These Moms Are Done Being ‘Doormats’ for Their Estranged Children

The Spritzler Report has obtained an exclusive interview with Ms. Wellington's estraged daughter Muffy. Said MMA fighter, "My mom has all the warm of a large Python. I especially appreciated that narcissistic bitch taking her dislike of me national. BTW, what a shocker that she's divorced. I guess dad's next on her hit woman parade. The moniker bitch doesn't do her justice".

These Moms Are Done Being ‘Doormats’ for Their Estranged Children

Parents blast adult offspring for cutting them off, drawing tens of thousands of online followers; ‘ungrateful little bastard’

Laura Wellington standing with her hands on her hips.

By Elizabeth Bernstein, WSJ

Dec. 13, 2025 10:00 am ET

One evening last year, Laura Wellington opened her phone, created a TikTok account called “Doormat Mom” and filmed her first post from her porch in Connecticut.

“Were you a really good parent who did the best they could and yet your child has decided to be an ungrateful little bastard as an adult?” she says in the video. “We need to connect here. We need to support each other, and we need to talk about it.”

Welcome to the pissed-off parent pushback.

After years of therapists, psychology influencers and internet chat groups encouraging adult children to cut ties with families they deem harmful or “toxic,” estranged parents are now speaking out. But rather than beg for forgiveness and reconciliation, many deliver a defiant message: We weren’t bad parents. This is the kids’ fault. Now, my needs come first.

The movement is driven by moms who are amassing tens of thousands of followers through social media, podcasts, memoirs and apps. They aim to reduce stigma, build community and empower others who are enduring one of life’s most painful experiences: the loss of a child who is still alive. Fellow estranged parents fill the comment sections of these accounts with gratitude, while estranged offspring counter that they preach victimhood and skirt accountability.

Some 10% of the U.S. population is estranged from a parent or a child at any given time, according to research by Karl Pillemer, a family sociologist and professor of human development at Cornell. With rising tensions over politics and social issues, he says more such schisms are likely.

It’s more common for children to be estranged from their fathers than their mothers, according to a 2022 study in the Journal of Marriage and Family. Yet mothers often struggle more with it—even to the point of feeling existential angst—because they tend to identify more closely than fathers with being a parent, Pillemer says.

Sometimes, adult children are justified in creating boundaries and breaking ties with their parents, especially if they were abusive, Pillemer says. But for mothers who feel unjustly cut off, building a public platform to speak can be healing, helping them gain support and, in some cases, feel vindicated.

Still, it could harm their chances of reconciliation, especially if parents are complaining about or blaming their kids, he says. And airing family business so publicly also attracts lookie loos—followers intrigued by the drama because it makes them feel better about their own relationships. “People have been fascinated by estrangement stories for as long as written history,” Pillemer says. “You start with Cain and Abel—and you wind up at ‘Succession.’”

Wellington, 59, goes by “Doormat Mom” on TikTok and Instagram, where she has almost 140,000 followers combined. She says she broke off ties with one of her adult daughters in the summer of 2024 after learning that she wouldn’t be invited to her wedding. Wellington maintains that she is a good mom and doesn’t understand what went wrong, but realized that her daughter didn’t want to have a relationship with her.

“I got the message loud and clear,” says Wellington, a retired tech entrepreneur and children’s programming creator who has four other children, ages 15 to 32, who aren’t estranged. “It shouldn’t be on me to wait and see if she comes around.”

A resident of Old Saybrook, Conn., Wellington opened TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube accounts, launched a podcast and wrote a memoir—self-published on the weekend of her daughter’s wedding—called “Doormat Mom, No More! When Good Parents Finally Say ‘Enough’ to Their Ungrateful Adult Kids.”

Her message is defiant: It’s not always the parents’ fault. Yes, there are abusive parents with children who are correct in cutting them off, she says, but there are also well-meaning and loving parents who are unjustly hurt. Rather than wait around for crumbs from their children, parents should get on with their lives.

Response was loud and immediate. Estranged parents shared their stories in the comment sections of Wellington’s posts and thanked her for making them feel less lonely. Commenters estranged from their parents furiously told her what they thought she’d done wrong—perhaps because they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell their own parents. (“Lolol zero accountability. Always someone else’s fault, huh?”) Soon both groups were arguing and hurling the word “narcissist.”

“I hit a nerve,” says Wellington, who is now launching an app to help estranged parents meet virtually and in person.

Her popularity inspired other moms to speak out. Like Wellington, some say they were cut off for no reason and blame their children. Others fault their children’s therapists for encouraging them to go no-contact with their parents. Many offer a strong religious view. (The devil has stolen these godless kids!) Nearly all offer advice.

“Hey, bring it in, turn the volume up,” says Kendall Williams in a November video that garnered nearly 6,000 likes. “I know exactly who needs to hear this, and that would be anyone who is daft enough to think that parents are not caused trauma by their kids.”

Williams, 52, began sharing her estrangement story one year ago on her motherhood-focused podcast, “Mum’s True Tea,” after cutting off contact with one of her two adult sons following what she calls years of his verbal and emotional abuse. “People think that when a mother speaks out against her children, she couldn’t possibly be telling the truth,” she says. “But I refuse to accept toxic behavior from someone I gave birth to, that I have shown nothing but love to, that I have supported through good and bad and that I have given the tools to be a good person.”

Williams, who lives in suburban Atlanta, has drawn more than 200,000 followers on social media, self-published two books and launched a coaching business for estranged parents. In videos, she criticizes therapists who encourage parents to capitulate to their children, addresses the pain of moms who are cut off from their grandchildren, critiques estranged offspring for holding their parents to an “unimaginable” standard of perfection and preaches caution to parents looking to reconcile.

“Heal yourself first,” she says.

Nicole Coates, 39, of Meridian, Idaho, feels God asked her to speak up about her estrangement from her eldest child, who is 22, to help other estranged mothers and fathers feel less stigmatized. “Parents didn’t want to talk about this before because the world would assume you are abusive,” she says. “But I don’t fall into that category, and this is happening to me.”

Coates, who has three younger sons who aren’t estranged, says she isn’t sure why her eldest blocked her and her husband from contact via phone and social media last spring.

In July, Coates started speaking out—on social media and in a podcast she created covering topics like what a parent should say when someone asks how their child is, not knowing about the estrangement. She was surprised to receive thousands of comments from other parents, some of whom wrote only the years that they’d been estranged: Two. Three. 17.

“What I hear from others is that we are playing a game that only our estranged child knows the rules to, but we feel the consequences if we break them,” she says.

Coates, who works for a disaster-relief charity, says she tries not to criticize her child publicly, but worries that her advocacy will permanently harm their relationship. Still, she wants to keep speaking up.

“I want moms to be seen,” she says.

Like so many trends, there’s backlash to the backlash. Liza Ginette, 55, of Garner, N.C., says she decided to respond to the parents who blame their children. “If I hear one more estranged parent saying ‘but why, why, why?’ I’m going to lose my freaking mind,” she says.

Ginette, who supervises customer-service representatives at an insurance company, says she is cut off from her two daughters, ages 29 and 21, due to her anger, emotional abuse and neglect. “I had a traumatic childhood,” she says, “and we had a dysfunctional family.” She isn’t estranged from her adult son and stepson, she adds.

After her daughters stopped talking to her, Ginette sought therapy and read a book called “Emotions Anonymous,” which she says helped her take accountability for her actions. Ginette started posting videos on TikTok and Instagram stating: “Yes, I abused my children” and “I very well might be the problem.” One early post drew more than a million views. She advises parents to listen to what their children are trying to tell them.

Ginette estimates that 95% of her followers are estranged from their parents and many seek advice on how to speak with them, or share that she gave them hope. (“Literally would die to see my mother take half the accountability she is taking,” one posted.)

“I say the things that they are dying to hear from their parents,” Ginette says. They help her, too, offering optimism that she’ll be able to reconnect with her daughters.

“I don’t think any loving parent wouldn’t hope to reconcile,” she says.