 
| Current
Research Current
research is just beginning to identify and catch up to the
social changes around our family structure that have taken
place in the last number of decades. The major victims in
all of this are our children. They are being placed at risk
and deprived of two parents, not only by alienating parents,
but also by a legal system which fails to understand the
implication of Parental Alienation and is ill equipped to
deal with it. |
|
DEFINITION OF PARENTAL ALIENATION
Prepared by
Theo J.
Boere, Co-President MARS BC
Parental Alienation is a distinctive family response to divorce in
which the child becomes aligned with one parent and preoccupied with
unjustified and/or exaggerated denigration of the other, target
parent.
In severe cases, the child's once
love-bonded relationship with the rejected/target parent is
destroyed.
Since first
being identified by Dr. Richard Gardner as Parental Alienation
Syndrome or PAS, much controversy has surrounded PAS, as to whether
it is really an identifiable syndrome..
Debate continues to rage as to its legitimacy as a real syndrome,
but it is not our intention to enter into that debate. Whether it is
identified as Parental Alienation Syndrome, or simply as parental
alienation, or a multitude of other related psychiatric disorders,
it is simply our intention to address the problem. Whether or not
one chooses to use Gardner's terminology, the problems posed by
these cases to families, professionals and the courts are very real.
Reluctance to consider Parental Alienation by name, along with the
diagnostic and interventions it entails, may however contribute to
the perpetuation of the problem in a variety of ways.
Depending on the severity of the alienation, a child may exhibit all
or only some of the following behaviors.
It is the cluster of these symptoms that prompted Gardner to
consider them as a syndrome.
 | The child is aligned with
the alienating parent in a campaign of denigration against the
target parent, with the child making active contributions; |
| Rationalizations for
deprecating the target parent are often weak, frivolous or
absurd; |
| Animosity toward the
rejected parent lacks the ambivalence normal to human
relationships; |
| The child asserts that
the decision to reject the target parent is his or her own, also
referred to as the "independent thinker" phenomenon;
|
| The child reflexively
supports the parent with whom he or she is aligned; |
| The child expresses
guiltless disregard for the feelings of the target or hated
parent; |
| Borrowed scenarios are
present, i.e., the child's statements reflect themes and
terminology of the alienating parent; |
| Animosity is spread to
the extended family and others associated with the hated parent. |
Parental Alienation or a similar type of
behavioral acting out by divorcing parents has become a pervasive
aspect of divorce in our society.
Clawar and Rivlin (Reading List
#7) found that parental alienation was practiced to varying degrees
by 80%
of divorcing parents,
with 20 percent engaging in such behaviors with their children at
least once a day.
According to Johnston (Reading List #8,9,39),
43%
of children they examined were
in
strong alignments
with an alienating parent and
29%
in
mild alignments.
These figures approach
Gardner's estimate that
90% of the children he has
assessed in custody evaluations exhibit varying degrees of PAS.
According
to Statistics Canada there were 69,088 divorces in Canada in 1998.
In the 1996 census the average persons per family was 3.1 people.
This would equate to 1.1 children per family. This would indicate
that approximately 75,000 children were affected by divorce in 1998,
not including children of common law marriages. If Parental
Alienation was in effect in only 20% of these divorces, 15,000
children are affected annually. If we used even higher percentages,
as some studies suggest that some degree of Parental Alienation is
active in 80-90% of divorce cases, then we are speaking of over
60,000 children annually. That is 600,000 children each decade and
that’s just in Canada. According to Statistics Canada, in 1998,
approximately one third of divorce cases involved child custody
orders. These orders concerned 37,851 children. Child custody orders
are an indication of high conflict divorce. We believe that we can
safely draw the conclusion that thousands of children in Canada are
affected by Parental Alienation annually.
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|
| View the
City of Nanaimo's Proclamation
of Parental Alienation Day
Here |
| View the
City of Vancouver's
Proclamation of Parental Alienation Day
Here |
|
PRESS RELEASE
Member of Parliament Maurice Vellacott (Saskatoon-Wanuskewin)
releases
results of new equal
shared parenting poll
Here |
| Child Abuse
Parental
Alienation is
destructive irrespective of the gender of the alienating
parent and is considered to be a form of child abuse.
Children are growing up without one parent and are being
psychologically damaged in the process. These children are
acting out their confusion, anger, and frustrations in many
ways. For example, boys, in the teenage years, are often
prone to violent, self destructive behaviors related to
drugs, car thefts, robbery, gang behavior, and suicide.
Girls, in the teenage years, are prone to similar kinds of
self destructive behaviors, including drugs, gang behavior,
and sexual promiscuity. |
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