From Chandler Bing to Gen Z: The Thanksgiving Rebellion Reshaping the American Family

The holiday season is here. People are bustling around, winding down their end-of-year projects, decorating their homes, and, for the most exciting part, figuring out when, where, and with whom they are splitting their time this holiday season.

Unsurprisingly, 89% of Americans experience increased stress levels during the holidays–and don’t go blaming that on younger generations for that stat. The stress is across the board. Among the top reasons are financial concerns and anxieties over gift-giving. Despite those stressors, seven of the top 10 contributors have to do, at least in part, with relational or family stressors. 

Holiday stress is not new. The other evening, my wife and I were watching an episode of Friends. It was the 9th episode, the friends’ first Thanksgiving together. Chandler, played by the late Matthew Perry, recounts how he loathes the holiday because it was the day his parents announced they were getting a divorce. Even 31-years ago, the familial tensions of the holiday were being worked into sitcoms. 

More than the hassle of having blended families and multiple repeats of each holiday with each unique family unit and parent, is a rising trend: family estrangement. 

Not only are younger generations experiencing estrangement, they are also redefining family as a whole. 

Last year, Vogue published an article on the growing phenomenon really plaguing Gen Z: estrangement. Millions of Americans are now identifying as being estranged from a parent, sibling, or even their own children. Among the main reasons cited were toxic parents, boundary violations, and unsafe relationships. Others cited the need to protect their own mental health, which is a clear sign of the rising need for psychological safety required in Gen Z. Ironically, the term “toxic parenting” was born just years prior to the birth of Gen Z in a book with the same name by Dr. Susan Forward. Before that, there is little to no record of the term being used in literature. 

Now, I do not want to make light of difficult family situations, particularly when it puts someone in harm's way. But it is important to observe a cultural shift. We have raised a generation to prioritize psychological safety so intensely that even normal family conflict can be interpreted as harm. More to come on the topic of psychological safety and emotional fragility in another essay.

“More families are divided than ever,” stated psychotherapist and internet sensation, Dr. Matthias Barker, during a keynote talk at ThinQ. He went on to cite that 26% of adults in the United States have cut off communication with a parent. Supporting this trend, a recent whitepaper on family centrism from Becoming You Labs revealed a dramatic decline in the importance Gen Z places on family. The "family first" mentality among Gen Z has fallen 54.7% below the ranking of Baby Boomers and Gen X, and is even 38% lower than Millennials. Daniel B. Davis, PhD, who authored the whitepaper, analyzed a sample size of over 80,000 and concluded: “Across generations, the downward tilt among Gen Z suggests a cultural inflection point. Younger adults appear less centered on family and more likely to treat it as one value among many, not a defining feature of identity or purpose.”

The sliding of the importance of family has made way for an increased ability to allow family estrangement to enter in. 

If the American Dream once centered on the nuclear family with a home, a couple, a 2.2 kids, and a steady path upward, today’s reality looks markedly different. Families are smaller. Marriages happen later or not at all. Cohabitation is normal. 

More specifically, U.S. fertility has fallen from over 3.0 births per woman in the mid-20th century to roughly 1.62 today, the lowest in modern U.S. history (CDC & NCHS, 2025; BLS, 2023). At the same time, the median age at first marriage has risen to about 30 for men and 28 for women, compared to 22 and 20 respectively in the 1950s (NCFMR, 2020). For those opting out of marriage, cohabitation has become a valid option with 9.1% of U.S. adults now cohabiting with a partner (up from 3.7% in 1996), and more than half of women ages 19 - 44 have cohabited at least once (Wharton Budget Model, 2025; NCFMR & IPUMS-CPS, 2024).

Blended families, multi-generational households, LGBTQ+ families, and “chosen family” networks have become mainstream. Like every swing of the cultural pendulum, they come with unintended consequences.

Earlier generations, particularly Baby Boomers, worked with a clear, albeit self-imposed, directive: provide more for your children than you had yourself. You see this ethos play out in the massive Great Wealth Transfer happening right now along with the birthing and propagation of the American Dream. The Boomer’s lifestyles reflect the idea that family is an obligation worth working for.

Gen X carried that same instinct but channeled it differently. Instead of primarily providing materially, they focused on providing emotionally. They showed up. They attended the games. They sat on the edge of beds asking how feelings were doing. They were going to reverse the Latchkey kid trend, and as the pendulum swung, they overcorrected. Of course, this came from a good place but in overcorrecting, Gen X rolled out the emotional bubble wrap for their kids. Instead of learning from mistakes, the mistakes were perceived as almost fatal and helicopter mommy would swoop in. Discomfort felt dangerous. And a generation arose with a heightened sensitivity to internal distress.

Pair that with the slow life model employed by Gen Z and even Millennials we see the family paradigm shifting. These are two generations that are cautious about entering into long-term commitments and have entered adulthood with digital dating, delayed marriage, delayed childbearing, and delayed homeownership. They want to travel first, explore first, “find themselves” first. But delaying doesn’t eliminate uncertainty. It often amplifies it. The truth is, very few people ever feel “ready” for marriage or family. That has been true across every generation.

One of the fallacies of doubling down on generational labels is the fact we are taking a snapshot in time, with every generation frozen for a brief moment. The reality is, we all mature. So, employing the Generational Prism Model (Age-Moment-Label), we can see the reflections of what may be a byproduct of age and what might be more indicative of a cultural trend.

Age effects remind us that younger adults of every era are less tied down, more exploratory, and typically more self-focused than those who are older. Some of today’s trends are simply young adulthood, not an indictment of an entire cohort. With that said, the growing trend does move towards the fact that society as a whole has departed from a collectivist mindset and is trending more individualistic. Meaning, we can expect these trends to stay, even as the generation matures. 

Moment effects remind us that we live in a moment in time where social media therapy, boundary culture, and “quiet quitting” are all normal behaviors. Estrangement can be validated instantly and publicly, gathering likes and support in ways that were unthinkable 30 years ago. In fact, it is quite unbelievable if you take a moment to scroll through social media, you can find reel after reel of people discussing family trauma and family drama that was once only confined to the private living room setting…or on Judge Judy. Many of these squabbles that are now labeled as byproducts of toxic parenting are what Baby Boomers and Gen X might call a typical Sunday afternoon dinner. 

Label effects take into account Gen Z’s cohort. Looking at their age and the moment in time, labels are often ascribed to their social environment. They are products of helicopter parenting and often accused of emotional fragility and being the anxious generation. They are digital natives with high polarization when it comes to politics and beliefs. Growing up in a digital world, they are global citizens, looking at their place in the world as a whole, and not in their immediate family or community. This creates a unique set of pressures and interpretations that shape how they view family.

The data is clear. There is a significant drift in the value of family. 

Older generations worked for the benefit of their families. Younger generations, namely Millennials and Gen Z, work for their fulfillment or to afford the lifestyle they believed they deserved. The Baby Boomers and Gen X found identity in family and in their children. Gen Z is trying to find their own place in the world and their identity then deciding if family plays a role in that narrative. 

Thanksgiving, as with any major holiday, is often always complicated with family dynamics. You are worried Aunt Meridith will drink too much, you are careful not to leave your kids alone with Uncle Creed, you dread being seated next to the hyper-judgemental Aunt Angela, and you know that Uncle Michael will look for any and every opportunity to slide in an inappropriate joke. 

But it is the holiday season and these shifting family dynamics that remains one of the clearest mirrors of where society and culture is heading. For many Boomers and Gen Xers, the table is built on obligation, continuity, and tradition, even when it’s messy. The mess is part of it. For Gen Z, presence is increasingly conditional and goes through an emotional safety checklist: Does this align with my mental health? My boundaries? My comfort? My values? Millennials are stretched between the two extremes. They often have more resiliency than their successors, but also, are more quick to put up walls than their predecessors.  

Even 31 years ago, Chandler Bing was recounting why he hated Thanksgiving so much–divorce. The flavor of family discord in that era was divorce and separation. Fast forward three decades, family feuds haven’t disappeared, but their impact has evolved. Fractured marriages are now fractured families at every level: parent v. parent; brother v. sister; mother v. daughter.

Families have always been messy. Once conflict was something we worked through, not something we walked away from. For some, the holidays are exceptionally hard this year as someone who sat at your table is no longer there this year. My heart goes out to you. 

Wherever, however, and with whomever you gather this year for the various holidays, treasure those relationships, the mess and all. With every passing dish and every shared story, we need to be alert to the fact that what we’re really witnessing is the definition of the American family transforming one generation at a time. And in that transformation, perhaps the quiet reminder is this: belonging, however imperfect, still matters.

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