Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will focus on adult family members who have a distant or inactive relationship with one another in terms of contact, communication, and quality, which is increasingly referred to as estrangement. Estimates of the prevalence of family estrangement vary, with some suggesting that it is as common as divorce, and therapists noting that it is a common issue that arises in therapeutic settings.

Although clinical conceptualisations of family estrangement have a long history, the empirical literature exploring and examining estrangement between adult family members is relatively new and sparse.

This Special Issue therefore aims to explore the state of knowledge in the field. It also aims to encourage the application of this knowledge to inform both policy and practice.

This Special Issue provides an exciting opportunity to integrate knowledge and encourage discussion and debate across disciplines. Articles appropriate for the special issue include original research, reviews of research in specific areas, and methodological considerations in studying family estrangement. Multi-disciplinary perspectives on family estrangement are welcomed, as are articles that utilize quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method approaches.

Given the relatively young yet growing nature of research in this field, this issue will use a broad conceptualisation of family (i.e., family members are not assumed to be genetically or gestationally related to one another or to have lived in the same households or geographic location), and estrangement (family members who have a distant and/or inactive relationship with one another in terms of contact, communication, and quality).

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Behavioral Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Family
• Family relations
• Estrangement
• Intergenerational relations
• Sibling relations
• Parent–child relations
• Grandparents
• Grandchildren