It was awful but also a fantastic thing to happen to me.” Cara*, a 25-year-old journalist from Bradford, is talking about an experience that, for many, would be unthinkable. Three and a half years ago, at the age of 22, she fell out with her dad – and they haven’t spoken since.
While the idea of reaching a point where you cut all contact with a parent might sound extreme, it is far more common than polite society would have us believe. Previous research by charity Stand Alone suggested around one in five families in the UK may be affected by estrangement; the Institute for Family Studies claims that 6 per cent of adult children in the US are estranged from their mothers. It’s long been such a taboo subject, though, that the hard data often simply doesn’t exist.
