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A California representative, Democrat Jim Beall, has reintroduced legislation as Assembly Bill 612 (AB 612) to ban the discussion of parental alienation in child custody evaluations. California judges, psychologists, and family law attorneys all oppose this legislation because they know that parental alienation is a real problem that is harming children in many families, especially in high-conflict divorces. So do the many California parents who have been alienated from their children. And so do the grown children who are victims of parental alienation and recognize it for the damage their alienating parent caused in their own lives.

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It’s quite possible that many of the filings for Domestic Violence Temporary Restraining Orders (DV TRO — also known as DV protective orders) in the US are based upon false claims and are stunts to persecute a spouse and/or bolster a child custody case.
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(Click here for more coverage on parental alienation.)

Psychologist Dr. Robert M. Gordon has testified in many court cases about the form of child abuse known as parental alienation. One of the things that frustrates him is that advocacy groups such as NOW (National Organization of Women) dispute the existence of parental alienation and Parental Alienation Syndrome to the extent that it becomes difficult to talk in court about a very real phenomenon backed by research. Yet most of these articles disputing that PAS even exists don’t mention research. Many are full of anti-father diatribes, others of individual cases in which PAS was claimed by an abusive father and the alienation wasn’t really PAS but the children’s legitimate reaction to child abuse.
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People who suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder are often sexually promiscuous. They may have learned early in life that sex is a way to control or manipulate others, possibly because they were sexually abused as children. Borderline women may have unusual fascinations regarding sex with “unavailable” men that lead them to affairs with men who already have relationships and might even be married.

Borderline women have a unique feature that Borderline men don’t have — they can become pregnant. As Borderlines often have abandonment issues, behaviors that many of them exhibit are to conceive a child with a man whom they have told they are using birth control, can’t get pregnant, or some other distortion to reassure the man that they aren’t going to inadvertently father a child.

But the Borderline woman may simply be lying to cover up her intent to become pregnant. She may not be taking any birth control pills or it may be prime time during her menstrual cycle for getting pregnant. She might have punched a whole in her supply of condoms so they won’t work. She might even use the contents of a discarded condom to impregnate herself after her “catch” has fallen asleep or left. The end result is that a man who has a relationship with a Borderline woman has a very high chance of having children with her without his consent.
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(Click here for more coverage on parental alienation.)

The article to which this post links was written by Shari Schrieber, a child of parental alienation who is now a therapist. She loved her father very much, and felt intense pain as her mother cut him out of her life starting at age five. Her mother falsely accused her father of molestation and succeeded at mostly driving her father out of her life.

In retrospect, she wishes the courts had assigned custody of her to her father rather than to her mentally ill mother. She believes that her mother’s inability to emotionally provide for her as a child caused many problems in her life that took years for her to overcome. These problems could have been avoided if the courts would have had her live with her mentally healthier father. He wanted to be involved in her life, but the courts and her mother refused to permit it. Instead, they insisted she should live with her mother even though her mother was mentally ill and caused enormous damage because of it.

In the article, Schreiber mentions how personality disordered parents are often unable to emotionally provide for their children. Such parents may be able to meet basic physical needs of the children such as shelter and food. But their children develop low self-esteem, inability to trust, inability to have healthy relationships, and a variety of mental health problems themselves as a direct result of their primary parental relationship being with an emotionally chaotic or unavailable mentally ill person.

Click below to read the article:

THROWAWAY DADS; Children’s struggle for wholeness in the wake of divorce.

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New York Firefighter Richard Smulczewski has two teenage daughters. His ex, Susan Smulczewski, committed parental alienation against their two daughters, brainwashing them into hating their father, and blocking access to the kids. She was found to be committing parental alienation by the courts and deemed an unfit mother. The court remanded custody of the daughters to their father. Yet the mother has refused to comply with court orders, continued to alienate their daughters against him, and continues to have custody.
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(Click here for more coverage on parental alienation.)

Here’s an interview with Jayne Major, Ph.D., a Los Angeles psychologist and educator advocating means to stop parental alienation behaviors and heal the damage they cause. In the interview, she answers common questions about parental alienation. She describes the range from mild bad-mouthing to sociopathic intent to brainwash children to hate the other parent. She notes that in severe alienation cases, the target parents (those who are alienated against) must learn to stand up for the truth if they are to have hope of not losing their children permanently to the brainwashing of the alienating parent. She notes that the most dangerous alienating parents often have one or more personality disorders:

Few lawyers, judges, nor laypersons are able to recognize seriously disturbed people who look and often act “normal.” Yet, their numbers are large and the damage they do to other parents, their children, and society is staggering. Sociopaths are cruel—without moral conscience, empathy, sympathy, or compassion. Their purpose is to win by domination. Harvard psychologist Martha Stout, in her book The Sociopath Next Door, states that one in twenty-five people is a sociopath. Furthermore, there is an estimated 20% of the general population with personality disorders. Those individuals who are the most dangerous are described in the DSM IV, Axis II Cluster B. The descriptive labels of these disorders are borderline, narcissistic, histrionic, and anti-social.

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(Click here for more coverage on parental alienation.)

Actor (“30 Rock”) and author (“A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce“) Alec Baldwin speaks September 22, 2008, to The Commonwealth Club of California about parents turning their children against a former spouse.

Our Review of Baldwin’s Book

Book Review: A Promise To Ourselves, by Alec Baldwin

Sheena Berg’s Review of Baldwin’s Book

Blended-Families.com‘s Sheena Berg briefly reviews Alec Baldwin’s book A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce.

Other Reviews of A Promise to Ourselves

Book Review: Alec Baldwin’s “A Promise to Ourselves“

Alec Baldwin: A Promise to Ourselves

Alec Baldwin’s A Promise to Ourselves Captures the Brutality of Divorce Wars

Divorce American Style (review by New York Times)

Recommended Books on Parental Alienation

The October 3, 2008, episode of Dr. Phil covered the topic of parental alienation. Here’s a link to information and video excerpts from the episode.

Dr. Phil: “Brainwashed by My Parents”

Also, here’s a video on Parental Alienation for our readers in United Kingdom where there is no formal legal recognition of parental alienation:

(Click here for more coverage on parental alienation.)

Psychologists Dr. Amy J. L. Baker and Dr. Katherine Andre have written a new book entitled “I Don’t Want to Choose: How Middle School Kids Can Avoid Choosing One Parent Over the Other”. This work is targeted for an audience of middle school children who want to keep both parents involved in their lives. It teaches children to use their critical thinking skills to avoid being duped or pressured into picking one parent over another.

What is Parental Alienation?

Parental alienation involves the systematic and frequently repeated denigration of one parent by the other and blocking of access to the parent who is the target of denigration. This is not just a simple and occasional comment such as “mommy can be so annoying sometimes” or “it is frustrating that daddy doesn’t keep his schedule”. While those comments are inappropriate in front of children as they tend to make children anxious and feel like they might have to take sides, infrequent comments like these probably do not constitute parental alienation.
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