Parental Alienating Behaviors are Family Violence
What is family violence?
Family violence refers to all types of abuse that occur in families, including physical, sexual, psychological, and financial abuse, as well as neglect.
What are parental alienating behaviors?
Parental alienating behaviors are a parent’s persistent use of patterns of behaviors over time to harm the child’s relationship with their other parent. Alienating parents use many different behaviors, such as badmouthing the alienated parent to the child and others, interfering with their contact, and enlisting the child as an “ally” against them.
Parental alienating behaviors are child abuse
Making a child believe a parent abandoned and does not love them, or that the parent is dangerous or bad, is psychological abuse. Alienated children’s developmental needs are also often neglected by alienating parents. In severe cases, children need protection from these psychologically abusive behaviors.
Parental alienating behaviors are intimate partner violence
Parental alienating behaviors are direct and indirect attacks made by an alienating parent toward the alienated parent to harm and control them. The children are used as weapons in these attacks, and they become collateral damage in the process. Domestic violence researchers label these same behaviors as a form of coercive control.
Parental alienating behaviors are coercively controlling
The alienating parent’s intent is to manipulate and control the alienated parent’s actions and outcomes. The alienated parent experiences negative outcomes if they do not comply with the alienating parent’s demands or threats, such as not being able to see their children. The coercively controlling behavior of the alienating parent leads to their having greater control and dominance over the alienated parent, limits the alienated parent’s ability to make decisions, and undermines their parental authority.
Most families affected by parental alienation are not "hybrid cases"
Compared to other forms of abuse, coercive controlling behaviors are not often reciprocated by the victim. This form of abuse creates power imbalances such that the victim has little power or influence in the family. Describing such families as “hybrids” implies that both parents are to blame—the alienated parent is then blamed for being thevictim of the alienating parent’s coercive controlling behaviors.
