Dear Linda,

I don't know of any order that requires severing all ties with one's family - at the very least the very real spiritual ties will remain, and you will always feel in your heart the love that draws you to pray in a special way for your family, your parents more especially.  

Religious life, however, does involve a certain degree of separation from your family, which varies according to the spirit and purpose of each congregation. Many congregations and orders also have different rules according to the stage of formation that one is going through - it is common to have less family contact during the Novitiate for example, because of its particular nature.  

This is not always easy and I think the family, concretely the parents, may feel it more than the religious himself, who in reality has been given a new family, and is kept pretty busy with his formation and apostolate. But God blesses the family and the religious for the sacrifice they make, and as each of them grows in their understanding of the vocation they perceive the source of grace for them all that this sacrifice is, because God is never outdone in generosity. There is a paradox that most experience, the parents grow to be spiritually closest to the child who seems most "absent", and they have the consolation of all the good they know their son or daughter is doing.

God bless.