PARENTAL ALIENATION AND THE DYNAMICS OF THE ENMESHED PARENT–CHILD DYAD: ADULTIFICATION,PARENTIFICATION, AND INFANTILIZATION

When caregivers conflict, systemic alliances shift and healthy parent‐child roles can be corrupted. The present paper describes three forms of role corruption which can occur within the enmeshed dyad and as the common complement of alienation and estrangement. These include the child who is prematurely promoted to serve as a parent's ally and partner, the child who is inducted into service as the parent's caregiver, and the child whose development is inhibited by a parent who needs to be needed. These dynamics—adultification, parentification and infantilization, respectively—are each illustrated with brief case material. Family law professionals and clinicians alike are encouraged to conceptualize these dynamics as they occur within an imbalanced family system and thereby to craft interventions which intend to re‐establish healthy roles. Some such interventions are reviewed and presented as one part of the constellation of services necessary for the triangulated child.     

LEGAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MANAGEMENT OF CASES WITH AN ALIENATED CHILD

Cases entering the family court with an alienated child require intensive and coordinated case management to intervene effectively. It is critical to link the authority of the court with the delivery of mental health services to address the complex systemic factors that may entrench a chilďs unwarranted rejection of a parent. This article provides principles of legal and psychological case management for families with an alienated child, followed by various structural interventions, including sample court orders, for managing these cases as they progress through the family court process. Finally, criteria for making custody recommendations in the most severe cases of child alienation are provided.     

Innovative Programs in Israel for Prevention & Responding to Parental Alienation: Education,Early Identification and Timely,Effective Intervention

There is substantial research and documentation showing that behavior of a parent which alienates a child against the other parent (PA) and other family members may cause serious, and sometimes permanent, damage to the child. Building on the work that defines maladaptive parental gatekeeping (MG) and PA, and on identifying typologies of behavior, and their effects on the alienated child, the need for prevention of children in these cases is well established. This paper describes programs and responses in Israel, some already in place and others under development, almost all of which require multidisciplinary collaboration between professionals. The programs include: primary prevention; early identification, so as to allow prompt secondary intervention by advice and treatment of parents and child; and immediate tertiary intervention when alienation has led to contact failure or is about to do so. Prevention and early intervention can reduce the need for the massive investment of resources needed for attempts to restore contact, and also for treatment of those affected by PA.     

Children of Uxoricide: the Anti-therapeutic Effects of the Construction of Parenthood Pathology in Cases of Family Trauma

When children are involved in the murder of one parent by the other, their lives are turned-upside down. They are immediately confronted with police and court interventions and by child welfare decisions. This article looks at the policy of the Dutch Child Protection Board in such cases. We consider the legal arrangements made by the Board for dealing with the child's future residence and any special needs. We also consider the ways in which social workers from the Board depict the families of uxoricide and perceive the future relationship of the child with the surviving parent.     

THE ALIENATED CHILD:A Reformulation of Parental Alienation Syndrome

In this article, controversies and problems with parental alienation syndrome are discussed. A reformulation focusing on the alienated child is proposed, and these children are clearly distinguished from other children who resist or refuse contact with a parent following separation or divorce for a variety of normal, expectable reasons, including estrangement. A systemic array of contributing factors are described that can create and/or consolidate alienation in children, including intense marital conflict, a humiliating separation, parental personalities and behaviors, protracted litigation, and professional mismanagement. These factors are understood in the context of the child's capacities and vulnerabilities.     

Responding to Severe Parent–Child Rejection Cases Without a Parentectomy: A Blended Sequential Intervention Model and the Role of the Courts

There have been significant developments over the past two decades that have expanded our understanding of the dynamics of parent–child contact problems post‐separation, which have resulted in some changes in judicial processes to respond to these cases. One significant advancement is a more sophisticated differentiation of the nature and severity of contact problems, which better assists legal and mental health professionals to provide more suitable legal and clinical interventions. However, the issue of innovative court processes has received limited attention. The authors describe a subgroup of families within the “severe” category, for whom an expanded intervention model, referred to as a Blended Sequential Intervention is proposed. This approach involves a reversal of care with court mandated therapeutic support for the rejected parent and child, but also involves the favored parent in the therapeutic plan from the outset, and is intended to avoid a permanent “parentectomy” of the child from either parent. The authors discuss how the courts should respond to these cases, and posit that until all therapeutic treatments are exhausted, interim orders should be preferred to final determinations, and judges should maintain oversight. The authors discuss the critical role of judicial leadership in working with lawyers and mental health professionals to manage and address the issues in these high conflict cases.     

HELPING ALIENATED CHILDREN WITH FAMILY BRIDGES: PRACTICE, RESEARCH, AND THE PURSUIT OF "HUMBITION"

This article briefly summarizes and responds to feedback offered by Joan Kelly regarding Family Bridges: A Workshop for Troubled and Alienated Parent–Child Relationships™. We emphasize principles that promote an educational atmosphere, as opposed to a therapeutic one, and the court's role in contributing to successful interventions with severely alienated children. Among the considerations discussed are: working with favored parents, economic comparisons of Family Bridges with counseling approaches, modifying the program for use in prevention and with milder cases of alienation, and issues related to training additional team leaders and conducting outcome research.     

COMMENTARY ON "FAMILY BRIDGES: USING INSIGHTS FROM SOCIAL SCIENCE TO RECONNECT PARENTS AND ALIENATED CHILDREN" (WARSHAK, 2010)

This commentary reviews the goals, structure, and content of the intensive educational intervention described by Warshak (2010); raises concerns; considers the meaning of "success" in child alienation cases; and makes suggestions for future research. Titled Family Bridges: A Workshop for Troubled and Alienated Parent-Child Relationships, the program is a rigorous and disciplined approach designed to help participants repair severely derailed parent–child relationships. Family Bridges uses evidence-based instruction principles to maximize learning and create a safe atmosphere enabling the alienated child(ren) and rejected parent to be, and work, together. The multimedia materials selected for the 4-day program draw from social science research and focus on multiple and universal processes by which distortions of perception, memory, and thinking occur; negative stereotype formation; the impact of high conflict on children and parent–child relationships; effective communication and dispute resolution; and parenting skills training. Based on a small and diverse sample of families, Family Bridges demonstrates considerable promise as one type of intervention designed for these severely troubled relationships. Concerns include the cost of the intensive intervention, the absence of a parallel program for the favored parent, and whether the program can be replicated effectively. The family psychology and law fields would benefit significantly from research that evaluates Family Bridges and other educational and therapeutic interventions designed to help alienated children repair and strengthen balanced relationships with both parents.     

Parental Alienation in U.S. Courts, 1985 to 2018

Courts have been dealing with alienating behaviors in high conflict family litigation for hundreds of years. Experts in the behavioral sciences have been writing about mothers and fathers manipulating their children to disparage the other parent for more than seventy years. But in the last two decades some social scientists and legal professionals have questioned the legitimacy of parental alienation as a concept and its admissibility in child abuse and child custody litigation. This study was designed to examine the extent to which courts in the United States have found the concept of parental alienation material, probative, relevant and admissible. Thirty‐four years of cases were found with a WESTLAW query and analyzed. Cases were selected for study only if the record reflected that a judge or an independent expert found the concept of parental alienation to be of value in the litigation. Results illustrate increasing awareness of the concept and document its admissibility in every one of the United States. The numbers, sex of the alienating parent and prevalence of significant custody changes are discussed. Limitations inherent in this form of quantitative analysis are also discussed with recommendations for future research.     

THERAPEUTIC WORK WITH ALIENATED CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES

This article describes goals and strategies for family-focused counseling and therapy when children are alienated from a parent after separation and divorce. The confidential intervention takes place within a legally defined contract and is based on a careful assessment of the dynamics of the multiple factors that contribute to the alienation and how the chilďs development is affected. Strategies for forming multiple therapeutic alliances with often reluctant, recalcitrant, and polarized parents are discussed together with ways of helping the child directly.     

Children Resisting Contact with a Parent Due to Abuse,Alienation, or Other Causes: Can a Proactive Role for Lawyers Contribute to Better Outcomes?

Lawyers have a significant role to play in cases where children are resisting contact with a parent, or the family appears to be going down that path, in the context of parental alienation, family violence or other factors. These cases pose great challenges for lawyers dealing with parents, as their clients are often anxiety‐ridden, angry, scared, and may have difficulty focussing on the long‐term interests of their children or themselves. A lawyer may be one of the first professionals encountered by the parents; lawyers for parents are advocates, but they are also in a position to provide wise counsel, to help triage the situation, provide practical advice, and early, helpful solutions. This article sets out practical suggestions for lawyers acting for parents. What can and should lawyers do to ensure they are part of the solution, not part of the problem? Lawyers need to be able to identify the potential problems and provide practical help to the family – whether they are acting for the “preferred” parent, the “rejected” parent, or the involved children.     

Children Exposed to Domestic Violence: Making Trauma‐Informed Custody and Visitation Decisions

This article explores the risks for young children and the challenges for courts that emerge when parents who are victims or perpetrators of intimate partner violence seek court decisions on child visitation or custody matters. We focus particularly on children age five and younger, a group that is disproportionately represented in families affected by intimate partner violence, and especially vulnerable to its traumatic impact. We examine the literature on children's response to violence between their parents and the literature on parental alienation, a counter‐charge that may arise when one parent alleges violence as a reason to limit the other parent's access to the children. We look at challenges faced by both mental health professionals and courts involved in custody determinations and make policy recommendations to help courts make trauma‐informed decisions that best serve children.     

Risks and Realities of Working with Alienated Children

Involvement in custody cases that include accusations of parental alienation—whether as an evaluator, expert witness, lawyer, judge, therapist, provider of a specialized intervention, or researcher—incurs both professional and personal risks. Some risks relate to false negative or false positive identifications of parental alienation that can lead to regulatory agency complaints and public condemnation by the parent who feels wronged by the case outcome. Other risks stem from providing services in an emerging area of practice and working with children who overtly oppose repairing the relationship with their rejected parent. These risks include: unfounded accusations of mistreating children; negatively biased commentary and sensationalist attacks in the media and in social media, professional conferences and journals, and in courtroom testimony; harassment, vilification, and invasion of privacy; threats of violence and public humiliation; shunning and rumor spreading by colleagues; and complaints to regulatory agencies. This article examines circumstances, beliefs, and dynamics that give rise to these risks, suggests precautions to reduce the risk of false accusations against professionals, and offers recommendations for dealing with regulatory agencies. Criticisms that a court or service provider has mistreated a child merit careful scrutiny in the context of the case evidence and empirical data. While some interventions for alienated children raise legitimate concerns, others have been maligned by anecdotal complaints that studies show do not represent the experience of most participants.     

Best Interest of the Child and Parental Alienation: A Survey of State Statutes

State statutes regarding the best interests of the child (BIC) in deciding disputed custody were reviewed and independently coded with respect to three issues (i) the child's preference and any limits (ii) parental alienation and (iii) psychological maltreatment. Results revealed that many states allowed for the child's preferences to be considered and none qualified that preference when undue influence has occurred; parental alienation as a term was not found in any state statutes but 70% of the states included at least one BIC factor relevant to its core construct of the parent supporting the child's relationship to the other parent; and many states included a history of domestic violence or child abuse but only three states explicitly mentioned psychological maltreatment. These findings highlight yet another way in which the BICS factors lack specificity in ways that could negatively impact children caught in their parents’ conflict.     

Predictors of Initial Court Agreement and 1‐Year Relitigation in Title IV‐D Contested Paternity Cases

We examined potential predictors of initial court agreement and 1‐year relitigation in a sample of contested paternity cases involving unmarried parents coming to court to establish paternity, child support, and other issues. Cases participated in an RCT of a parent program and of a waiting period between establishment of paternity and court hearing. We controlled for RCT study factors and used baseline assessment data to predict likelihood of reaching full agreement in the initial court hearing and relitigation in the following year. Findings suggest that cases in which parents get along better outside of court are more likely to reach agreement and less likely to return to court. Additionally, particular parent demographics predict lower likelihood of reaching initial agreement (e.g., parents are non‐White, father earns below $10,000 yearly), more relitigation (e.g., parents are non‐White, mother earns above $10,000 yearly, father has children with others), and less relitigation (e.g., father earns above $10,000 yearly). Child demographics and most parent relationship characteristics did not predict outcomes. We discuss findings and offer suggestions for court interventions.     

Assessment and Intervention with Parents to Stabilize Children Who Have Witnessed Violence

When children are exposed to violence, interventions require the assessment of parents. Whether parents can create a safe environment, are able to hear their children's story of their exposure, and then can help them move forward in healthy life patterns, must be evaluated. When safety is established, treatment of parents must be focused on how the parent can enhance the child's sense of security and empathic connection. Assessment must identify the red flags that suggest a need for more intensive work with the parent to address these issues, before specific work with the child begins. Treatment can utilize the parent's best wishes for their child to help motivate parents do the work needed for their own and their children's recovery.     

Parent–child contact problems and family intensive interventions: The crisis of adolescent suicidality and the role of social media

Although clinicians, educators and parents have been alarmed by the decline in the mental health of children and adolescents commensurate with the Covid-19 pandemic, statistics indicate there has been a downward spiral over the last decade. This has been evident in the overall increase in suicide rates for young people. For legal and mental health professionals working in the Family Court system, this has provided unique challenges. Most vulnerable has been those children and adolescents embroiled in high conflict divorces, especially those exhibiting parent child contact problems. This article focuses upon that population exhibiting parent child contact problems, and their treatment, specifically Family Intensive Intervention. Building Family Resilience is an Intensive family treatment program that has had to address this deterioration in child and adolescent mental health and increase in suicidality. The role of social media in both exacerbating and/or ameliorating mental health issues is explored.     

Trauma‐Informed Interventions in Parent–Child Contact Cases

Parent–child contact problems may arise in the context of high conflict separation/divorce dynamics between parents. In cases where there are parent–child contact problems and children resist or refuse contact with one of their parents, there may also be incidents of child maltreatment, intimate partner violence, or compromised parenting that can be experienced by a parent or child as traumatic. The circumstances around separation and/or post‐divorce often result in intense stress for families. In this paper we distinguish between the stressful circumstances that may arise as a result of high interparental conflict and pulls for alignment from a parent, and the real or perceived trauma as a factor which contributes to resistance or refusal of a child to have contact with a parent. Interventions to address both trauma responses and the resist‐refuse dynamics are differentiated and discussed. After screening and assessment, the intent is to treat trauma responses with short‐term, evidence‐based therapy, either before or concurrent with co‐parent and family intervention.     

An Objective Measure of Splitting in Parental Alienation: The Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire

Both clinicians and forensic practitioners should distinguish parental alienation (rejection of a parent without legitimate justification) from other reasons for contact refusal. Alienated children—who were not abused—often engage in splitting and lack ambivalence with respect to the rejected parent; children who were maltreated usually perceive the abusive parent in an ambivalent manner. The purpose of this study was to assess the usefulness of the Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ) in identifying and quantifying the degree of splitting, which may assist in diagnosing parental alienation. Results showed that severely alienated children engaged in a high level of splitting, by perceiving the preferred parent in extremely positive terms and the rejected parent in extremely negative terms. Splitting was not manifested by the children in other family groups. The PARQ may be useful for both clinicians and forensic practitioners in evaluating children of divorced parents when there is a concern about the possible diagnosis of parental alienation.