Why are so many abusive parents “shocked” that their children have cut off contact with them?

Because that’s not how it’s worked for the vast majority of history. Children were expected to succumb, follow authority, and do the same thing to their kids, if they had any.

Abusive parents weren’t even called out on their abuse. Hitting or emotionally abusing children wasn’t even considered abuse. It was “discipline” (or “teaching manners” or “demanding respect” … etc., ad nauseum).

Now, knowing what we know about abuse and how it’s often generational, a form of privilege, and profoundly lazy, there’s no real cover for abusive parents besides “tradition.” (And we all know tradition is always benevolent, amirite?)

No, ungrateful children “talk back” and are “uppity” and “too big for their britches” (ya know, all that shit that would get you seriously side eyed if you said the same thing about a woman, a black woman, a lesbian black woman, etc.)

The emperor has no clothes. The emperor is buck naked, we see that, and we say something about it now.

When they continue their shitty behavior regardless, when the grown survivors say “fuck this” by surrounding themselves with better, kinder, fairer people (and becoming better, kinder, fairer people themselves), the perpetrators think they can gaslight their former victims back into compliance, claim innocence, and salvage their deservedly tattered reputations.

When that shit doesn’t work anymore, they claim their victims were just bad, mean old kids all along who won’t love their parents like they’re supposed to (ya know, out of obedience, not because the parents actually deserve that love).

That shit worked way more effectively in the past than it does now and they hate that their hypocrisy is far more (a) identifiable and (b) avoidable.

So, yeah, they’re “shocked” (especially when they’re holding court in front of an audience that doesn’t know the real deal).