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Updated: Oct 19, 2025

Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure
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Published on: September 19, 2019

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Patterns and Processes of Intergenerational Estrangement: A Qualitative Study of Mother-Adult Child Relationships

Megan Gilligan1, J Jill Suitor2, Karl Pillemer3

  • 1Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Iowa State University, IA, USA.

Research on Aging
|September 23, 2021
PubMed

Drawing from the life course perspective, we explored patterns of estrangement between mothers and their adult children across time, and the processes through which these ties remained estranged, or moved in or out of estrangement. We used a prospective design in which data were collected in face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 61 older mothers about their relationships with their 274 adult children at two time points 7 years apart. We began by examining the patterns of stability and change in intergenerational estrangement and identified movement in and out of estrangement across time. Qualitative analyses of the processes underlying estrangement revealed that movement in and out of estrangement reflected nuanced changes in contact and closeness over time rather than abrupt changes resulting from recent transitions in either mothers' or children's lives. Taken together, these findings illustrate the complexity of patterns and processes of intergenerational estrangement in later-life families.

Keywords:
intergenerational estrangementintergenerational relationsparent–child relations in adulthood

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