It was also used in John Huston's 1982 film Annie, spoken by Eleanor Roosevelt as Annie sings "Tomorrow" to Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House in order to get Oliver Warbucks' begrudging support for New Deal policies he opposes. [41][38] The scientific validity of this therapy,[42] and whether it may properly be considered by a court, is in dispute. 39, 73. [4][5][6] In debate, however, it is a plea for pity that is used as an appeal to emotion, and therefore it becomes a logical fallacy. About the Author. In family cases, the welfare of the child is always paramount and previously where the child was settled with one parent, even where there had been parental alienation, the court was reluctant to act. [66] One complicating factor for research is that high numbers of parents involved in high conflict custody disputes engage in alienating or indoctrinating behaviors, but only a small proportion children become alienated.[16]. as a tactic used in an attempt to end discussion by invoking an unanswerable argument. The child engages in a campaign of denigration against the alienated parent; The child offers frivolous rationalizations for criticisms that the child directs at the alienated parent; The child displays a lack of ambivalence or "splitting" in relation to the alienated parent, and gravitates to an enmeshed relationship with one parent while strongly rejecting the other; The child demonstrates the independent-thinker phenomenon, asserting that the child's opinions about the rejected parent are the child's own opinions and not the result of the influence of the favored parent; The child expresses reflexive support for the preferred parent; The child does not display guilt over the treatment of the alienated parent; The child uses borrowed scenarios, making negative comments about the rejected parent that are identical to those made by the favored parent; and. [27] Noting that it has been used by Democrats and Republicans alike in the United States,[27] Reagan called the tactic "obvious political BS". [79], Lorandos, D., W. Bernet and S.R.

[16], Some mental health professionals argue that severe parental alienation should be established as a form of emotional abuse and domestic violence. [6], Proponents of parental alienation assert that it is primarily motivated by one parent's desire to exclude the other parent from their child's life. [17] No diagnostic criteria have been proposed that can be applied to determine if a child's feelings toward a parent are irrational or disproportionate to the actions or behavior of the alienated parent. References to this work on external resources.

Some researchers thus use "preferred" rather than "alienating" parent and "non-preferred" rather than "alienated", "rejected", or "targeted" parent. One theory of motivation suggests that parental alienation may occur when divorce triggers reenactment of a parent's childhood feelings of inadequacy or abandonment, and causes alienating parents to reenact psychological processes experienced during their own childhood. [74], The National Coalition Against Parental Alienation[75] is a nonprofit organization that was organized to increase awareness of parental alienation. A complete sentence has at least a subject and a main verb to state (declare) a complete thought. As multiple factors are generally involved in human behavior, they assert that without direct evidence it is not appropriate to infer manipulation or exploitation by one parent as the cause of a child's preference for one parent over the other. [21], The theory of parental alienation has been asserted within legal proceedings as a basis for awarding custody to a parent who alleges estrangement, or to modify custody in favor of that parent. [77] The American Professional Society on Abuse of Children (APSAC) has at the time of this writing posted on its website a recommendation against using the parental alienation concept or claiming that when a child rejects a parent, emotional abuse by the preferred parent has taken place. ). "[13][14][15] during a contentious debate by citizens of the fictional town of Springfield. [7] Some assert that parental alienation should be diagnosable in children as a mental disorder. The psychological community has not accepted parental alienation as a diagnosable mental condition. [18] Lovejoy's comic use of the phrase on The Simpsons[16] satirized its use in public discourse. [20] Bruenig also cited the labeling of NBC's refusal to broadcast a movie trailer about abortion as "think-of-the-children-ism". [40], Simpsons writer Bill Oakley said in the 2005 DVD commentary on the episode that the motivation for the phrase on the show was to emphasize how "think of the children" was used in debate; irrelevant, it sidetracked discussion from the original issues.