How would you characterize Christopher McCandless's relationship with his parents in Into the Wild?

John Krakauer's story about Christopher McCandless, the
young college graduate who forsook a promising future as a professional, probably
lawyer, for the individualism and commitment to nature embodied in his subsequent life
and early death, Into the Wild, depicts an uncomfortable
relationship between parents and son.  Early in this sorrowful depiction of McCandless'
death from starvation -- or, possibly, from toxins ingested from some of the plants he
consumed -- Krakauer describes a relationship between youth and parents that clearly
presages a break on the part of the former with the expectations of the latter.  As
Krakauer quotes McCandless' father, Walt, an aerospace engineer, responding to
Christopher's decision to forgo law school while donating his college fund to
charity,  “'We misread him,' his father admits."  Chris was raised along with his
siblings in a rather conventional setting in northern Virginia, his father employed by
NASA and by prominent aerospace companies that support federal agencies until
establishing his own consulting firm.  Walt and Billie, Chris' mother, had little
inkling that their son aspired to a future radically different from what they
envisioned.  In a telling passage, Krakauer describes the schism between parents and
child when Chris unexpectedly gives his mother a box of candy for Mother's
Day:

"It was
the first present she had received from her son in more than two years, since he
had announced to his parents that, on principle, he would no longer give or
accept gifts. Indeed, Chris had only recently upbraided Walt and Billie for
expressing their desire to buy him a new car as a graduation present and offering to pay
for law school if there wasn’t enough money left in his college fund to cover
it."

Chris' decision to head
for Alaska to live off-the-land and commune with nature represented an enormous
departure from the existence his family had known in northern Virginia, close to the
nation's capitol.  That his parents weren't emotionally prepared for such a decision
spoke to the depth of differences that separated them.