A parent’s alarm about cults can be triggered by ordinary adult separation

Evidence

I think my 33-year-old daughter is in a cult! Until recently, we talked on the phone at least once every day, we spent our vacations together, and she told me everything. Now she wants to go on vacation with friends and doesn’t always pick up the phone when I call. She dodges when I ask her questions. There must be a cult behind it. They always try to disrupt contact with the family. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 472

Categorization

• CANDY: A dry, broadly recognizable irony: the parent-pathologizing of a 33-year-old choosing independence reads the same way cult panic does.