Parental Alienation: Custody Courts and a Controversial Theory
Parental-alienation claims have found an audience in family courts. (📷:judgegiljones) P arental alienation is a theory born in divorce battles: it alleges that one parent (usually the custodial parent) is “brainwashing” or manipulating the child to reject the other parent . In practice, it’s most often raised by a parent (often the father) after the other parent (often the mother) accuses him of abuse. The accusation says: the abuse claims are false, part of a strategy to alienate the child. Mental health professionals largely reject this idea as junk science , but courts nonetheless hear it. In theory it is supposed to be gender-neutral (any parent could allegedly “alienate”) but in practice it almost always echoes the old notion of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) , a concept invented by psychiatrist Richard Gardner in the 1980s. Gardner’s PAS portrayed mothers as “hysterical” or irrational and advocated treating rejecting children by giving custody to the accused father an...