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No Contact: How a Seductive Ideology Broke Families and Friendships and How We Can Repair Them
288 pages, Hardcover
Published September 8, 2026
About the author
Noelle Mering
9 books25 followersNoelle Mering is a Fellow at Washington DC based think tank the Ethics and Public Policy Center where she co-directs the Theology of Home Project. She is also the editor of TheologyofHome.com
She studied philosophy and theatre at Westmont College in California and earned an MA in Philosophy from Franciscan University of Steubenville. Noelle and her husband live in Southern California with their six children.
She studied philosophy and theatre at Westmont College in California and earned an MA in Philosophy from Franciscan University of Steubenville. Noelle and her husband live in Southern California with their six children.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 16, 2026
This book was incredible. Not only does the author delve into the sociological factors that fueled and escalated the societal trend of family alienation and going no contact (which escalated around the Covid epidemic and the election of Donald Trump, but not exclusive to those things); but dealing with the complexity of such issues that have no one singular factor and are also beyond a contemporary phenomenon - or a quick guaranteed fix. Personal reflection and assuming culpability by all parties is essential to at least make the effort for reunification with a family member. This is an excellent book for individuals facing this crisis in their own family, for families that one might know, or for therapists and pastors who counsel such people.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Remember being a young adult? You’d get annoyed with your parents sometimes. You’d roll your eyes and sigh loudly. You’d decide to not talk to them anymore and cut them out of your life. Okay WAIT–you wouldn’t do that last one, right? For most people of my generation, of course you wouldn’t. But for increasing numbers of today’s young people, it’s a very real option. “No contact” is the phrase for eliminating “problematic” friends and family from one’s life, and the phenomena is growing in our world today. “This book “No Contact: How a Seductive Ideology Broke Families and Friendships and How We Can Repair Them” is about that phenomena, and also about the general divide we face between progressive and conservative ideologies.
Author Noelle Mering works at a conservative think tank, and that was part of the book’s appeal to me. She writes that she is frequently asked, “What do I do about my grown children who not only have abandoned the faith and values they were raised with but have also estranged themselves from us?” It’s a sad situation that happens often these days. While in my generation, occasionally I’d hear of parents cutting off a daughter who’d gotten pregnant outside of marriage or perhaps a troublesome son, it was unthinkable for a child to cut off his parents. “Ordinary parental failings … in previous generations would have been absorbed or forgiven rather than collected, catalogued, and marshaled retroactively to support a narrative of childhood harm.”
This issue happens almost solely when young adult children change from their more conservative upbringings to a progressive, liberal view–often in college. I’m sure that somewhere out there, there are liberal youth who become conservative and cut off their liberal parents–maybe? Honestly, I’ve never heard of that happening. “With the conviction of crusaders who believe they are fighting on behalf of the vulnerable, allies often become the most uncompromising enforcers, cutting off relationships with stunning speed and finality.” Mering writes that these liberated youths often loudly decry authoritarianism, while being blind to the authoritarianism they display as they eliminate those with whom they disagree.
I found it interesting that this problem seemed to really ramp up in 2020, due largely in Mering’s view to Covid. “In some ways 2020 can be defined as the year we all became strangers and threats to one another.” She writes of young people cutting off parents and family members because they didn’t get the Covid vaccine. Similarly, I remember being invited to a wedding during that time which stated that it was open only to the vaccinated. I was stunned at that! It wasn’t someone I knew well so I wouldn’t have attended anyway, but I had to wonder if guests would be required to show paperwork at the door? One young adult in the book says, “Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways?” Think about this for a minute. When is the last time you were motivated to “mend your ways” by someone being unfriendly to you?
There is even a new movement where young adults blame their parents for giving birth to them under the idea that the young adults “did not give consent” to be born. For the crime of bringing them into the world, these parents are not worthy of being included in their young adult children’s lives. “You inflict consciousness on unsuspecting flesh; you owe it a lot,” one young adult writes.
TikTok is mentioned frequently as exacerbating these problems. Popular influencers there use hashtags like #ToxicFamily, #NarcissisticParents, #ChildhoodTrauma, and #NoContact to gather followers, and once a teen hovers over one of these posts for just a few seconds, the algorithm shows them more and more posts advocating cutting problematic people from their lives.
When a no contact situation happens, the young adults are often only willing to consider a relationship if the parents not only apologize, but also totally change their own opinions and become active “allies” of the children in their atheism, homosexuality, transsexualism, you name it. “I was so convinced I was right that I considered the mere act of disagreeing with me tantamount to bigotry,” writes on young adult. I’ve witnessed this myself; I think of a man I knew (the family has since moved). He always seemed like a salt-of-the-earth, common-sense guy. But at one point I noticed some very uncharacteristically progressive posts from him on social media. I did a little looking and sure enough, one of his children’s pages was full of such posts too. I can only assume that his posts were an attempt at maintaining a relationship with his child.
Mering writes about our larger societal problems related to this; it’s not just something happening in families but among friendships and our nation as a whole. “What begins as a private, familial disorder soon becomes a cultural one. Slowly but pervasively, the very concept of parenthood is redefined. Parents are depicted as ignorant or oppressive, in need of correction and discipline, while children are treated with undue deference.”
Mering quotes and does lots of looking on Reddit forums, and while much of the online world is liberal/progressive, I can tell you that Reddit is really over-the-top in that regard. I read some forums there because of unrelated interests, but I would never post there due to the rabid liberal tone of commenters. Trust me, they bring politics even into totally unrelated topics (royalty, for instance). So I’m not sure I’d rely much on Reddit comments, but still, some of her observations are interesting. She mentions a Reddit thread where a poster suggests that unless Trump voters ask for “forgiveness” for their votes, they “are not good people.” One commenter writes, “My life is too short to waste time trying to find small moments in common with them.” Oh my.
What is causing all this? Media, of course–both legacy and social. Mering also points out an increase in emotional fragility and lack of resilience among the young today. I can tell you, as a piano teacher, that I’ve noticed a marked decrease in the amount of work kids want to do, for instance to learn a skill such as piano. Instant gratification is what they want, and I would assume that video games and technology are behind much of this.
She ends the book with suggestions given by parents who have gone through the “no contact” situation with their adult kids. One mentions “Redemptive suffering, which helped us reframe it. God allows hard things. And through it we can draw closer to him. Probably the best outcome is that you don’t really start to trust God until you have nowhere else to go. You think you trust him–but when there’s nothing left, then you start.” Others mention using their suffering as a prompt for intercessory prayer, offering that pain up as a prayer and using these situations as an opportunity to “suffer well.”
Mering also advocates reducing the amount of time we spend following the news, especially online which tries to rile people up into great frenzy in order to get the clicks that earn them money. “News networks are there as your drug supplier–to redirect the work of virtue into the ease of outrage and a tribalistic in-group belonging. If you take to social media to express your indignation over every political development, you look unhinged and unhealthy.” I think there’s a lot of truth there.
She mentions cultivating curiosity, which can interrupt the rage cycle. “Instead of approaching someone with the goal of proving them wrong, try approaching with the goal of understanding why they see things differently. This posture can disarm the other and invite them to engage more humanly as well.”
I found this book very interesting and insightful. Someone from the left probably wouldn’t, but honestly this phenomena is a largely left-wing issue and since most books are written from a left perspective, I found it refreshing to read something from a more conservative perspective. It’s well-researched with many pages of footnotes.
Thanks NetGalley for a review copy.
Author Noelle Mering works at a conservative think tank, and that was part of the book’s appeal to me. She writes that she is frequently asked, “What do I do about my grown children who not only have abandoned the faith and values they were raised with but have also estranged themselves from us?” It’s a sad situation that happens often these days. While in my generation, occasionally I’d hear of parents cutting off a daughter who’d gotten pregnant outside of marriage or perhaps a troublesome son, it was unthinkable for a child to cut off his parents. “Ordinary parental failings … in previous generations would have been absorbed or forgiven rather than collected, catalogued, and marshaled retroactively to support a narrative of childhood harm.”
This issue happens almost solely when young adult children change from their more conservative upbringings to a progressive, liberal view–often in college. I’m sure that somewhere out there, there are liberal youth who become conservative and cut off their liberal parents–maybe? Honestly, I’ve never heard of that happening. “With the conviction of crusaders who believe they are fighting on behalf of the vulnerable, allies often become the most uncompromising enforcers, cutting off relationships with stunning speed and finality.” Mering writes that these liberated youths often loudly decry authoritarianism, while being blind to the authoritarianism they display as they eliminate those with whom they disagree.
I found it interesting that this problem seemed to really ramp up in 2020, due largely in Mering’s view to Covid. “In some ways 2020 can be defined as the year we all became strangers and threats to one another.” She writes of young people cutting off parents and family members because they didn’t get the Covid vaccine. Similarly, I remember being invited to a wedding during that time which stated that it was open only to the vaccinated. I was stunned at that! It wasn’t someone I knew well so I wouldn’t have attended anyway, but I had to wonder if guests would be required to show paperwork at the door? One young adult in the book says, “Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways?” Think about this for a minute. When is the last time you were motivated to “mend your ways” by someone being unfriendly to you?
There is even a new movement where young adults blame their parents for giving birth to them under the idea that the young adults “did not give consent” to be born. For the crime of bringing them into the world, these parents are not worthy of being included in their young adult children’s lives. “You inflict consciousness on unsuspecting flesh; you owe it a lot,” one young adult writes.
TikTok is mentioned frequently as exacerbating these problems. Popular influencers there use hashtags like #ToxicFamily, #NarcissisticParents, #ChildhoodTrauma, and #NoContact to gather followers, and once a teen hovers over one of these posts for just a few seconds, the algorithm shows them more and more posts advocating cutting problematic people from their lives.
When a no contact situation happens, the young adults are often only willing to consider a relationship if the parents not only apologize, but also totally change their own opinions and become active “allies” of the children in their atheism, homosexuality, transsexualism, you name it. “I was so convinced I was right that I considered the mere act of disagreeing with me tantamount to bigotry,” writes on young adult. I’ve witnessed this myself; I think of a man I knew (the family has since moved). He always seemed like a salt-of-the-earth, common-sense guy. But at one point I noticed some very uncharacteristically progressive posts from him on social media. I did a little looking and sure enough, one of his children’s pages was full of such posts too. I can only assume that his posts were an attempt at maintaining a relationship with his child.
Mering writes about our larger societal problems related to this; it’s not just something happening in families but among friendships and our nation as a whole. “What begins as a private, familial disorder soon becomes a cultural one. Slowly but pervasively, the very concept of parenthood is redefined. Parents are depicted as ignorant or oppressive, in need of correction and discipline, while children are treated with undue deference.”
Mering quotes and does lots of looking on Reddit forums, and while much of the online world is liberal/progressive, I can tell you that Reddit is really over-the-top in that regard. I read some forums there because of unrelated interests, but I would never post there due to the rabid liberal tone of commenters. Trust me, they bring politics even into totally unrelated topics (royalty, for instance). So I’m not sure I’d rely much on Reddit comments, but still, some of her observations are interesting. She mentions a Reddit thread where a poster suggests that unless Trump voters ask for “forgiveness” for their votes, they “are not good people.” One commenter writes, “My life is too short to waste time trying to find small moments in common with them.” Oh my.
What is causing all this? Media, of course–both legacy and social. Mering also points out an increase in emotional fragility and lack of resilience among the young today. I can tell you, as a piano teacher, that I’ve noticed a marked decrease in the amount of work kids want to do, for instance to learn a skill such as piano. Instant gratification is what they want, and I would assume that video games and technology are behind much of this.
She ends the book with suggestions given by parents who have gone through the “no contact” situation with their adult kids. One mentions “Redemptive suffering, which helped us reframe it. God allows hard things. And through it we can draw closer to him. Probably the best outcome is that you don’t really start to trust God until you have nowhere else to go. You think you trust him–but when there’s nothing left, then you start.” Others mention using their suffering as a prompt for intercessory prayer, offering that pain up as a prayer and using these situations as an opportunity to “suffer well.”
Mering also advocates reducing the amount of time we spend following the news, especially online which tries to rile people up into great frenzy in order to get the clicks that earn them money. “News networks are there as your drug supplier–to redirect the work of virtue into the ease of outrage and a tribalistic in-group belonging. If you take to social media to express your indignation over every political development, you look unhinged and unhealthy.” I think there’s a lot of truth there.
She mentions cultivating curiosity, which can interrupt the rage cycle. “Instead of approaching someone with the goal of proving them wrong, try approaching with the goal of understanding why they see things differently. This posture can disarm the other and invite them to engage more humanly as well.”
I found this book very interesting and insightful. Someone from the left probably wouldn’t, but honestly this phenomena is a largely left-wing issue and since most books are written from a left perspective, I found it refreshing to read something from a more conservative perspective. It’s well-researched with many pages of footnotes.
Thanks NetGalley for a review copy.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
No Contact explores every nook and cranny of why someone would cut themselves off from their family forever. This isn’t a book about estrangement caused by abuse; it’s about the painful situations where the reasons for the cutoff don’t make sense, at least at first, or where one side struggles to understand what happened.
No Contact helps you understand why estrangement happens, cope with the pain, confront your own flaws, control what you can, surrender what you can’t, and ultimately find peace. Most importantly, it offers practical guidance for giving yourself the best possible chance of reconciliation—and for recognizing how to avoid falling into this situation in the first place.
No Contact helps you understand why estrangement happens, cope with the pain, confront your own flaws, control what you can, surrender what you can’t, and ultimately find peace. Most importantly, it offers practical guidance for giving yourself the best possible chance of reconciliation—and for recognizing how to avoid falling into this situation in the first place.
September 9, 2026
Noelle Mering takes on a contemporary plague- parental alienation. This is not alienation due to alcoholism or addiction, or physical or sexual abuse. This is alienation due to political disagreement or “emotionally distant” parents. Mering succinctly diagnoses the issue and posits the fixes.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews