Academics and family law practitioners have debated the concept of parental alienation for some time now, all aiming to provide guidance on how such cases should be managed.
The Children and Family Court Advisory And Support Service (CAFCASS) have themselves sought to come up with strategies for their Family Court Advisors to assist in identifying and managing cases where parental alienation may be an issue. The aims are laudable: to secure better results for the children involved, and the families who are exposed to these harmful behaviours.
The main hindrance to these efforts thus far, however, is that there is no solid definition of what parental alienation really is. If you can’t define a problem, you can’t manage it, and if you can’t manage it, how can you possibly solve it?
This, argues Ian McArdle of Atlantic Chambers, Liverpool, is the conundrum facing the Family Justice System when dealing with allegations of parental alienation.
While the concept of parental alienation dates back to the 1970s, he says it wasn’t until Richard Gardner, the American child-psychiatrist wrote prolifically on the issue (to much criticism) attempted to introduce parental alienation as a syndrome in 1985. Gardner defined it as a “disturbance in which children are obsessed with deprecation and criticism of a parent – denigration that is unjustified and/or exaggerated.”
Since that time there has been literature across a variety of disciplines which seeks to examine the effects of parental alienation and its associated syndrome.
It is worth noting that while “parental alienation” and “parental alienation syndrome” are often used interchangeably there are said to be more extensive “symptoms” of a syndrome, and neither the US nor the WHO recognise the “syndrome” such as it is.
Much of the aforementioned literature is written on the understanding that the reader is already aware of what parental alienation is, or accept what others believe it to be. The same goes for parental alienation syndrome (PAS).
CAFCASS identified the need for a greater understanding of the concept as they are often called upon by the Family Court to assist with such cases, and as such have adopted a working definition of the term. Some argue, however, that this working definition highlights a significant difficulty in moving on the debate on the topic or offering any impactful assistance to the Court.
CAFCASS states that “parental alienation” is:
“When a child’s resistance/hostility towards one parent is not justified and is the result of psychological manipulation by the other parent.”
Of course, “psychological manipulation” brings to bear connotations that parental alienation is purely a psychological issue, aligning it with Gardner’s assertion that it is indeed a syndrome. Like Gardner, however, proponents of his work have found their research subject to criticism and even judicial rejection in the UK.
Given that there are many critics of Gardner’s original assertion that it is a syndrome from both psychological and legal standpoints; and given that neither the ICD-11 (World Health Organisation classification of diseases) or DSM-V (American Psychiatric Board list of disorders) include the syndrome, largely due to a lack of research; it is hardly surprising that some argue that an organisation such as CAFCASS adopting this working definition only serves to further obfuscate the issue, especially when CAFCASS Cymru review found that there is no agreed definition of parental alienation.
In McArdle’s early research it became apparent that “experts” in the area seemed to use the terms “parental alienation” and “parental alienation syndrome interchangeably, despite the fact that they were very different beasts. CAFCASS’s definition seems to merge the two concepts with the reference to “psychological manipulation”.
As such, McArdle contends that there should be a clear definition that does not appear to conflate the two, especially given that the international directories for mental illness have so far rejected the syndrome’s inclusion.
The courts have acknowledged that cases where there are allegations of parental alienation place a huge demand on the court’s resources, and particularly so at a time when the Family Court is facing significant pressure.
Mcardle says: “The fact that many of the reported cases in which parental alienation is said to be a factor take the form of a ‘post-mortem of the lost parental relationship’ provides further support for the argument that more work is required in order to arrive at a clearer, less controversial definition and one that will offer the court and the families it serves the opportunity to manage such cases effectively, yet efficiently.
“However, the burden placed upon the courts is unlikely to lessen whilst arguments persist as to what parental alienation actually is.”
Parental alienation allegations are not going to stop, and evidence shows that fractured relationships such as these can and will create difficulties for children both at the time and further into their adult life and relationships. If the Family Justice System is to garner better outcomes for children and their families where these allegations are made, a greater understanding is required.
Our current approach, from a legal perspective, is the very antithesis to our usual modus operandi – we are attempting to solve a problem that we do not yet fully understand, or even have solidly defined.
How can we hope to solve the problem of these allegations and assess them correctly, if we don’t understand what this problem is?
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