Critiquing assumptions about parental alienation: Part 1. The analogy with family violence

Abstract

Harman et al. asserted that parental alienation (a child’s rejection of a divorced parent because of persuasion by the other parent) is a form of family violence and therefore harmful to the child. Harman et al. argued that parental alienation is a form of psychological abuse and compared psychological abuse to other forms of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that have been shown to carry risks for psychological and physical health. That position is foundational to the argument that cases where a divorced parent has been said to have alienated a child are child protection cases, rather than child custody cases. In child protection cases, an obvious remedy is to separate the child from a harmful parent, change custody, and prohibit contact. This paper critiques the arguments presented by Harman et al., examines analogical reasoning, the state of understanding of ACEs, and other empirical work, and concludes that presently there is no evidence supporting the idea that parental alienation is a form of family violence or that parental alienation cases should be treated as child protection situations. On the contrary, the risks associated with the child protection approach, with potential harms to both children and parents, outweigh the uncertain benefits of that approach. In the absence of an established protocol for identifying parental alienation, and without empirical work showing effects on children of the actions of both preferred and nonpreferred parents, the safest position on the equation of parental alienation and family violence or other adverse childhood experiences is that this view is “not proven”.