to seeing a childhood through. It affects the rich and the poor, the therapists and the family lawyers alike. Why? Because it has been O.K.; because alienating behaviors come with near absolute amnesty from consequences. Throughout history, anger, ignorance and absolute power can be identified as key ingredients in countless violations of human rights.
Parental alienation is especially cruel because many of the proponents’ arguments are ironic: evidence* shows that the alienating parents are usually less-fit to parent than the alienated ones, whether that is due to personality disorders or simply to using the children as pawns for personal gain. And ironically, it is often the alienators that are the ‘dead-beat parents’ because they cry “poor” rather than securing a stable environment for the children, all the while relying too heavily on alimony or child support from the parent they cut out of the children’s lives.
It almost begs the question: is our society really drowning in no-good, dead-beat parents, or is it manufacturing them, like it manufactured deformed children in 17th century Europe, to create “the other”? To satisfy the human craving for a “them” that is distinctly different from “us”?
At times, the system is hard to change because despite “unintended adverse con-sequences,” it achieves some intended good aims. However, it is impossible to see any benefit of institutionalized parental alienation. By “crying wolf” over alleged hordes of child molesters, wife-beaters, addicts and dead-beats, we diminish the grave reality of true victims of neglect, abuse and violence. What’s more, we squander court resources that could be invested in identifying and addressing actual wrongdoings. And in all the noise, we come to accept a horrendous injustice as the norm.
As long as we obsess with individuality, surely there are many ways to be a good parent; many ways to raise kids in love. So we must suspend our own outdated, conflicting views and shed a floodlight onto the wrong that is parental alienation, and we must not stand by when we suspect it is taking place. Because it achieves nothing worth keeping. Because it is a blatant violation of human rights. And because it is taking lives, and leaving mere shells of the lives it doesn’t take.
Since the last issue of Parent Survival Guide, many of the countries where our readers reside have celebrated Mothers’ and Fathers’ days. For our readers, these – like all family holidays – are tainted, if not altogether devastating. Many have not seen their children in years, and the rest spend only crumbs of compromised time with them. All attest to undermined relationships. And all are expected to get up every day, participate in society, and not skip a beat while pretending – so as to not disturb the dominant view of the world – that their hearts are not broken.
Most of you, our readers, are paying the price every day for crimes committed against you. You are victims of cruel, systemic injustice that has been allowed to rage for too long.
With your support, Simply Parent will not rest until this cruelty is relegated to the pages of history books, and until your children may be able to recognize it for themselves. We work towards a wave of reconciliations commen-surate only with the magnitude of suffering you know too well.
Until then, we beg you not to loose heart. Take care of yourselves, but do not give up on yourselves or your children, because your love matters. You matter.
P.S. - If you have not yet completed the survey whose preliminary results we reference, please do, whatever your experience. Help us understand the impact of parental alienation on you, and by doing that, build an irrefutable argument for why it can no longer be ignored.
* Parents Acting Badly: How institutions and societies promote the alienation of children from their loving families. J. Harman, PhD and Z. Biringen, PhD. 2017.
6 summer 2017 PSG
Throughout history, anger, ignorance and absolute power can be identified as key ingredients in countless violations of human rights.