Word: reconnections
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Such absolute estrangements may not be the norm, but experts who study family relationships believe they are on the rise. Psychologist Carol Netzer, author of Cutoffs: How Family Members Who Sever Relationships Can Reconnect, thinks that today's broader cultural freedoms have made it easier for people to say goodbye to traditions and to relatives. "The nuclear family is not as tight as it once was," she says. Some rifts reflect larger trends. The Woodstock generation, Netzer explains, was full of young people leaving their families to lose themselves in drugs or join religious groups, political movements and communes. "Often...
Often, estranged siblings are struck by a sudden yearning to reconnect. Says Bank: "Your children leave home, your friends are sick, the leaves fall off the trees, and you say, 'Well, what do I have from my past?' And for better or worse, you've got this sibling who might have been a pain in the neck but who probably knows more about what it was like to live in your childhood home than anybody else...
...dorms, at least, Davis says he suspects there is plenty of roaming going on when students want to relocate their computers within their suite. If suite-mates decide to swap rooms mid-way through the year, for example, they no longer need to wait a day or two to reconnect to the network...
...like-minded people to befriend. When Frances Wong Chan, 78, a divorced retiree, moved from Washington to San Francisco 13 years ago to help care for her daughter's children, she didn't know a soul there outside her family. With no old friends in the city to reconnect with, she took the next best route. She joined the Unitarian Church, a book club, a co-counseling group, an investor's club, a senior center, even a Japanese singles club--though she herself is ethnic Chinese. "I guess I'm a groupie," she says with a laugh. "I look...
With older children, the task becomes trying to maintain some semblance of normal mother-child relations. In Plymouth, Mich., the Children's Visitation Program runs parenting-skills classes at the women's prison to help moms and their kids reconnect. "A lot of [the children] are very angry," says director Florida Andrews. "They've been stigmatized because their mothers are locked up." Girl Scouts Beyond Bars buses kids to prisons once a month, where the scouts hold troop meetings with their incarcerated mothers. Tanyall Law, 15, and her two sisters, members of the Girl Scouts Rolling Hills council...