Parental Alienation 2007

Welcome parents, legal and psychological communities, medical and educational practioners.

When I first began work on parental alienation and later developed this website, only a few other parental alienation websites existed. There was a strong need to help to educate, define and name parental alienation. We were still in the first generation of thinking. (First generation work brings a problem into existence by identifying and naming it.)

The 1980’s insightful work of Richard Gardner, M.D. on Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) raised the public level of awareness and gave it a name.

Even then, alienation tactics were nothing new. As long as people have held grudges and been motivated by hatred, while calling it “protecting the child,” alienation has existed. When a parent dishonestly turns a child against the other parent through lies, bribery, manipulation, and other deceitful tactics, alienation exists. When a parent pressures and emotionally and psychologically batters a child to align with him or her and to turn against the other parent, not only is there a severe disruption in the parent-child relationship, but in its most severe form, the symptoms of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) are observed.

During the 1990’s, PAS was contested as controversial, largely because of misunderstanding, but it continued to be brought to the attention of courts, psychological and legal communities. Now it is commonly referred to as parental alienation and the most severe form called PAS.

Now we find ourselves in the second generation of parental alienation thinking. It is a productive period in which many professionals and parents are working together to make parental alienation more understandable, especially to those for whom it is still an unfamiliar term. We understand that it is not just one “bad” individual who maintains it, but a system in which everyone contributes to it, even at times, the targeted parent. Therefore, all these communities must work together with families to change it by creating a system that not only does not support it, but one which does not allow it. In fact, there may need to be sanctions against alienators the way that there are consequences for child abusers and and perpetrators of domestic violence.

I like to use the words from a song I heard Michael John Poirier sing. The song,

“Somebody Say” has several lines that really struck my heart.

Maybe it’s time to move that mountain…

It takes courage to change darkness into day…

Maybe it’s time to move that mountain away.

And that is what I hope our second generation of thinking will do. With all of us from our varied professions working with alienated families we will learn to move the mountain that supports the system that abuses children and creates parental alienation.