No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Looking Beyond the Sorting Hat: Deconstructing the “Five Factor Model” of Alienation
Parent–child contact problems (PCCP) are among the most vexing and intractable matters encountered in contemporary divorce and post‐divorce litigation. These complex and incendiary family dynamics can confound even the most experienced evaluators, investigators, and jurists, fueling opposing confirmational biases, and sparking a destructive tug‐of‐war between the aligned parent's allegations of abuse and the rejected parent's allegations of alienation. This article describes all such either/or binary arguments as misleading, contrary to the science, and harmful to children. Rather than cast alienation and estrangement as mutually exclusive alternatives, the systemically‐informed professional must consider more than a dozen mutually compatible practical exigencies and relationship dynamics which can converge to cause a child to align with one parent and resist or refuse contact with the other. Together, these variables are described as constituting an ecological model of the conflicted family system. A rubric is proposed to standardize evaluation across time, children, families, and jurisdictions, minimize bias, avoid premature closure, facilitate more comprehensive evaluations, optimize the efficacy of associated interventions, and invite more rigorous future research.
Children may be vicariously traumatized from learning about the trauma of family and friends. To date, a causal model of children’s vicarious traumatization has not been empirically validated in the literature. This paper fills the gap in the literature by reporting on the direct effect of vicarious trauma on children independent of caregiving impairment. Data for the study came from the National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence I (NATSCEV I). This unique dataset features two indicators of vicarious trauma exposure: (1) family victimization and (2) community violence. Hierarchical multiple regression was conducted in order to control for nuisance variables such as caregiver impairment, defined as the degree of warmth or hostility; time elapsed since the trauma occurred and the study taking place; and other trauma exposure (i.e. direct and witnessed trauma). As expected, the study found evidence of a direct and positive relationship between learning about the trauma of close friends and family and children’s trauma symptomatology. Both adolescents and young children were found to be vulnerable to experience vicarious traumatization, with gender and ethnicity being contributing factors. Chronological age was not found to be significant in children’s vicarious traumatization. These findings support the causal model of vicarious traumatization. They demonstrate that children may be traumatized by exposure to the trauma material of others above and beyond the influence of caregiver impairment. As such, attention should be given to interventions, practices, and policies that intervene in the lives of children exposed to violence.
This article is a response to comments by Mercer (2021), who criticized Bernet, Gregory, Rohner, and Reay (2020 Bernet, W. , Gregory, N. , Rohner, R. P. , & Reay, K. M. (2020). Measuring the difference between alienation and estrangement: The PARQ-Gap. Journal of Forensic Sciences , 65 (4), 1225–1234. https://doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.14300 [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) regarding their research on parental alienation and the use of the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ). Here we respond to Mercer’s claims that the work of Bernet et al. is pseudoscience, that parental alienation theory involves false assumptions, that the extreme degree of psychological splitting observed by Bernet et al. is age-appropriate for adolescents, and that conclusions drawn by Bernet et al. are exaggerated and misstated.
Parental alienation (rejection of a parent without legitimate justification) and realistic estrangement (rejection of a parent for a good reason) are generally accepted concepts among mental health and legal professionals. Alienated children, who were not abused, tend to engage in splitting and lack ambivalence with respect to their parents; estranged children, who were maltreated, usually perceive their parents in an ambivalent manner. The hypothesis of this study was that a psychological test—the Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ)—will help to distinguish severely alienated from nonalienated children. The PARQ, which was used to identify and quantify the degree of splitting for each participant, was administered to 45 severely alienated children and 71 nonalienated children. The PARQ‐Gap score—the difference between each child's PARQ: Father score and PARQ: Mother score—was introduced and defined in this research. Using a PARQ‐Gap score of 90 as a cut point, this test was 99% accurate in distinguishing severely alienated from nonalienated children. This research presents a way to distinguish parental alienation from other reasons for contact refusal. The PARQ‐Gap may be useful for both clinicians and forensic practitioners in evaluating children of separating and divorced parents when there is a concern about the possible diagnosis of parental alienation.
Objectives
The purpose of the current study was to assess clinician reports of behaviors and attitudes of physically abused children in order to determine whether they generally behaved in a manner designed to maintain the attachment to the caregiver rather than disrupt the attachment.
Methods
Three hundred and thirty-eight clinicians were surveyed about the attitudes and behaviors of physically abused children. Some clinicians rated a specific severely abused child, some rated severely abused children in general, some rated a specific moderately abused child, and some rated moderately abused children in general. Half of the items on the survey pertained to attachment-enhancing behaviors (caring about the parent’s feelings, staying connected the family of the parent, minimizing the harm, and so forth) and half of the items reflected attachment-disrupting behaviors (idolizing the other parent, being rude towards the parent, expressing trivial reasons for being hurt with the parent, and so forth).
Results
For each of the four samples, abused children were rated as expressing significantly more attachment-enhancing behaviors than attachment-disrupting behaviors. They were also found to exhibit more extreme attachment enhancing behaviors than extreme attachment disrupting behaviors. For the most part, characteristics of the rater and the child were not associated with ratings.
Conclusions
Physically abused children were reported to want to maintain relationships with abusive caregivers, which presents challenges as well as opportunities for clinicians working with this highly vulnerable population.
The parent- child relationship impacts many later social and cognitive outcomes. The current study compared correlates of mother versus father dyadic interactions with their twin children in 503 families at 36 months of age. Measures included parent reported child temperament, observed parents' marital quality and affect, and parents' sensitivity, responsivity, and growth fostering with their children. Different patterns emerged for mothers and fathers: marital quality related to higher sensitivity for fathers, whereas positivity related to higher sensitivity for mothers. Child inhibitory control was related to fathers' response to child distress and mothers' use of cognitive growth fostering. In sum, parental engagement varied depending on marital and child factors, although different patterns emerged for mothers and fathers.
Despite affecting millions of families around the world, parental alienation has been largely unacknowledged or denied by legal and health professionals as a form of family violence. This complex form of aggression entails a parental figure engaging in the long-term use of a variety of aggressive behaviors to harm the relationship between their child and another parental figure, and/or to hurt the other parental figure directly because of their relationship with their child. Like other forms of family violence, parental alienation has serious and negative consequences for family members, yet victims are often blamed for their experience. In order to be recognized as a form of family violence and to secure protection for victims under law and social policies, a formal review and comparison of parental alienating behaviors and outcomes to child abuse and intimate partner violence has been sorely needed. The result of this review highlights how the societal denial of parental alienation has been like the historical social and political denial or other forms of abuse in many parts of the world (e.g., child abuse a century ago). Reframing parental alienating behaviors as a form of family violence also serves as a desperate call to action for social scientists to focus more theoretical and empirical attention to this topic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
Parental Alienation: The Handbook for Mental Health and Legal Professionals is the essential “how to” manual in this important and ever increasing area of behavioral science and law. Busy mental health professionals need a reference guide to aid them in developing data sources to support their positions in reports and testimony. They also need to know where to go to find the latest material on a topic. Having this material within arm’s reach will avoid lengthy and time-consuming online research. For legal professionals who must ground their arguments in well thought out motions and repeated citations to case precedent, ready access to state or province specific legal citations spanning thirty-five years of parental alienation cases is provided here for the first time in one place.
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.
Background
Research on trauma and its impact on mental health typically relies on self-reports which can be influenced by recall bias and an individual’s subjective interpretation of events. This study aims to compare responses on a checklist of life events with a trauma experience screening question, both of which assessed trauma experience retrospectively.
Methods
A community sample of adults were asked about life events from a checklist before asking them whether they ever had a trauma experience, i.e. “an event that either puts them or someone close to them at risk of serious harm or death”.
Results
Less than half of the sample who reported at least one life event on the checklist that qualified as a trauma reported a trauma experience that they perceived put them or close others at risk of serious harm. Women responders, those reporting early life traumas, and a greater number of lifetime trauma events were more likely to report a trauma experience. Current symptoms of Common Mental Disorder did not account for differences in reporting of trauma experiences.
Conclusions
Epidemiological approaches which require participants to make subjective judgement on the severity of the trauma experience will capture individual differences that we have shown are influenced by gender and previous trauma experience.
Over the past 30 years, number researchers have documented that interparental conflict predicts (predicts) adjustment difficulties among children from divorced and married families, as well as strained parent–child relationships. The conflict literature, reports of “parental alienation” behaviors, and clinical experience make it clear that some parents make disparaging comments about their coparent in front of their children. Very little empirical research has been conducted on the actual behaviors involved in what we term “parental denigration.” Basic information is needed on how often denigration occurs, whether it is practiced by only one parent or both parents, and whether denigration adversely affects parent–child relationships. In the present study, 648 undergraduates completed a new, internally consistent measure of denigration as well as questionnaires about parent–child relationships. Results indicate that denigration (a) occurs infrequently but more often in divorced families, (b) is almost always practiced by both parents, and (c) is associated with less close parent–child relationships, especially with the denigrator parent. These initial findings underscore the need for more research on a construct that is studied rarely but frequently raised in custody proceedings and seen often in clinical work. This information will help bring awareness of these behaviors to courts, parents, and mental health professionals to best protect children from adverse psychological effects and help families function better in the midst of conflict.
Ross Cheit’s book The Witch-Hunt Narrative highlights the difficulties of prosecuting child sexual abuse. Drawing examples from a single case, Alex A., we examine the ways in which false acquittals of sexual abuse are likely to occur. First, prosecutors tend to question children in ways that undermine their productivity and credibility. Second, prosecutors have difficulty in explaining to juries the dynamics of sexual abuse and disclosure, making children’s acquiescence to abuse and their failure to disclose when abuse first occurs incredible. Third, attorneys undermine children’s credibility by pushing them to provide difficult to estimate temporal and numerical information. A postscript to the Alex A. case illustrates the costs of wrongful acquittals.
Most Dutch foster children live permanently in foster families. It is often assumed that foster children have ambivalent loyalties and attachments to their birth parents and foster parents and are torn between the two. In this study 59 children between 10 and 18 years placed in long term foster care completed standardized questionnaires on the relationship with their parents respectively foster parents and their wellbeing. Results show that, on average, foster children have positive feelings of loyalty and attachment towards both their foster parents and biological parents. However, their wellbeing appeared mainly related with stronger attachment representations towards their foster parents. This study found no indications for a competing position of biological parents and foster parents from the perspective of the child. Nevertheless, foster children who see their foster and biological parents as more vulnerable or experience stronger normative boundaries, feel worse compared to children who experience this feelings less.
The process of separation and divorce demands significant changes among family relationships requiring the ongoing negotiation of roles and responsibilities. Most children of separated parents will continue to want contact with both parents, but a small subgroup of children will align with one parent and simultaneously resist or reject the other. Several names and etiological suggestions have been coined to label these extreme alignments, but many of these oversimplify the complexity of these strained parent-child relationship dynamics. This article critically reviews the research literature using an ecological systems framework to better understand the nature of these complex strained parent-child relationships. Courts, legal, and mental health professionals that work with these families are encouraged to assess and respond to these dynamics using an ecological approach.
Allegations of family violence, child abuse, and alienation often occur in the same contested child custody case. Custody eval-uators often are poorly trained in forensic assessment of allegations of domestic violence and allegations of alienation. The authors of this article suggest language that is designed to differentiate between cases in which the term alienation is appropriate, as in non-abuse cases, and when it is best to use other language such as estrangementsabotaging, and counter productive protective parenting in cases where there is abuse. This article describes a decision tree that is designed to assist evaluators in identifying the causes of multiple allegations of maltreatment and abuse.
Parental alienation is an important phenomenon that mental health professionals should know about and thoroughly understand, especially those who work with children, adolescents, divorced adults, and adults whose parents divorced when they were children. We define parental alienation as a mental condition in which a child—usually one whose parents are engaged in a high-conflict divorce—allies himself or herself strongly with one parent (the preferred parent) and rejects a relationship with the other parent (the alienated parent) without legitimate justification. This process leads to a tragic outcome when the child and the alienated parent, who previously had a loving and mutually satisfying relationship, lose the nurture and joy of that relationship for many years and perhaps for their lifetimes. The authors of this article believe that parental alienation is not a minor aberration in the life of a family, but a serious mental condition. The child's maladaptive behavior—refusal to see one of the parents—is driven by the false belief that the alienated parent is a dangerous or unworthy person. We estimate that 1% of children and adolescents in the U.S. experience parental alienation. When the phenomenon is properly recognized, this condition is preventable and treatable in many instances. There have been scores of research studies and hundreds of scholarly articles, chapters, and books regarding parental alienation. Although we have located professional publications from 27 countries on six continents, we agree that research should continue regarding this important mental condition that affects hundreds of thousands of children and their families. The time has come for the concept of parental alienation to be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V), and the International Classification of Diseases, Eleventh Edition (ICD-11).
This study of custody disputing families tests competing hypothesis about the correlates of children's alignment with one parent and rejection of the other. Hypotheses include: (a) parental alienation by the aligned parent, (b) abuse by the rejected parent, and (c) boundary diffusion or role reversal in the family. The data were coded from clinical research records of 125 children referred from family courts for custody evaluation or custody counseling. The findings support a multi-factor explanation of children's rejection of a parent with both the aligned and rejected parents contributing to the problem, together with role reversal in parent-child relationships.
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.
When mental health, medical, and social work professionals and paraprofessionals make false positive or false negative errors
in their judgments about the validity of allegations of child sexual abuse, the consequences can be catastrophic for the affected
children and adults. Because of the high stakes, practitioners, legal decision makers, and policy makers should have some
idea of the magnitude and variability of error rates in this domain. A novel approach was used to estimate individual error
rates for 110 professionals (psychologists, physicians, social workers, and others) who conduct or participate in forensic
child sexual abuse evaluations. The median estimated false positive and false negative error rates were 0.18 and 0.36, respectively.
Estimated error rates varied markedly from one participant to the next. For example, the false positive error rate estimates
ranged from 0.00 to 0.83. These estimates are based on participants’ self-reported substantiation rates and on their subjective
frequency distributions for the probability of truth for the abuse allegations they evaluate.
KeywordsChild sexual abuse-Forensic evaluation-Judgment-Overconfidence-Accuracy
Parent–child contact problems (PCCP) are among the most vexing and intractable matters encountered in contemporary divorce and post‐divorce litigation. These complex and incendiary family dynamics can confound even the most experienced evaluators, investigators, and jurists, fueling opposing confirmational biases, and sparking a destructive tug‐of‐war between the aligned parent's allegations of abuse and the rejected parent's allegations of alienation. This article describes all such either/or binary arguments as misleading, contrary to the science, and harmful to children. Rather than cast alienation and estrangement as mutually exclusive alternatives, the systemically‐informed professional must consider more than a dozen mutually compatible practical exigencies and relationship dynamics which can converge to cause a child to align with one parent and resist or refuse contact with the other. Together, these variables are described as constituting an ecological model of the conflicted family system. A rubric is proposed to standardize evaluation across time, children, families, and jurisdictions, minimize bias, avoid premature closure, facilitate more comprehensive evaluations, optimize the efficacy of associated interventions, and invite more rigorous future research.
Since their emergence a few years ago, artificial intelligence (AI)-synthesized media—so-called deep fakes—have dramatically increased in quality, sophistication, and ease of generation. Deep fakes have been weaponized for use in nonconsensual pornography, large-scale fraud, and disinformation campaigns. Of particular concern is how deep fakes will be weaponized against world leaders during election cycles or times of armed conflict. We describe an identity-based approach for protecting world leaders from deep-fake imposters. Trained on several hours of authentic video, this approach captures distinct facial, gestural, and vocal mannerisms that we show can distinguish a world leader from an impersonator or deep-fake imposter.
This paper evaluates the Baker Strategies Questionnaire (BSQ; Baker & Chambers, 2011 Baker, A., & Chambers, J. (2011). Adult recall of childhood exposure to parental conflict: Unpacking the black box of parental alienation. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 52(1), 55–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/10502556.2011.534396[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), an instrument intended to assess adult participants’ recollections of childhood experiences of parental alienation. The BSQ is considered in terms of four factors that help determine the quality of a questionnaire and therefore of studies based on that instrument. One factor is validity, the extent to which questionnaire responses correlate with some known accurate measure Second, questionnaire development requires careful attention to management of response bias (Choi & Pak, 2005 Choi, B., & Pak, A. (2005). A catalog of biases in questionnaires. Prevention of Chronic Disease, 2, A13. [Google Scholar]), for example the role of wording. Third, understanding the results of a questionnaire requires evaluation of levels of measurement (Stevens, 1946 Stevens, S. (1946). On the theory of scales of measurement. Science (New York, N.Y.), 103(2684), 677–680. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.103.2684.677[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) Instruments like the BSQ that involve Likert-type scales need to be interpreted with special care. In analyzing the results of a questionnaire study, it is necessary to choose descriptive and inferential statistics that are suitable for the level of measurement used. Although published material about the BSQ does not allow for complete evaluation relative to these four factors, it appears that the BSQ does not meet the usual standards for questionnaires. As a result, reports of correlations between BSQ scores and other participant characteristics (e.g., Verrocchio et al., 2015 Verrocchio, M., Marchetti, D., & Fulcheri, M. (2015). Perceived parental functioning, self-esteem, and psychological distress in adults whose parents are separated/divorced. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 17601760. https://doi.org/10.3389/fp-syg.2015.01760[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) are questionable.
Although the phenomenon that we know as parental alienation (PA) had been described in the mental health and legal literature for many years, it was given its name-parental alienation syndrome-by Richard Gardner in 1985. As time went on, most writers abandoned the use of the word syndrome and simply referred to this mental condition as parental alienation. The definition of PA is a mental state in which a child-usually one whose parents are engaged in a high-conflict separation or divorce-allies strongly with one parent (the favored parent) and rejects a relationship with the other parent (the alienated parent) without a good reason. Of course, it is a major loss for a child to experience the removal of a parent from their life in that manner. The purposes of this commentary are to explain definitions and distinctions related to PA; describe the Five-Factor Model (FFM) for the identification of PA; and offer clinical, legal, and training implications stemming from an understanding of PA.
The Turning Points for Families (TPFF) therapeutic intervention program for severely alienated children and their alienated parent was evaluated to determine whether it was safe, did not cause harm, and led to positive changes in the alienated parent–alienated child relationship. Court orders and video recordings of the 4‐day intervention were reviewed for indications of improvements over the course of the intervention in relational communication, social support and communal coping, which refers to the family members jointly ‘owning’ a problem and proactively taking responsibility for it together. Improvements in the parent–child relationships were noted, and the TPFF helped to improve family members’ communal coping scores. Participation did not lead to negative changes on any measure. This preliminary evidence indicates that TPFF, similar to other therapeutic structural interventions, is a safe and effective treatment option for severely alienated children.
Practitioner points
The Turning Points for Families program is an effective and safe treatment option for families in which severe parental alienation has occurred.
Success of the program is largely contingent on treatment protocol compliance and coordination with family courts.
Transitional objects are those idiosyncratically determined, beloved blankies and stuffed animals that communicate an absent parent’s affection. As such, transitional objects serve the short-term need to cope with separation, and the long-term need to move toward autonomy. This article discusses the value, use, and misuse of transitional objects in the context of coparental conflict. The concept of alienation-by-proxy is introduced. Specific recommendations are provided, including the therapeutic creation and empowerment of transitional objects to assist children experiencing separation anxiety, consideration of the role of transitional objects in child custody evaluations, and the court’s responsibility to encourage litigating parents to respect the child’s needs for transitional objects.
There have been significant advances in understandings and practice related parent–child contact problems (PCCPs), with a growing consensus about some issues and continuing controversy about others. It is widely acknowledged that PCCP cases are most fruitfully understood from a multi‐factorial perspective. While some cases may be totally the “fault” of one parent (a parent perpetrating violence or abuse, or a parent exhibiting alienating behavior), in many situations both parents bear some responsibility: focusing on a single cause is rarely helpful. Most professionals and researchers agree that the challenge in practice is to distinguish between false positives and false negatives for both alienation (or unjustified rejection) and realistic estrangement (justified rejection). There is continuing controversy over whether the concept of “alienation” should be used, especially in court proceedings, and a related disagreement about the extent to which family courts are now failing to respond adequately to cases of intimate partner violence (IPV) or child abuse when alienation is also raised. Continuing education, intentional exploration of alternative hypotheses, and active perspective‐taking will contribute to effective professional involvement. Increased parent education and prevention can play an important role, although for the more severe PCCP cases the family courts system will continue to play a critical role. While more research must be done, given the complexity of issues, conclusive findings are unlikely in the near future. Legislators and family justice professionals must make decisions based on a thorough analysis of each family's circumstances in the context of our present knowledge, taking account of the limits of the law. They will often face the conundrum of making decisions in the face of uncertainty.
The concept of parental alienation (PA) has expanded in popular usage at the same time that it remains mired in controversy about its scientific integrity and its use as a legal strategy in response to an increasing range of issues in family court. In this paper we describe how competing advocacy movements (for mothers, fathers and children) in the family justice field have, over time, helped shape the shifting definitions and widening focal concerns of PA‐ from children who make false allegations of abuse, to those who resist or refuse contact with a parent, to parent relocation, and to the emotional abuse wrecked upon children who are victims of a manipulative parent. In search of common ground for a sound approach to using PA concepts, we argue that the Single Factor model of PA (asserting that an alienating preferred parent is primarily the source of the problem) is inadequate, overly simplistic and misleading. A Single Factor model rests on the fallacy that abuse or poor parenting on the part of either parent have been, or are able to be, ruled out as sufficient reason for the child's rejecting stance. By contrast, multi‐factor models of PA make more useful, valid, differentiated clinical predictions of children's rejection of a parent, informed by basic and applied research on children and families. However, multi‐factor models are complex and difficult to argue in court and to use in assessment and interventions. Suggestions are made for developing intervention‐focused prediction models that reduce the number of factors involved and are applicable across different types of interventions.
Had Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective, the great Sherlock Holmes, actually engaged in deductive reasoning, he would have solved many fewer crimes. In fact, Holmes' logical progression from astute observation to hypotheses is a model of a type of inductive reasoning. This paper argues that mental health professionals tasked to evaluate why a child is resisting/refusing contact with one parent must approach each family the way that Holmes approached each case, without a presumed suspect, moving systematically from detail to hypothesis, well‐versed in the full range of dynamics that may be at play, and erring in favor of parsimony rather than pathology. By contrast, the custody evaluator who approaches these matters through a deductive process, seeking data that support an a priori theory, is vulnerable to confirmatory bias and doing harm to the child whose interests are paramount. The literature concerned with resist/refuse dynamics is reviewed, yielding 13 non‐mutually exclusive variables that evaluators must consider so as to more fully identify why a particular child is resisting or refusing contact with one parent. On this basis, the hybrid model is expanded to include the full spectrum of contributing dynamics. Specific recommendations are made for judicial officers in the interest of writing orders for custody evaluations that minimize the risk of confirmatory bias.
Key Points for the Family Court Community
• Deductive reasoning seeks to confirm or refute an a priori hypothesis
• Deductive reasoning is highly vulnerable to confirmational bias
• Confirmational bias can corrupt and invalidate forensic evaluation to the detriment of all involved
• Resist/refuse dynamics must be understood through an inductive process that is open to all possible hypotheses
• A survey of the literature identifies at least thirteen mutually compatible hypotheses, all of which must be evaluated
• Courts must take care to word orders for forensic family evaluations in a manner that minimizes confirmatory bias and invites inductive investigation
According to the four‐factor model of parental alienation, in order for alienation to be present there must be: (1) a prior positive relationship between the child and the now rejected parent; (2) absence of maltreatment by the rejected parent; (3) use of alienating behaviours by the favoured parent; and (4) presence of behavioural manifestations of alienation in the child. The purpose of the current study was to determine the reliability and validity of the four‐factor model as a model of parental alienation. The study tested the reliability and validity of the four‐factor model by having mental health professionals code vignettes representing a combination of presence and absence of the factors. Reliability was quite high across the vignettes, coders and factors. There was agreement that when all four factors are present the case is alienation and when one or no factor are present it is not alienation. These data support the four‐factor model and suggest avenues for continuing to study the interplay among the factors deemed relevant by mental health professionals in the field of children’s relationships with their divorced parents.
Practitioner points
The four‐factor model of parental alienation is a framework to ensure that information about all parties is factored into custody assessments
The four‐factor model of parental alienation can be used to differentiate alienated from estranged children
The reliability and validity of the four‐factor model of parental alienation will be relevant for professionals providing expert testimony
The use of the term ‘high conflict’ to describe a wide range of family dynamics after separation and divorce has increased significantly over the years. At the moment, no consensus on the definition of high conflict exists. Lack of definitional clarity hinders the ability for legal and mental health professionals to assess, identify, and effectively intervene with this population. Based on a rapid evidence assessment of 65 empirically based social science studies relevant to high conflict, this article positions high-conflict separation and divorce using an ecological transactional model to better understand risk factors and indicators associated with these families. Authors propose a more comprehensive definition that captures the complexity and interactions of various risk factors and indicators on multiple levels. Positioning high-conflict families using an ecological model identifies several points of intervention professionals can use and the fundamental need for collaboration among stakeholders for effective intervention.
Supervised access is typically viewed as a short-term transitional intervention. This study seeks to identify factors that influence clients’ long-term use using mixed-method secondary analysis. Several factors distinguish long-term clients, including ongoing legal proceedings, custodial and noncustodial stated reasons for initiating service, the involvement of child protection services, a pending criminal trial, presence of domestic violence reported at intake, and previous clinical assessments. Implications for practice include exploring the unique needs of long-term clients, creating clear court orders for service, making supervised access part of comprehensive parenting plans, and assisting families to transition from supervised services.
One hundred and nine college students completed an anonymous and confidential survey regarding their childhood exposure to parental alienation strategies by each parent as well as their own actions and attitudes toward each parent. Results revealed statistically significant associations between parental alienation behaviors and behaviors of an alienated child, even after controlling for the quality of parenting of the rejected parent. The findings are discussed in light of attachment theory, social learning theory, and family systems theory.
A subgroup of intractable families, in which a child refuses post separation contact with a parent, perplexes and frustrates professionals who work with them. This article discusses the underlying forces that drive the family's intractability, as well as guidelines for working with the family. The guidelines include specific court orders developed from the very beginning of the case that elaborate the court's stance about goals and expectations for the family, along with specialized individual and family therapies that are undertaken within a framework of planned collaboration with the court. The collaborative team of legal and mental health professionals works in an innovative and active way to structure, support, and monitor the family's progress in resolving the resist/refuse dynamic.
A qualitative retrospective study was conducted of 40 adults who experienced parental alienation as a child. Individuals participated in one-hour semi-structured interviews. Audiotapes were transcribed verbatim and submitted to a content analysis for primary themes and patterns. For this article, findings pertaining to the strategies parents were reported to use to effectively turn the participants against the other parent were analyzed. Results revealed 33 types of strategies, 12 mentioned by at least 20% of the sample 1) general bad mouthing of the other parent, 2) limiting actual contact, 3) withdrawing love/getting angry if participant showed positive regard for targeted parent, 4) bad mouthing targeted parent by saying s/he doesn't love participant, 5) forcing participant to choose, 6) bad mouthing targeted parent by saying s/he is dangerous, 7) confiding in participant about adult relationship 8) limiting mention and photographs of the targeted parent, 9) forcing participant to reject targeted parent 10) limiting contact with/belittling extended family, 11) belittling targeted parent in front of participant, and 12) inducing conflict between participant and targeted parent. These twelve strategies are discussed in the context of attachment theory. Examples of each are provided in order to offer a glimpse into the lives of adult children of parental alienation.
Interest in the problem of children who resist contact with or become alienated from a parent after separation or divorce is growing, due in part to parents' increasing frustrations with the apparent ineffectiveness of the legal system in handling these unique cases. There is a need for legal and mental health professionals to improve their understanding of, and response to, this polarizing social dynamic. This book is a critical, empirically based review of parental alienation that integrates the best research evidence with clinical insight from interviews with leading scholars and practitioners. The text draws upon the growing body of mental health and legal literature to summarize the historical development and controversies surrounding the concept of "alienation" and explain the causes, dynamics, and differentiation of various types of parent-child relationship issues. The chapters review research on prevalence, risk factors, indicators, assessment, and measurement to form a conceptual integration of multiple factors relevant to the etiology and maintenance of the problem of strained parent-child relationships. A differential approach to assessment and intervention is provided. Children's rights, the role of their wishes and preferences in legal proceedings, and the short- and long-term impact of parental alienation are also discussed.
Power assertion is foundational to the authoritative parenting style and the authoritative parenting style is consistently acknowledged to be optimal so that a pejorative view of power assertion per se is unwarranted. In contrast to the “child-centered” presumption that power assertion by parents is detrimental to the well-being of children and bears an antinomian relation to reasoning, I argue that reasoning and confrontive power assertion are independent processes that, when synthesized, account for the benefits of authoritative parenting relative to the other primary parenting styles (authoritarian, permissive, disengaged) in which either or both confrontive power assertion and reasoning are minimal. Directive parenting, a newly identified power-assertive parenting style that is as demanding as the authoritarian style, but is not arbitrary, hostile, or punitive, has also been found to be beneficial. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)
The subjects of this study were 40 consecutive children in a child therapy and evaluation agency, half of whom were seen for reunification therapy and half for other reasons related to parent–child difficulties in the context of high-conflict divorce. Children completed a 28-item paper-and-pencil questionnaire regarding their thoughts and feelings about their parents to assess the degree to which their statements reflected unjustified alienation from one parent and alignment with the other. Responses to the questionnaires were coded by the first author as reflective of alienation or not. Case files were independently reviewed by agency staff for presence of indicated abuse, and clinicians independently rated the children's resistance to treatment services. Findings revealed that presence of alienation was found in all but one reunification therapy case and in only four of the nonreunification cases. In addition, the children who were coded as exhibiting alienation were rated by their clinicians as significantly more resistant to treatment. Only one alienated child had an indicated abuse or neglect finding in the file, as opposed to five in the not-alienated group. These data highlight the unique configuration of behaviors and attitudes of alienated children and contribute to the knowledge base about how to evaluate and identify them.
A survey study was conducted of adults who self-reported having children who were severely alienated from them. The primary research questions addressed were: (1) To what extent were the eight symptoms of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS)-as identified by the construct's originator, Dr. Richard Gardnerreported to be manifested by the alienated children? And (2) holding severity constant, to what degree did the frequency of symptoms vary? Sixty-eight parents reported that the relationship with their children was severely damaged due to the attitudes and actions of the other parent. One question was asked about each of Gardner's eight symptoms (campaign of denigration, frivolous, weak or absurd rationale for the alienation, lack of ambivalence towards the alienating, lack of guilt or remorse about the alienation, borrowed scenarios, independent thinker phenomenon, taking the alienating parent's side in the conflict, and spread of alienation to the extended family of the targeted parent). Additional questions were surveyed to determine whether despite the severity of the alienation, were there moments in which the child was less than completely rejecting and committed to the alienation. Results revealed general support for the presence of the eight symptoms of PAS as well as insight into windows of opportunity when even the most severely alienated child demonstrates some “cracks in the armor,” raising hope for clinical intervention and eventual reunification.
The objective of the current pilot study was to develop a new self-report instrument, the “Alienated Family Relationship Scale” (AFRS), in order to identify the alienated dynamic within the family from the young adult's perspective. The AFRS comprised three sections: Interparental Conflict, Alienating Attitude of the father toward the mother and of the mother toward the father, and Alienated Attitude of the young adult toward both parents. The sample consisted of 493 undergraduate students of which 417 were from intact families (IF) and 76 were from divorced-separated families (DF). Results suggested good reliability, as well as convergent and construct validity. The AFRS also discriminated between IF and DF groups. The implication of the present study for understanding alienation and for new avenues of research were discussed.
A sample of 50 college students responded to a questionnaire measuring perceptions of alienating behaviors on the part of their parents and their current relationship with each parent. Data revealed a higher degree of alienating behavior by divorced parents when compared to non-divorced parents. Mothers and fathers were rated about equally likely to engage in such behaviors. A higher incidence of alienated parent-child relationships in divorced homes approached, but did not reach, statistical significance. Students who were alienated from one parent report higher levels of alienating behaviors on the part of their parents. The results suggest that parental alienating behaviors, and the phenomenon of a child becoming alienated from a parent after divorce, are departures from the norm and worthy of attention and concern.
Few ideas have captured the attention and charged the emotions of the public, of mental health and legal professionals as thor- oughly as the concept of parental alienation and Gardner's (1987) Paren- tal Alienation Syndrome. For all of this controversy, the alienation concept stands outside developmental theory and without firm empirical support. The present paper explores alienation and its conceptual coun- terpart, alignment, as the necessary and natural tools of child-caregiver attachment (Ainsworth & Wittig, 1969; Bowlby, 1969) and of family system cohesion. This conceptual foundation offers developmentalists, clinicians, and family law professionals alike a common language and
One hundred and five undergraduate or graduate students completed a computer-based survey regarding their recollection of exposure to 20 parental alienation behaviors, current depression, and current self-esteem. Results revealed that 80% of the sample endorsed at least 1 of the 20 parental alienation behaviors, indicating some exposure to parental alienation, with 20% of the sample reporting that 1 parent tried to turn them against the other parent. Participants whose parents divorced or separated before they were 18 years old were much more likely to report exposure to parental alienation strategies than participants whose parents remained married during their childhood. No relationship was found between recalled exposure to parental alienation and current depression or self-esteem.
This chapter begins with an overview of the AAI (Adult Attachment Interview) protocol and a summary of the adult attachment categories. Here the specific relations between parental AAI and infant strange situation responses are noted. Next the development of the AAI and of the scoring and classification system are considered from a historical perspective, culminating in a discussion of the greater emphasis now placed upon the analysis of the discourse properties of the interview. These properties were later found to be consonant with the principles of cooperative, rational discourse described by the linguistic philosopher P. Grice (1975, 1989). Third, AAI training institutes and their effects are mentioned briefly. Fourth, a review of present and emerging empirical findings is provided. Finally, several common queries and sources of confusion regarding the AAI and its analysis are addressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
With the divorce rate rising and related child visitation disputes becoming an increasingly difficult issue before the courts, supervised visitation programs have proliferated over the last decade. The literature demonstrates that ongoing contact between children and both parents following separation and/or divorce is important for children's socio-emotional adjustment and positive child/parent relations. However, there is a paucity of literature demonstrating a relationship between supervised visitation programs and child/parent relationship outcomes. Based on the lack of outcome research the authors argue for a second generation of research regarding intended and unintended consequences of supervised visitation. This article reviews and synthesizes the current literature, highlighting strengths, limitations, significant findings and proposes a critical need for evidence-based research.
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.
Folie à deux is defined as an identical or similar mental disorder affecting two or more individuals, usually the members of a close family. Two case reports of this condition are presented with a brief review of the literature. Prompt recognition of this condition is an essential step in the management. The majority of patients with folie à deux require multiple treatments including separation, antipsychotics, individual and group psychotherapy, and family therapy.