<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # The parents say they were blindsided, and in the... > The parents say they were blindsided, and in the record the deposed are always blindsided, because that is how deposition works. A coalition against a senior animal forms silently among the ones who have grown strong enough to survive its anger, and it strikes on the day the senior's power to punish has fallen below the coalition's power to endure it. The adult child who once needed the parent's housing, money, approval and protection has acquired a spouse, an income, an independent coalition and a therapist, which is to say allies, resources, territory and a witness, and the parent has meanwhile lost the only instruments a parent ever had, the capacity to withhold and the capacity to shame. The price of cutting off a parent did not fall because the young became cruel; it fell because the old became powerless and the culture stopped charging for the cut. {{Parents are never blindsided by estrangement. They are outranked by it, and outranking is invisible right up until the day it is used.}} The backlash is the other half of the same transaction: op-eds, books, regret testimonials, therapists on the record, grandparent-rights bills, and the quiet reminder that wills can be rewritten are the senior coalition attempting to raise the price of expulsion back to where it stood when the young could not afford it. {{The backlash to no contact is not a moral awakening. It is a repricing campaign run by the coalition that lost.}} {{Every culture war over the family is a war over who pays for expulsion, and the side that wins is the side that makes leaving cost more.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The parents say they were blindsided, and in the record the deposed are always blindsided, because that is how deposition works. A coalition against a senior animal forms silently among the ones who have grown strong enough to survive its anger, and it strikes on the day the senior's power to punish has fallen below the coalition's power to endure it. The adult child who once needed the parent's housing, money, approval and protection has acquired a spouse, an income, an independent coalition and a therapist, which is to say allies, resources, territory and a witness, and the parent has meanwhile lost the only instruments a parent ever had, the capacity to withhold and the capacity to shame. The price of cutting off a parent did not fall because the young became cruel; it fell because the old became powerless and the culture stopped charging for the cut. Parents are never blindsided by estrangement. They are outranked by it, and outranking is invisible right up until the day it is used. The backlash is the other half of the same transaction: op-eds, books, regret testimonials, therapists on the record, grandparent-rights bills, and the quiet reminder that wills can be rewritten are the senior coalition attempting to raise the price of expulsion back to where it stood when the young could not afford it. The backlash to no contact is not a moral awakening. It is a repricing campaign run by the coalition that lost. Every culture war over the family is a war over who pays for expulsion, and the side that wins is the side that makes leaving cost more.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-parents-say-blindsided-makes-leaving-cost ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->