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No Contact: How a Seductive Ideology Broke Families and Friendships and How We Can Repair Them
From the acclaimed author of Awake, Not Woke comes this incisive exposé of the widespread, politically motivated no-contact movement that deconstructs the ideology behind this trend and equips readers to avert estrangement and repair broken relationships.
“Refusing easy villains or easy redemption, this book honors the difficult terrain between injury and reconciliation.”—Joshua Coleman, author of Rules of Estrangement
A new form of relationship estrangement is afoot. Whereas, in the past, relationships tended to rupture over issues like abuse, today, people are increasingly estranged because of politics. More than sixty-eight million Americans are currently alienated from close family members. Though going no contact is frequently framed as an act of empowerment and self-care, behind the numbers are millions of hurting people—and an ideology that threatens not only relationships but the entire fabric of society.
In No Contact, author Noelle Mering weaves together interviews with historical research to identify five major factors that have given rise to the no-contact identity politics, demythologization of the family, therapeutic culture, infallibility of victimhood, and cultural narcissism alongside spiritual decline. By laying bare the forces behind this destabilizing movement—and how they affect us on personal, familial, and social levels—Mering helps readers see clearly what is happening, confront it, and work with their families to heal, repair, and strengthen relationships.
More than just a critique, this book is a call to action. By bringing light to an experience that is often shrouded in shame or presented far too reductively to a cheering online audience, No Contact empowers readers with a clear-eyed and compassionate perspective that rejects the pernicious ideology undermining our most intimate and necessary relationships. The stakes are high. If we cannot hold fast to one another in the face of disagreement, we risk losing not only our most intimate bonds but also the foundation of a free and humane society.
“Refusing easy villains or easy redemption, this book honors the difficult terrain between injury and reconciliation.”—Joshua Coleman, author of Rules of Estrangement
A new form of relationship estrangement is afoot. Whereas, in the past, relationships tended to rupture over issues like abuse, today, people are increasingly estranged because of politics. More than sixty-eight million Americans are currently alienated from close family members. Though going no contact is frequently framed as an act of empowerment and self-care, behind the numbers are millions of hurting people—and an ideology that threatens not only relationships but the entire fabric of society.
In No Contact, author Noelle Mering weaves together interviews with historical research to identify five major factors that have given rise to the no-contact identity politics, demythologization of the family, therapeutic culture, infallibility of victimhood, and cultural narcissism alongside spiritual decline. By laying bare the forces behind this destabilizing movement—and how they affect us on personal, familial, and social levels—Mering helps readers see clearly what is happening, confront it, and work with their families to heal, repair, and strengthen relationships.
More than just a critique, this book is a call to action. By bringing light to an experience that is often shrouded in shame or presented far too reductively to a cheering online audience, No Contact empowers readers with a clear-eyed and compassionate perspective that rejects the pernicious ideology undermining our most intimate and necessary relationships. The stakes are high. If we cannot hold fast to one another in the face of disagreement, we risk losing not only our most intimate bonds but also the foundation of a free and humane society.
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 - 12 of 12 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.
September 29, 2026
One-sided and Harmful
Nicole Mering’s No Contact is a well-written a
and its sociological focus distinguishes it from many books on estrangement that approach the subject primarily through psychology or personal experience.
At the center of the book is compulsory kinship: the belief that family relationships carry an obligation take precedence over other relationships, and that maintaining those relationships is inherently moral. This framework is outdated, harmful, and far from being a fact. It is heavily influenced by longstanding cultural and religious traditions and ignores the reality that family relationships can be unhealthy or simy lacking in value. To be clear, abuse and addiction, are not the only justifiable reasons for family estrangement.
This book does not adequately address inequality. Family relationships do not exist between people who have equal social power. Age, gender, sexuality, race, economic status, disability, and other social structures profoundly affect a person’s ability to establish boundaries or leave relationships. When estrangement is discussed without sufficiently examining these power differences in our society, there is a danger of presenting family conflict as though everyone enters the relationship with equal agency and equal capacity to protect themselves. This assumption is the same as telling every person that they should report crimes to law-enforcement to protect themselves and others. However, the police do not treat everyone the same, and many people cannot trust the police. Many people cannot remain in their families due to inequalities.
While the book is thoughtful, readable, and sociologically interesting, I found its underlying framework too one-sided for someone looking for an unbiased examination of whether estrangement.
Nicole Mering’s No Contact is a well-written a
and its sociological focus distinguishes it from many books on estrangement that approach the subject primarily through psychology or personal experience.
At the center of the book is compulsory kinship: the belief that family relationships carry an obligation take precedence over other relationships, and that maintaining those relationships is inherently moral. This framework is outdated, harmful, and far from being a fact. It is heavily influenced by longstanding cultural and religious traditions and ignores the reality that family relationships can be unhealthy or simy lacking in value. To be clear, abuse and addiction, are not the only justifiable reasons for family estrangement.
This book does not adequately address inequality. Family relationships do not exist between people who have equal social power. Age, gender, sexuality, race, economic status, disability, and other social structures profoundly affect a person’s ability to establish boundaries or leave relationships. When estrangement is discussed without sufficiently examining these power differences in our society, there is a danger of presenting family conflict as though everyone enters the relationship with equal agency and equal capacity to protect themselves. This assumption is the same as telling every person that they should report crimes to law-enforcement to protect themselves and others. However, the police do not treat everyone the same, and many people cannot trust the police. Many people cannot remain in their families due to inequalities.
While the book is thoughtful, readable, and sociologically interesting, I found its underlying framework too one-sided for someone looking for an unbiased examination of whether estrangement.
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.
October 20, 2026
“If we can’t hold fast to one another in the face of disagreement, we risk losing not only our most intimate bonds but also the architecture that makes a free, humane, and just society possible.”
No Contact: How a Seductive Ideology Broke Families and Friendships and How We Can Repair Them by Noelle Mering offers an in-depth look at the rising prevalence of family estrangement in American culture, where one in four American adults is currently estranged from a family member. According to Mering, this rise is driven more often by ideology than by abuse. She points to a framework behind the rhetoric and describes how trends in our current environment hide real damage to family and society. The first part of the book diagnoses the estrangement movement, and the second part examines how families and friends can repair, avoid, or move on after estrangement happens to them.
Like many who picked up this book, I am no stranger to these subjects. Four years ago, estrangement ripped my family in half. Like many of the situations Mering describes, my family estrangement was not rooted in abuse. Ideology tore us apart and continues to keep us separated. This outcome blindsided me when it happened. Though I was aware of significant worldview differences between me and my siblings, I never dreamed they would lead to a serious rupture until they did. The result was an amputation, with my remaining family hemorrhaging shock, anger, and grief for years. Even today, with half of my family gone and the rest of us having moved forward, there is still a pervasive sense of loss.
Before this event, I had no vocabulary to understand what had happened. My usual go-to for things I don’t understand is research, so I began reading everything I could get my hands on. Many blog posts, articles, papers, and books later, I realized my family was caught in the wake of something much larger than itself. Noelle Mering, in her meticulous research, has given shape to this much larger thing. Her concern is targeted at the underlying shifts in how we understand relationships, especially within families.
Our culture frames estrangement as an act of empowerment. It starts when a person identifies a relationship as harmful, runs through a series of progressively restrictive boundaries, and culminates when the person concludes that going “no contact” is necessary for his or her personal well-being. Mering explains that this framework is inherently destructive because it treats ordinary human imperfection, disagreements, or relational pain as evidence that the relationship should end. This is not limited to families but also to friends and non-familial communities, highlighting a deeper social problem. If, Mering explains, we can no longer retain meaningful relationships across differences, then we lose the ability to model commitment, mutual responsibility, and coexistence at the most basic level. Estrangement is not only a strike against relationships but the very fabric of society.
Noelle Mering identifies five major factors in the rise of the no-contact movement:
Demythologizing the family: family has been redefined from biological relations to a “found” or chosen family. This redefinition strips the true family of its bonds and duties.
Social hygiene: removing those who disagree with you to improve your social environment and emotional well-being.
Broadening the definition of trauma: the word trauma, which used to define a traumatic event like a severe car accident, has been expanded to include experiences that may be interpreted as psychological distress.
The infallibility narrative: only the person who identifies as the injured party is given the right to interpret the conflict. Their narrative can never be challenged and is the authoritative voice in the conflict.
Cultural narcissism: a hyper-individualistic outlook in which personal fulfillment and self-protection override all obligations to others.
The deeper social problem underneath these five factors is “a radical revision of what it means to be human, recasting the person around two opposing principles: the exaltation of autonomy and the incentivization of victimhood.” These principles destabilize social structures, including the nuclear family. Mering offers historical continuity by illustrating how governments in the past used similar destabilizing techniques to rupture society in order to rebuild from the ground up. These include Communist China under Mao, Revolution-era France, and Nazi Germany.
One of Mering’s most intriguing arguments concerns the role of therapeutic culture in normalizing estrangement. Therapy does so by encouraging us to interpret life through the language and lens of trauma, toxicity, boundaries, and emotional safety. While these concepts are useful in understanding harm, Mering argues that their prevalence also pathologizes ordinary life. Instead of interpreting painful experiences, unmet expectations, and disagreements as a normal part of life, therapy encourages us to interpret them as evidence of psychological injury. However, this interpretation cannot establish what happened, motives, or the correct response. All it can do is blur the distinction between suffering and wrongdoing until there is none.
Unsurprisingly, social media has reinforced this idea, especially through online personalities offering explanations for family dysfunction and advice on when to go no contact. Some of these resources may help people recognize patterns of abuse. However, the majority risk influencing people to interpret normal relational friction through simplified categories. The result is an unhealthy hypervigilance to “signs” of dysfunction and an unwillingness to listen to alternative explanations. Mering’s concern is that this produces an infallibility narrative of victimhood. Once an adult child describes himself as a victim, his narrative may not be challenged. Mering says:
“The adult child’s choice is therefore always presented as self-justifying, creating an atmosphere where questioning the act of severing ties is seen as dehumanizing or condoning abuse. Like the expansion of the concept of trauma, this sort of unfalsifiable claim of the righteousness of those who go no contact risks conflating extreme cases of abuse with more ordinary familial disagreements by covering all with a hedge of inscrutability.”
Family members who disagree will be accused of invalidating the “victim’s” experience, and any attempt to provide an explanation or counterargument will be treated as further evidence of toxicity. This is not a system of mutual accountability but an authoritarian structure. Estrangement elevates personal autonomy as the highest good and casts family obligation as a system of oppression. This was profoundly true in my experience. The flip from normal family conflict to an oppressive authoritarian autonomy was so swift and pervasive that I wondered if my siblings had entered into some kind of cult. Some days, I still wonder.
Mering’s goal is not to shame those who are currently engaging in estrangement but to illustrate how estrangement affects us at all levels of society. By assisting readers to see the broader picture of going no contact, she hopes they will work with their families to repair damaged relationships or move on in healthy ways. Her counsel is to avoid reacting the way estrangement demands. Do not follow the script this movement insists you follow. The stakes are far too high. Here, Mering is unflinchingly honest that not all estrangements can be reversed, and those that do will be different relationships than they were before. But she encourages readers to try anyway. We may not be able to do anything about what our estranged loved ones have done, but we can choose how we respond.
For the Christian, pursuing peace is the goal. I tried to pursue peaceful relationships with my siblings to that end, but all attempts failed. Some of this was due to my own imperfections. Several times I reacted to pain when I should have exercised more discretion or waited to respond when logic finally superseded emotion. But I also recognize that the blame does not rest entirely with me. I cannot carry guilt for their actions. I also recognize that we were caught in the wake of a larger movement, whose shifts and life are beyond any one person’s control. All I can do now is ensure I don't live by the script the no-contact movement tries to force on me. For this reason alone, Noelle Mering’s book is the most valuable book on this subject I have read.
The hard fact of estrangement is that there is no promise of reconciliation. In my situation, I consider reconciliation an unlikely outcome unless God ordains otherwise. But I am grateful to understand the framework and ideology driving estrangement and even more grateful to know that I am not alone. If estrangement and the no-contact movement are problems you’re personally suffering with, I recommend picking up this book.
No Contact: How a Seductive Ideology Broke Families and Friendships and How We Can Repair Them by Noelle Mering offers an in-depth look at the rising prevalence of family estrangement in American culture, where one in four American adults is currently estranged from a family member. According to Mering, this rise is driven more often by ideology than by abuse. She points to a framework behind the rhetoric and describes how trends in our current environment hide real damage to family and society. The first part of the book diagnoses the estrangement movement, and the second part examines how families and friends can repair, avoid, or move on after estrangement happens to them.
Like many who picked up this book, I am no stranger to these subjects. Four years ago, estrangement ripped my family in half. Like many of the situations Mering describes, my family estrangement was not rooted in abuse. Ideology tore us apart and continues to keep us separated. This outcome blindsided me when it happened. Though I was aware of significant worldview differences between me and my siblings, I never dreamed they would lead to a serious rupture until they did. The result was an amputation, with my remaining family hemorrhaging shock, anger, and grief for years. Even today, with half of my family gone and the rest of us having moved forward, there is still a pervasive sense of loss.
Before this event, I had no vocabulary to understand what had happened. My usual go-to for things I don’t understand is research, so I began reading everything I could get my hands on. Many blog posts, articles, papers, and books later, I realized my family was caught in the wake of something much larger than itself. Noelle Mering, in her meticulous research, has given shape to this much larger thing. Her concern is targeted at the underlying shifts in how we understand relationships, especially within families.
Our culture frames estrangement as an act of empowerment. It starts when a person identifies a relationship as harmful, runs through a series of progressively restrictive boundaries, and culminates when the person concludes that going “no contact” is necessary for his or her personal well-being. Mering explains that this framework is inherently destructive because it treats ordinary human imperfection, disagreements, or relational pain as evidence that the relationship should end. This is not limited to families but also to friends and non-familial communities, highlighting a deeper social problem. If, Mering explains, we can no longer retain meaningful relationships across differences, then we lose the ability to model commitment, mutual responsibility, and coexistence at the most basic level. Estrangement is not only a strike against relationships but the very fabric of society.
Noelle Mering identifies five major factors in the rise of the no-contact movement:
Demythologizing the family: family has been redefined from biological relations to a “found” or chosen family. This redefinition strips the true family of its bonds and duties.
Social hygiene: removing those who disagree with you to improve your social environment and emotional well-being.
Broadening the definition of trauma: the word trauma, which used to define a traumatic event like a severe car accident, has been expanded to include experiences that may be interpreted as psychological distress.
The infallibility narrative: only the person who identifies as the injured party is given the right to interpret the conflict. Their narrative can never be challenged and is the authoritative voice in the conflict.
Cultural narcissism: a hyper-individualistic outlook in which personal fulfillment and self-protection override all obligations to others.
The deeper social problem underneath these five factors is “a radical revision of what it means to be human, recasting the person around two opposing principles: the exaltation of autonomy and the incentivization of victimhood.” These principles destabilize social structures, including the nuclear family. Mering offers historical continuity by illustrating how governments in the past used similar destabilizing techniques to rupture society in order to rebuild from the ground up. These include Communist China under Mao, Revolution-era France, and Nazi Germany.
One of Mering’s most intriguing arguments concerns the role of therapeutic culture in normalizing estrangement. Therapy does so by encouraging us to interpret life through the language and lens of trauma, toxicity, boundaries, and emotional safety. While these concepts are useful in understanding harm, Mering argues that their prevalence also pathologizes ordinary life. Instead of interpreting painful experiences, unmet expectations, and disagreements as a normal part of life, therapy encourages us to interpret them as evidence of psychological injury. However, this interpretation cannot establish what happened, motives, or the correct response. All it can do is blur the distinction between suffering and wrongdoing until there is none.
Unsurprisingly, social media has reinforced this idea, especially through online personalities offering explanations for family dysfunction and advice on when to go no contact. Some of these resources may help people recognize patterns of abuse. However, the majority risk influencing people to interpret normal relational friction through simplified categories. The result is an unhealthy hypervigilance to “signs” of dysfunction and an unwillingness to listen to alternative explanations. Mering’s concern is that this produces an infallibility narrative of victimhood. Once an adult child describes himself as a victim, his narrative may not be challenged. Mering says:
“The adult child’s choice is therefore always presented as self-justifying, creating an atmosphere where questioning the act of severing ties is seen as dehumanizing or condoning abuse. Like the expansion of the concept of trauma, this sort of unfalsifiable claim of the righteousness of those who go no contact risks conflating extreme cases of abuse with more ordinary familial disagreements by covering all with a hedge of inscrutability.”
Family members who disagree will be accused of invalidating the “victim’s” experience, and any attempt to provide an explanation or counterargument will be treated as further evidence of toxicity. This is not a system of mutual accountability but an authoritarian structure. Estrangement elevates personal autonomy as the highest good and casts family obligation as a system of oppression. This was profoundly true in my experience. The flip from normal family conflict to an oppressive authoritarian autonomy was so swift and pervasive that I wondered if my siblings had entered into some kind of cult. Some days, I still wonder.
Mering’s goal is not to shame those who are currently engaging in estrangement but to illustrate how estrangement affects us at all levels of society. By assisting readers to see the broader picture of going no contact, she hopes they will work with their families to repair damaged relationships or move on in healthy ways. Her counsel is to avoid reacting the way estrangement demands. Do not follow the script this movement insists you follow. The stakes are far too high. Here, Mering is unflinchingly honest that not all estrangements can be reversed, and those that do will be different relationships than they were before. But she encourages readers to try anyway. We may not be able to do anything about what our estranged loved ones have done, but we can choose how we respond.
For the Christian, pursuing peace is the goal. I tried to pursue peaceful relationships with my siblings to that end, but all attempts failed. Some of this was due to my own imperfections. Several times I reacted to pain when I should have exercised more discretion or waited to respond when logic finally superseded emotion. But I also recognize that the blame does not rest entirely with me. I cannot carry guilt for their actions. I also recognize that we were caught in the wake of a larger movement, whose shifts and life are beyond any one person’s control. All I can do now is ensure I don't live by the script the no-contact movement tries to force on me. For this reason alone, Noelle Mering’s book is the most valuable book on this subject I have read.
The hard fact of estrangement is that there is no promise of reconciliation. In my situation, I consider reconciliation an unlikely outcome unless God ordains otherwise. But I am grateful to understand the framework and ideology driving estrangement and even more grateful to know that I am not alone. If estrangement and the no-contact movement are problems you’re personally suffering with, I recommend picking up this book.
October 4, 2026
It is not uncommon to hear stories of people who are going no contact with friends or family members. This book focuses on people who have gone no contact over ideological reasons. I know that the immediate counterargument some will have against a book like this is that there are situations like abuse where one needs to get away. Absolutely. The author agrees. However, this book contends that there are legitimate disagreements and challenges that cause division yet could be overcome. Not only that, but it would be healthier emotionally for both parties, the one who initiates the no contact and the one who receives it, if the differences were worked through.
It is no secret that our culture is fractured along ideological lines, but breaking up familial relationships or close friendships, which should be some of the best parts of our lives, is particularly tragic. The majority of this book does focus mostly on parents and children, but even as somebody without adult children, I found a lot of interesting commentary and thoughts about how to try to avoid obviously doing this to people but also what to do with it is done to me.
It is no secret that our culture is fractured along ideological lines, but breaking up familial relationships or close friendships, which should be some of the best parts of our lives, is particularly tragic. The majority of this book does focus mostly on parents and children, but even as somebody without adult children, I found a lot of interesting commentary and thoughts about how to try to avoid obviously doing this to people but also what to do with it is done to me.
October 15, 2026
Having recently had the deeply painful and unfortunate experience of family estrangement, this book is so spot on. It helped me not only understand what had just happened after feeling like the rug was swept out from under me, but it helped put words and context to thoughts that had been graining traction in my own mind over the past decade. Her explanation of what is happening to our society is incredibly well written and researched. The book also helped begin to heal my heart in its validation of how deeply painful this kind of situation really is. The second part offers hope for the future even if reconciliation isn’t possible. I was deeply blessed by this book and believe it to be one for the ages to help explain the crazy times we are living in right now. I hope this book finds its way into the hands of anyone who needs it. Well worth the read.
November 3, 2026
The author makes it very clear up front that this book is not about legitimate cases of abuse where going no contact is warranted. Rather, this book explores the social phenomenon, or shall we say social contagion, of large numbers of people calling things abuse and cutting family off forever for reasons that stretch credulity past its breaking point. To understand the problen, one need look no farther than the comment section of every single reddit post about relationships to find armchair therapists calling for permanent estrangement. The author does a fantastic job of looking at the causes and consequences of a problem that only seems to be affecting our culture. People who gave this book 1 star might be part of the problem.
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.
October 23, 2026
Very helpful for understanding the various contributing ideological and cultural factors to the rise in this kind of estrangement. Many of the examples in this book are sobering and heart-wrenching. Approaches the topic from a more “Christian psychology” perspective such that engagement with what Scripture says is surface-level and parents receive vague advice about investing more in their relationship with God. More work needs done on this topic from a biblical counseling perspective for parents and pastors, and more reflection on how this deconstruction of the biological family (given by God) is damaging our conception of church family (also given by God).
November 5, 2026
I really liked this book, and have recommended it to a number of people. I found it to be surprisingly well researched and insightful. The first half of the book is stronger. The second half had its moments, but became a little repetitive and basic.
One thing to know is that this book is coming from a conservative Christian perspective. I found it even handed but it’s definitely rooted in a Christian morality. There’s a lot of material that would speak to other groups in this book but they would be easy to dismiss for readers who are bothered by a conservative frame.
One thing to know is that this book is coming from a conservative Christian perspective. I found it even handed but it’s definitely rooted in a Christian morality. There’s a lot of material that would speak to other groups in this book but they would be easy to dismiss for readers who are bothered by a conservative frame.
October 20, 2026
This book is mainly geared towards the estranged party rather than the party that went no contact. The research used is very selective so that the author can make her point. I found the explanations and thoughts behind why people go no contact to be very bland and surface level. I wouldn’t recommend this book unless you’re a conservative parent whose kids have gone no contact with you.
September 9, 2026
Thanks to NetGalley, Forum Books, and Noelle Mering for the copy.
Noelle Mering really took on an interesting contemporary topic, the "no contact" movement.
It’s very important to note that this is not alienation due to alcoholism or addiction, or physical or sexual abuse. This is alienation due to political disagreements or “emotionally distant” parents.
Mering succinctly diagnoses the issue and posits the fixes.
Noelle Mering really took on an interesting contemporary topic, the "no contact" movement.
It’s very important to note that this is not alienation due to alcoholism or addiction, or physical or sexual abuse. This is alienation due to political disagreements or “emotionally distant” parents.
Mering succinctly diagnoses the issue and posits the fixes.
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