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As insane as it sounds, this is very, very likely to be one of the next big hot-button culture wars the right focuses on: stopping children from estranging their parents.
Spend a little time trawling through Facebook and you'll find hundreds of "support groups" for estranged parents of adult children, who are fully convinced not only that they did nothing wrong to deserve the estrangement, but that there's some sort of "estrangement epidemic" going on in America and that the therapy industry is evil and brainwashed their children to do it. You're starting to see op-eds about this in places like the Wall Street Journal too.
This is total nonsense, obviously. There's no evidence of an epidemic of estrangement, reputable therapists do not advise patients for or against estranging anyone, and it usually takes an enormous amount of trauma or abuse to convince someone to cut off their own parents.
In truth, all that's really happening is that social media is letting estranged parents connect with each other and build their own information bubbles in a way they couldn't before.
But this sort of thing has real potential as a culture war issue for the GOP. A huge chunk of their base are aging Gen X and Boomers who are at the right age to lose access to grandkids if estranged. Studies show that ever since the rise of MAGA, liberals are more likely than conservatives to cut family members out of their lives. And something like 80-90% of mental health professionals — whom many of these parents blame for estrangement — identify as politically liberal.
All of the pieces are there for this issue to become a huge, center-stage grievance for the right. We could increasingly see Republicans push for new restrictions on therapy, or new laws to make it easier for grandparents to sue for visitation of their grandkids in estrangement cases.
And yes, keep an eye on Florida, the state all the country's wealthy conservative grandparents retire to, if you want to look for where this movement might really start gathering steam.
This is actually a problem I’m seeing quite a bit. Parents not able to manage relationships with their kids or control their behaviors or lifestyles and are voting to have government step in to try and “fix” their kids. This is crazy.
This point is inarguable and exactly why current and former coaches are ineffective spokespeople for this legislation. A few athletes do make more than their coaches but not many.