Parental Alienation: The Innocent Eyes of a Custody Storm

Stories of parental alienation in child custody disputes that leave one parent in the dark and an innocent child with irreversible repercussions may sound like faraway scenarios from shows like 20/20 and Dateline, but according to renowned psychologist Amy J. L. Baker, these tragic tales hold real-life truths. “When I interviewed 40 adults who gave up one parent in order to please the other, they talked about very profound negative effects,” says the author of Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties that Bind. “It’s a form of emotional abuse to manipulate a child to reject a parent who does not deserve to be rejected,” says Baker. There’s no question in my mind,” she adds.

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) was coined in the 1980s by psychiatrist Richard A. Gardner, and is now under consideration for the next revision of The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. According to Baker, “PAS is the term used to describe children who reject one parent because of the emotional manipulation and thought-reform strategies of one parent.” While the idea of diagnosing it as a syndrome is openly debated amongst mental-health professionals, parental alienation is a widely acknowledged reality.

“It’s a form of emotional abuse to manipulate a child to reject a parent who does not deserve to be rejected.” – psychologist Amy J. L. Baker

Baker says that a child suffering from PAS displays very distinct symptoms from a child who is actually being emotionally or physically abused. Kids who are manipulated often campaign irrational hatred towards the alienated parent and provide “weak, frivolous and absurd reasons for the denigration,” whereas truly abused kids typically blame themselves and “don’t exhibit the same black-and-white thinking.”

So how do they do it? How does one parent make a child hate the other? What could possibly cause a kid to completely and unfoundedly cut off their kin? These are the types of questions that Baker sought to answer while interviewing a pool of adults who say they turned against one parent to please the other. While several strategies surfaced, Baker boiled her extensive list down to 17. Badmouthing, limiting contact, interfering with communications, asking the child to keep secrets, removing all photographs of the other parent and referring to a step-parent as mom or dad are just some of the behaviours that were reiterated. “The message that [the child] is given by the parent they have a relationship with is: ‘I will only love you as long as you reject that other parent,’” says Baker.

These conditional relationships can cause tremendous guilt, hurt and confusion in the child’s adult life. Among other things, Baker advises alienated parents to get educated immediately and seek guidance from mental health and legal professionals who understand parental alienation. “The problem is that most parents don’t know about this stuff until it’s too late,” she says.

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