—and Policy must catch up
Parental alienation (PA) is not just a private family dispute but a structural social phenomenon. It is actively reshaping family relationships, family narratives, and the future configuration of families.
How is Parental Alienation a Problem?
One parent uses PA behaviours (PABs) to manipulate a child into rejecting the other parent without reasonable grounds. PA theory, practice and research have reached a turning point; it is now a distinct field. It is moving beyond a purely “problem-fixing” stance. Instead, the PA field could lead the public dialogue on family narratives and configurations that meet children’s developmental and relational needs now and into the future.
Parental Alienation and Families
The PA field is situated in the broader context of rapidly evolving family structures. These evolving structures include blended families, single-parent households, and increasingly diverse parenting networks. It leads to thinking about how these shifts can make relationships more fluid and, therefore, more vulnerable to manipulation through coercive narratives.
What Type of Abuse is Parental Alienating Behaviour (PAB)?
PA behaviours are a form of power exercised through discourse, where one adult uses discursive strategies to normalise vilification and exclusion within the family system. Crucially, family law and child support settings can provide perverse incentives; these incemtives unintentionally reward vilification and exclusion and destabilise family moralities.
The PA Field Challenges Anti-Family Initiatives
The PA field brings to light adverse family relationship moralities. These anti-family moralities include:
- an unsettling norm where the State enforces child support while the parent receiving child support coaches the child to hate or reject the paying parent, and
- where social and legal agencies no longer consider parent-child relationships and a child’s relationship with family members as central to children’s development and welfare.
Public Policy and legislation should stop treating alienation as an oddity to be contested. Our social and legal agencies should treat it as a societal issue affecting children’s long-term health. It is time for structural reforms to ensure that children can maintain meaningful relationships with both parents, where safe, and for our institutions, such as family law, to repair family relationships rather than adjudicate conflicts about who cares for the children. The message from the PA field is clear; it is time to recenter families and family relationships in society.
For more information: download the full article at: https://doi.org/10.31124/advance.175869940.09833509/v1
Or at https://research.usc.edu.au/esploro/outputs/991198251002621
Similar Posts:
- Ethics Approval for Research into Parental Alienation as a Social Phenomenon
- Sociological Implications of Social Alienation and its Demon Spawn Parental Alienation in Families
- False Allegations and Parental Alienation in Australian Family Law
- Important Changes for Parental Alienation Services in Australia
- Progress on Research into The Lived Experience of Parental Alienation in a Social Context
Leave a Reply