose her for ever, which would have broken my heart, Jane says.When Oscar Wilde used his wit to warn that children end up judging their parents, he used his wisdom to say something else, too. He counselled that some of the children who judge their parents might, also, learn to forgive them.Lets hope that our children will remember those words and look back with compassion and not anger when they come to cast their verdicts on us.Otherwise, as the ties that bind us unravel, we could grow old as our children grow up and find ourselves joining the growing ranks of the unloved, unvisited and estranged.