Parting with parents: sweet or sorrow?
The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement by Eamon Dolan (Penguin Random House, 2025)
Reviewed by Don McCulloch
The phenomenon of “Adult Child Estrangement” from parents is growing. About 25% of the population are presently estranged from a relative, making the trend a hot topic. Eamon Dolan’s new book, The Power of Parting: Finding Peace Through Family Estrangement, could be summarized as pro-estrangement. The book’s cover quotes the famous therapist, Lori Gottlieb, calling the book “brave and groundbreaking.” Unfortunately, it is neither.
The book does have value. This book may be very helpful to a small number of people who really need to leave their abusive parents behind. Drawing on Dolan’s own experience, is also an excellent psychological self-examination of a very bright individual who was able to successfully jettison himself from a very abusive relationship with his mother. Dolan provides a nicely written and easy to read compendium of research, therapy examples and quotes, anecdotes from others who have left their families behind, definition of abuse, and self-diagnosis of mental conditions resulting from parental abuse. The book discusses how to leave abuse (by one’s parents) behind, and then, how to cope with any negative feelings you might have from such an action.
The Power Parting will be of help to some, but it does not live up to the hyperbole. The author himself states in the introduction that he hopes his book will be like Melody Beattie’s classic, Codependent No More. This book may help those who are dealing with the throes of significant abuse, but The Power of Parting could be viewed as dangerous. The author’s bitterness over his abuse and family dynamics has clouded his objectivity and invites others to join him on the path to family cut-off.
Family dynamics are always complicated. There are no simplistic steps that will resolve years of dysfunction in childhood and the resulting negative physical, social and emotional toll that can impact the life of an individual. Part of the complication is the uniqueness of every situation. Dolan’s narrative applies to his situation, but The Power of Parting stretches Dolan’s narrative to fit other experiences.
Dolan is right that there is relatively little research on the topic of estrangement and he does a good job of quoting what is available. However, he picks and chooses what he shares. He quotes the research of Kylie Agllias and her findings that those who estrange from their parents are apt to feel better after estrangement, but he does not report the research on the devastating and life-shortening toll on those who are left behind. He references the finding that 25% of the population is estranged from a family member, but he does not add that in adult child estrangement lasts, on average, six to eight years. Dolan presents parting as a terminal step. Anecdotes report those who have heroically left their abuse behind, but he is very wary of reconciliation stories. In one section heading he even labels reconciliation as a myth. He has a section in the book that disavows the value and necessity of forgiveness (something that would be important for reconciliation), but here he is missing decades of psychological research on the value of forgiveness.
Quoting some large studies, he states that therapists tend to downplay the issue of abuse…this bending of the research to fit his narrative is egregious. The field of psychology and counseling resounds with a constant drum beat regarding the need to identify and report abuse. The significance of trauma and abuse is the baseline for the majority of ethical counseling in this country. Most states have criminal statutes to prosecute licensed therapists for non- reporting. Contrary to his narrative, it has been suggested that therapists tend to support their client’s narratives of abuse without objectively considering subjective biases. It is hyper-sensitivity to abuse that has led to counselors routinely labeling parents (who they have never met) as toxic and narcissistic. This creates a controversy in the field of therapy between those who support reconciliation, such as Joshua Coleman in his book, Rules of Estrangement (a best seller and the gold standard on the topic), and therapists who present estrangement as means to freedom and a cure for the anxiety of our age. Certainly, parting can lead to independence and freedom, but Dolan does not tell you it can also lead to a diminished life.
One way to understand Dolan’s strong pro-estrangement approach may have to do with his view of love. At one point he defines love as a reciprocal arrangement. The problem with this definition is that love often involves sacrifice for which there is no particular pay off, such as parents caring for infants and small children, middle-aged adults caring for elderly parents, an adult male in the prime of his life caring his partner dying of HIV/AIDS, or putting up with the shrill and meddling parents who raised you. One could argue that to be fully human is to be altruistic and overlook the many wounds and arrows that accumulate in a long-term relationship. We don’t always get an equal return on some of the relationships in which we choose to remain, and like the old adage says, we don’t choose our parents. Overall, Dolan’s approach seems to be arguing for transaction and maybe even graceless approach to relationships.
The Power of Parting presents cutting off your parents as a difficult but necessary fix for the self-diagnosed symptoms of C-PTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder). One issue of concern is that Dolan supports self-diagnosis of C-PTSD and even says readers should make sure that their therapist supports C-PTSD before entering therapy with them. Most experts believe the opposite. Self-diagnosis is simply unsafe. Dolan sees trauma as a monolithic concept that therapists have historically tended to downplay. While there is certainly some truth in that argument, his research on the best way to handle parentally caused trauma ignores the fuller understanding that human responses to trauma are heterogeneous (see Beyond Resilience and PTSD: Mapping the Heterogeneity of Responses to Potential Trauma by Bonanno & Mancini, 2012).
Trauma is not experienced the same way by every person and not everyone should cut off their parent. The majority of trauma sufferers actually respond with resilience. Dolan will probably not like that, with his understandable anti-abuse and pro-estrangement outlook. There are many things that he states he does not like. Dolan does not like the toxic positivity of the self-help movement. He does not like traditional families (he favors family self-construction or the “chosen family” model). He does not like institutions like the church and other institutions that have a history of being light on the issue of abuse. Finally, he interprets present presidential politics through the lens of familial abuse, citing Mary Trump’s unflattering book about her uncle as an example of the pervasiveness of the abuse cycle even in government. The latter part of the book reads like a rant, or, more generously, a call to anti-abuse activism where he sees it as needed.
Eamon Dolan’s The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Estrangement is aimed at a general audience and advocates for a pro-estrangement, non-reconciliation approach for adults dealing with their abusive parents. The book is readable, fact-filled, and written through the lens of the author’s own abusive relationship with his mother and his finding freedom by his parting from the source of his abuse. But this situation is more lamentable than emblematic of most people’s experiences. It is a book that could be helpful for the small community that truly suffer from significant parental abuse, but it is neither ground-breaking nor is it heroic. The book’s flaws and subjectivity overwhelm its potential for broad appeal.
Don McCulloch is an associate professor of psychology at Palm Beach Atlantic University and a practicing licensed clinical psychologist. His specialty is in working with parents who have been cut off by their adult children.
