An assistant professor at Iowa State researching estrangement within families.

Currently, Megan Gilligan, assistant professor of human development and family studies, is collaborating on the Within Family Differences study to try to find an explanation for estrangement. The study is a longitudinal study in its 15th year and has more than 2,000 respondents.

While a lot of family scholars compare one family to another, Gilligan’s research focuses specifically on research within the individual families.

“I would be interested in why a certain child became a caregiver instead of another, or why does one child become estranged from his or her mother versus the other siblings don’t,” Gilligan said.

Gilligan said she often considers norm violations when looking at estrangement. A norm violation is when a person violates a group-held belief about how people should behave in a given context.

“Is it that you violated some large societal norm … or did you violate a norm that is specific to your family?” Gilligan said.

One piece of the findings shows a child who violates a mother’s norm belief, opposed to a societal norm, is more likely to be estranged. Estranged, in the context of the study, means to be alienated by one’s family.

“Children who engage in things the mother finds offensive are more likely to be estranged than other siblings,” Gilligan said.

Another part of her research deals with caregivers of parents later in life.

“Daughters are much more likely to become caregivers in the family than are sons,” Gilligan said.

Parents in the study are also asked which child they would like as a caregiver. When they do not get the one they want, the mother can face consequences.

“If moms prefer a particular caregiver and they don’t get that caregiver in the future, it actually has negative consequences on their psychological well being,” Gilligan said. “They’re more likely to have depressive symptoms if they don’t get the caregiver they want.”

Gilligan said her first interest in families began as an undergraduate at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, where she worked at Waypoint Services as a domestic violence victim advocate in both the domestic violence shelter and the homeless shelter for women and children.

“I really liked working at Waypoint,” Gilligan said, “but I was also interested in what are the bigger causes of these problems and how could research kind of address these? So that led me to go to grad school to study family sociology.”

Gilligan is collaborating on the study with Jill Suitor at Purdue University and Karl Pillemer at Cornell University. Suiter said Gilligan has been a valued member of the project.

“Because of her interest in estrangement in adult children, she has allowed us to expand the project in new and important directions we have not considered before,” Suiter said.

In the past some have suggested estrangement issues within families might be unique to the baby boom generation. Suitor said she is unsure if this is an accurate statement, but rather, it may be easier to explain estrangement now than it previously has been.

“Because of contemporary technology, if a child is separated from the family it’s harder to explain why that child is no longer an active member of the group,” Suitor said.

Gilligan said the baby boom generations activist mindset may have played a role.

“I don’t know if it’s unique to the baby boom generation, but it might be more prominent to the baby boom generation,” Gilligan said.