Family Estrangement

On today’s episode of The Annex Sociology Podcast, the group discusses family estrangement. They get into the specificities of gender differences and degrees of estrangement. Kristina challenges the idea of parenting perceptions versus children’s parenting perceptions. Gabriel discusses that in American culture in which individualism is achieved, that may be a factor to family estrangement. Kristina and Gabriel get to the bottom of families unifying in ritualistic ways to ostracize certain family members. Leslie questions if family estrangement is a form of deviance. Joe leaves off the podcast questioning the aftermath of family estrangement and how resilience is exercised.

Kristina Scharp is an Assistant Professor of Communications at the University of Washington. Her forthcoming articles include "Making Meaning of the Parent-Child Relationship: A Dialogic Analysis of Parent-Initiated Estrangement Narratives" in the Journal of Family Communication, and "'You're Not Welcome Here': A Grounded Theory of Family Distancing" in Communication Research.

Joseph Nathan Cohen co-hosts The Annex and directs the Sociocast Project. He is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York, Queens College. He wrote Financial Crisis in American Households: The Basic Expenses That Bankrupt the Middle Class (2017, Praeger) and co-authored Global Capitalism: A Sociological Perspective (2010, Polity). Twitter: @jncohen

Leslie Hinkson co-hosts The Annex. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University. Her recent book is Subprime Health: Debt and Race in U.S. Medicine(2017 University of Minnesota Press).

Gabriel Rossman co-hosts The Annex. He is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He wrote Climbing the Charts: What Radio Airplay Tells Us about the Diffusion of Innovation(2015, Princeton) Twitter: @GabrielRossman