Many people become estranged from their parents in the course of their lives: one in five father-child relationships is affected, for mothers, it is almost one in ten. Families in which one parent has died or in which a stepparent has come along after parental separation are particularly at risk. This is shown in a new study by WiSo professor Karsten Hank (Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology (ISS) of the WiSo Faculty) and his colleague Oliver Arránz Becker (Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg). For this purpose, they examined data from more than 10,000 people.
For their study, the two sociologists used data from the "pairfam" longitudinal study. This is a relationship and family panel started in 2008 that examines partnership and family life situations in Germany. The focus was on the question of which factors and events influence the probability of an estrangement. Prof. Hank and Prof. Arránz Becker looked at the data of children between the ages of 18 and 45 who do not share a residence with their parents.
The researchers speak of estrangement when there is a combination of two criteria, explains Oliver Arránz Becker: "If the child and parent have contact less than once a month and they are not emotionally close, we call that estrangement." According to the study, estrangement is a common phenomenon in the parent-child relationship. Within ten years, this distance develops in 20 per cent of all adult children and their fathers, compared to only nine per cent of mothers. "This can be explained by the fact that the bond with the mother is often closer than with the father," explains Karsten Hank. Whether the child is a son or a daughter hardly played a role.
Factors that drive parents and children apart are above all drastic family events. If one parent dies, it often affects the relationship with the other. "That is quite surprising. One would actually assume that the bond would become closer after such an event, but in fact, it tends to get worse," says Arránz Becker. The separation of parents also has a bad influence on the parent-child relationship. In the case of stepfamilies, there is another aspect: if the relationship with a stepparent is bad, it is often accompanied by alienation from the natural parent. Often, however, a distanced relationship is not permanent. In the study, in 62 per cent of the cases, the children became closer to their mother again and 44 per cent to their father. "Based on studies on the frequency of close and conflictual relationships in different countries, we assume that Germany is in an average position internationally with these results," says Karsten Hank.