The Atlantic
A Shift in American Family Values Is Fueling Estrangement
Both parents and adult children often fail to recognize how profoundly the rules of family life have changed over the past half century.
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Sometimes my work feels more like ministry than therapy. As a psychologist specializing in family estrangement, my days are spent sitting with parents who are struggling with profound feelings of grief and uncertainty. “If I get sick during the pandemic, will my son break his four years of silence and contact me? Or will I just die alone?” “How am I supposed to live with this kind of pain if I never see my daughter again?” “My grandchildren and I were so close and this estrangement has nothing to do with them. Do they think I abandoned them?”
Decreased somewhat (2)
Results
The Assimilation Prime had a strong and significant effect on immigration support. In the Assimilation group, 46% favored increasing immigration, compared to 35% in the control group a treatment effect of 11 percentage points, statistically significant at the
p .01 level. Opposition to immigration in turn halved from 24% in the control group to 12% in the Assimilation group. If using the 5-point immigration outcome measure (instead of net support/oppose), the Assimilation article had a treatment effect size of .36 scale points, or a third of a scale point, significant at the
p .001 level. Results from a comparison of means test indicate that higher support for immigration in the Assimilation group was statistically significant (t(362) 2.98,