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Parental alienation and the unregulated experts shattering children’s lives
- mmastrac 4y agoDivorce is a messy process and the laws around it have become incredibly messed up from trying to handle a ridiculous number of nuanced situations with a single broadsword. Make pre-nup agreements a requirement to get married. It's really the only fair way to handle the incredible universe of situations.
- lokar 4y agoA pre-nup can't really address the best interests of children. They are not property to be negotiated.
- mmastrac 4y agoPre-nups don't deal solely with property. They also an agreement on how two parties will behave should things go bad. In addition, by pre-negotiating the financial considerations, the two parties might better be able to negotiate what's truly in the best interests of the children instead of weaponizing them.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- YPPH 4y agoIn what jurisdiction? I find this hard to believe. It makes no sense to permit parents to agree in advance as to who should have parental responsibility. Things change, particularly when divorce occurs, and the best interests of the child is what matters - not what's agreed to beforehand.
- sokoloff 4y agoI think the idea is that it sets an initial post-divorce set of conditions. From there, both parties could agree to do something different that was more in the interests of the children and/or the adults, but by having a written set of indicative initial conditions, you hope to reduce the cost, stress, and animosity of the subsequent divorce. (Is it perfect? Of course not. Can it be way, way better than nothing [meaning the default jurisdictional law/customs]? Absolutely.)
- ajross 4y agoI think you missed the point: there are more than two parties here. The children's interests, in fact, are primary to any decision a court is going to make. And they weren't party to any prenup and certainly aren't bound by it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Pre-nups don't deal solely with property. Contracts inherently deal only with property interests of the contracting parties; they can (within certain bounds) address custody because our legal system treats that as a property interest that is subject to some domain-specific limitations and oversight, because the general premise is that it is not a natural property right, but a legal contrivance for the interests of the child because parents will normally be the best motivated to serve those interests. (Though there is definitely a not-uncommom view that children are naturally property, as well.)
- blip54321 4y agoA pre-nup could handle the best interest of the children far better than a court. Best interest of the children are to minimize parental conflict. No matter the outcome, a legal process inflames conflict. Arab countries have this right. There is a strong presumption that kids go with mother up to some age, and father beyond. The rules are clear and simple, barring exceptional circumstances. Some of the Scandinavian countries do to. Barring exceptional circumstances, there is a presumption of 50/50 custody and child support is capped. There is nothing to fight over, and fighting dies down. The US high stakes system, where child support is astronomical and where everything is up for fighting over, is the biggest loser here.
- indymike 4y agoInk my state, the interests of the kids trumps the prenup.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoPre-nuptial agreements are often challenged during divorce and sometimes not upheld.
- triceratops 4y agoWhat would you put in a pre-nup for a situation like this? And if the agreement solves all issues, why wouldn't you just put it into regular marriage/family law so everyone can enjoy the benefits without hiring a lawyer when tying the knot?
- jvanderbot 4y agoa pre-nup solves issues by deterministicly reverting to a sane state as agreed to by the individuals involved when they loved each other. A 'general pre-nup' is a contradiction, practically. The point is to have extreme customization, at least as suggested by GP comment. That's why the solution suggested to cumbersome divorce law would be to enforce pre nup agreements.
- umvi 4y agoSo... To answer GP's question you're saying a prenup would solve this by specifically laying out what would happen to the children in different scenarios? (Father is domestic abuser, mother is alcoholic, etc?) And you'd have to enumerate the bazillion different scenarios that might happen?
- jvanderbot 4y agoI believe that's what was intended by the comment, yes. I'm only correcting a misinterpretation. I don't have a strong opinion, but I bet a pre-nup could include many "decision trees" and mitigation strategies. I don't have a pre-nup, so I don't know.
- ceejayoz 4y agoHow would you revert “we had children”? Or “my partner turns out to be a pedophile and we agreed to 50/50 custody”? Things change in ways pre-nups cannot account for. They’re fairly often litigated as a result.
- jvanderbot 4y agoI agree, I was just clarifying the parent comment.
- wjnc 4y agoThing is I expect usually when people get married there are no children yet. On top of that, say a decade of marriage, children and changes in the way couples share their respective roles (say one works fulltime and the other parttime) and their is not much to bargain about up front.
- BlargMcLarg 4y agoAbout half of all kids are born out of wedlock these days in many developed countries. Doesn't change you'd need a measure which covers both, but that "usually" hasn't been as usual for a long while.
- wjnc 4y agoMy parent is talking about prenup. That’s only in case of marriage. For those so inclined to get married I do expect marriage before children. With falling marriage rates I expect that effect to be stronger.
- Vrondi 4y agoYou expect incorrectly. A great percentage of children are now born out of wedlock. Your expectations are not real.
- jessaustin 4y agoClearly GP knows this, and additionally expects that children born outside marriage will tend to stay outside marriage. That additional expectation may not be correct, but you haven't really addressed it.
- wjnc 4y agoThanks for reading. It’s not even that subtle a distinction. If marriage gets less normal, those who do get married feel stronger about it. It’s value theory 101.
- 4y ago
- hotpotamus 4y agoIs the pre-nup then that single broadsword?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- StevePerkins 4y agoThis sounds about as naive as the old libertarian argument against gay marriage, that we should instead "get the government out of the marriage business altogether". The idea that a prenuptial agreement could effectively address the concerns of children not yet born is absurd. I have been married for around 20 years now, and today have two children in elementary school (i.e. prime age to screw them up with a divorce). When I try to imagine the prospect of my silly mid-20's self and spouse, writing an agreement about children around 9/11 that would make any sense today, I laugh out loud. Even a prenup dealing solely with money and property would have little purpose years into a typical marriage of young people. Prenuptial agreements generally cover money and property that the couple had coming into a marriage. Not "common property" that is accumulated together after the marriage. My mid-20's spouse and I had no property and subzero net worth on our wedding day, it's all post-marriage common property anyway.
- achenet 4y agoThe pre-nup getting outdated is a valid point. What if we made it mandatory to renegotiate the pre-nup every year or so? I suppose that could cause problems of its own, but it would 'fix' the outdate pre-nup problem (which would in turn fix the general divorce law trying to address very specific cases problem).
- mensetmanusman 4y agoMandatory annual government paperwork would be an additional incentive to not get married.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago> What if we made it mandatory to renegotiate the pre-nup every year or so? I’m wondering if you’ve ever been married. People generally don’t live their marriage with the intent of divorce, so planning in the way you suggest seems obtuse. I can’t ever imagine my wife, who does not have a career and depends on my income, annually renegotiating a prenuptial agreement.
- 4y ago
- vletal 4y agoYou should have seen the raised eyebrows of my psychologist when I told her I do not have a pre-nup. Yet she might be biased. Most people she meets needed it.
- daveoc64 4y agoIn the UK, pre-nups are not always enforceable - especially if the terms are not favourable to any children involved. There are also many other scenarios in which a pre-nup or its terms can be invalidated during divorce proceedings. It's going to be difficult to come up with an agreement that covers all scenarios and is enforceable.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- balderdash 4y agoWhile a prenup can address some child related elements (paying for school, the religion they’re raised, etc.) I don’t think they can be used for things like custody, visitation, child support, etc.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoHighly recommend ‘the marriage story’ The industries that grow around the incredibly emotional (and lucrative) topic of divorce are vast.
- epicureanideal 4y agoAnd when watching it, realize that this movie that is meant to depict a “difficult divorce”, is basically average, and much much worse happens frequently.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago> “There is no way of getting your children back unless you admit you have alienated them,” said Waxman. “Not wanting to do the therapy is seen as resisting.” You will be assimilated.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- achenet 4y ago>In particular, there has been growing anxiety about the potential conflict of interest presented where an expert could be financially incentivised to make a finding of PA in a system that allows them to recommend their own therapy or that of colleagues. > An expert report can cost as much as £10,000, but the costs of therapeutic interventions can run into tens of thousands of pounds. > The options for a parent who believes they have been wrongly accused of alienation are limited and costly. “There is no way of getting your children back unless you admit you have alienated them,” said Waxman. “Not wanting to do the therapy is seen as resisting.” This honestly seems like a Kafka-esque nightmare driven by greed. Parent: "My ex hit me." Psychologist: "Lol, that's parental alienation, you need to give me monies, it's 'for the children'." Parent: "No, I was actually hurt by this person." Psychologist: "You're clearly in denial, courts, take the kids away until this person pays up."
- annyeonghada 4y agoAfter 2 years of therapy I'm convinced that psychologist are the sarcedotal class of our time. Like astrology in Imperial China, psychology serves as the science for ad hoc justification.
- flybrand 4y agosac·er·do·tal /ˌsasərˈdōdl,ˌsakərˈdōdl/ Learn to pronounce adjective relating to priests or the priesthood; priestly. THEOLOGY relating to or denoting a doctrine which ascribes sacrificial functions and spiritual or supernatural powers to ordained priests.
- annyeonghada 4y agoYes, I can read the dictionary, thank you. Nevertheless, I will respond to your implied objection instead of whatever you wrote. 1. Check the definition of an analogy (this is the case where the dictionary is actually useful), maybe it will make clear why what I wrote was not meant as a perfect depiction of reality; 2. Psychology has not really a good track as a science: between replication crisis, statistical illiteracy of the researchers, ideologically motivated reasoning and outright fraud it is not clear to me that believing in Psychology is any different that believing in Theology: they are both self-consistent systems that fail to make prediction on the physical world and, while intellectually interesting and provocative, I would not like that anyone makes decisions about society and my life using concepts from these disciplines. P.S.: Actually, thank you for giving me the opportunity to reflect much more about the similarity between these two seemingly different disciplines.
- olivermarks 4y agoI'm sworn in as a California court appointed special advocate for children. https://www.californiacasa.org/state-priorities https://www.californiacasa.org/state-priorities The primary goal is to keep children with their parents/parent wherever possible while speaking for the child in the court system to allow their voice to be herd. No matter how awful the family relationship they still have a family which is ultimately more grounding and stable than anything else. I'm also a British citizen and I find this Guardian article disturbing because it doesn't appear the authorities are putting the child's needs first.
- newaccount74 4y ago> The primary goal is to keep children with their parents/parent wherever possible It doesn't sound like children that are taken away in these cases end in the foster system, they are just taken to the other parent (who may be abusive).
- olivermarks 4y agoCASA website is a bit misleading. We primarily look after the needs and well being of kids who are living with parent/s but are in danger of going into care (or are in and out of care). So pick up kid from home take for a day out every week (consistency v important) talk, look for injuries, concerns etc.
- cvccvroomvroom 4y agoWhat about situations where one parent is a psychopath, sociopath, and/or narcissist who "seems" like the more stable one? Also, if both parents seem to possess severe, codependent drama-attracting personality disorders, wouldn't the risks of foster care end up being lesser than horrible parents? Finally, family court is rigged in non-rural California against the fathers in numerous ways. Community property division is one way, even if both parents make similar amounts. Statistically, mothers initiate divorce and alienate the kids from their dad by demonizing him. It's the most common pattern in divorce proceedings with children, but not the only pattern as there are infinitely many, no angel and no devil, only pain and travesty in one sort or another that isn't limited to being inflicted or suffered by only one party.
- robonerd 4y ago
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- christkv 4y agoI'm going to take the story presented here with a giant pinch of salt. I imagine that the UK has the biased against the father court system of most western countries. Having seen it up front, bearing character witnesses in two cases I can tell you that it's the exception that the father is granted custody. I've only seen it with situation where the mother is clearly not able to take care of herself or the children due to severe mental health issues.
- tinalumfoil 4y agoThis article looks really uncritically at people who had their children taken away for abusing them, but in most of these cases it looks like these same people are trying to take their partner's children away from them. The article keeps calling this form of abuse "rare" but doesn't actually offer any evidence. The picture of a mother losing custody of their children is always going to be an emotional picture to paint, but if you step back and focus on the well-being of the child, then you need to take this stuff into consideration.
- newaccount74 4y agoThe article also has an example of the reverse situation, where the kid wanted to live with the father and the mother claimed it was parental alienation. The point of the article is that courts are (sometimes) ignoring childrens' testimony and instead siding with unqualified experts who have a financial incentive to remove children from their preferred parent.
- throwaway09223 4y agoChildren are malleable and relying on their testimony encourages parents to manipulate them. Placing the children with the most manipulative parent isn't in their best interest. There are so, so many cases of children testifying against a parent while living under the care of another, then recanting years later as adults. I don't have a good answer here because I think often the experts are unqualified and give bad advice, but it's important to acknowledge the depth of the problem
- NohatCoder 4y agoThey are also usually really bad at lying. When questioned by actual experts they certainly make for more reliable witnesses than their parents.
- cafard 4y agoProvided always that the actual experts are actually experts and do not have an axe to grind. The McMartin day care case shows what can happen.
- blip54321 4y agoMy experience here is that courts have no way to decipher truth from fiction, and make ruling based on who spends more money and who lies better. Legal processes -- with lawyers -- inflame conflict and turn things adversarial. We need clear, simple, consistent rules. We also need social workers instead of lawyers.
- benj111 4y agoSocial workers aren't any better though. Ultimately the whole system is a mess.
- wintermutestwin 4y agoThere is such a thing as a consultative attorney, who will inform you of your rights in a divorce. Unfortunately, they are extremely hard to find because lawyers are incentivized to inflame conflict. Once both sides know their rights, mediation is the preferred solution for both pre and post divorce concerns. Note that some courts (CA, for example), have mandatory "mediation," which is not really mediation. True mediation is voluntary and confidential. The costs of mediation for divorce average around 1/10th the cost of an adversarial divorce with attorneys. Of course, the real costs of an adversarial divorce are the massive detrimental effects on the children.
- blip54321 4y agoThe problem is that it takes both sides to want to do that.
- motive 4y agoI really empathise with the mother in this situation, it really does sound awful. I’m currently going through something similar, but on the opposite side of the fence. The courts have generally found in my favor because I’ve kept meticulous evidence of my wife’s abuse and how she involved the children. If it weren’t for this system, my life would be destroyed. What can possibly be done to make the system more equitable? The experience has made me truly believe something is fundamentally broken in our society with how we raise children. It takes a village, yet the western world runs on a two parent system that inherently creates conflict when it comes to career opportunity and so much more. It can’t be a coincidence that the divorce rate is so high.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- logicchains 4y ago>I’m currently going through something similar, but on the opposite side of the fence. The courts have generally found in my favor because I’ve kept meticulous evidence of my wife’s abuse and how she involved the children. If it weren’t for this system, my life would be destroyed. >What can possibly be done to make the system more equitable? A lot could be done to fix the root problem by educating young people on the nature of abusive relationships, and what the signs and red flags they should look out for are, so we don't end up with so many people in such situations. Imagine if the government treated it like an anti-smoking campaign, showing scenes of people tolerating and excusing a bit of bad behaviour from a new partner, then cutting to a few years in future when they're a nervous wreck and their partner is doing all kinds of horrible things to them. Arguably it's one of the most important things in life, knowing how to avoid abusive relationships, but there's absolutely zero education on it. In some cases the entertainment media even (inadvertently?) tries to normalise such abusive behaviours.
- krona 4y ago> Imagine if the government treated it like an anti-smoking campaign Smoking is binary: you know if you are smoking or not, and other's do too. An 'abusive relationship' is not binary, and is laden with evaluative meaning, subjective, contextual, differing from culture to culture. Perhaps most importantly such terms are subject to concept creep due to prevalence changes in society. This is not something people put much consideration in to, but the trade-off in educating people (a good thing) is the slow pathologising of every aspect of healthy human relationships. Which, incidentally, is what this article is about.
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 4y agoDe facto parental alienation, aka custody and access games, has been going on since courts began allowing ex-spouses to up stakes and move the children out of reach of the other parent - as happened to me as a child over half a century ago. Utterly ignored, especially by the courts, is the child's emotional and developmental need to grow up with both parents. Equal time with both parents allows children to grow up and learn that parents are imperfect people who are doing their best in the circumstances they have been put in. My late mother still carries unremitting blame for enabling an alcoholic PTSD afflicted stepfather from hell to blight my life - all while claiming she was doing the right thing. There's nothing wrong with the family court system that a tac nuke couldn't fix.
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- steve76 4y ago
- rayiner 4y agoFrom the article: "The concept stems from the theory of 'parental alienation syndrome' coined in the 1980s by US child psychiatrist Richard Gardner. The 'syndrome' went on to be largely rejected." Psychology is not a science and we need to stop treating it like one. So much harm has been done by people giving credibility to faddish psychological theories. For example: https://psmag.com/social-justice/dangerous-idea-mental-health-93325 https://psmag.com/social-justice/dangerous-idea-mental-healt...; https://lithub.com/moral-panic-and-the-myth-of-recovered-memory https://lithub.com/moral-panic-and-the-myth-of-recovered-mem.... It's not just "a few bad apples," either. These things keep happening because the field isn't rigorous, and can't feasibly be made rigorous.
- carapace 4y ago
- sanderjd 4y agoOr maybe because its proponents make vague allusions to it from which is impossible for people to tell what they're talking about? I have no clue what you're talking about in this comment, nor any way to research it.
- orzig 4y agoAgreed, I’m curious enough to spend 10 minutes reading a link but not go on a wild goose chase.
- ceejayoz 4y agoMaybe no one is using it because it’s proponents forget to say what is is?
- canjobear 4y agoWhat are you referring to?
- carapace 4y ago
- svnt 4y agoCourts are the wrong way to address this. The legal system is both overly punitive and toothless in family law. It cannot punish other than removing access to children. Anything else punishes the children as much as the parent. In my opinion the missing solution is a community-based arbitration process that requires the participation of those who know more about the history/reality. Too often people are afraid of taking a side.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- robonerd 4y ago> It cannot punish other than removing access to children. Anything else punishes the children as much as the parent. I can think of other possibilities, but I'm sure they wouldn't be popular (in the west anyway.) For instance, moderate caning. Community-based arbitration falls apart when you account for the modern lifestyle of knowing so little about your neighbors, you don't even recognize their faces let alone know their names.
- thatjoeoverthr 4y agoThis is one of my spicier opinions but I think we need caning. Jail and fines do too much _damage,_ including (if the offender has dependents) collateral damage.
- wintermutestwin 4y ago>Hannah Jones, a chartered forensic psychologist who has been appointed in the family courts as an expert since 2014, said: “True alienation of a parent where that parent is entirely unproblematic is rare enough that it does not need its own concept.” WTF? Why in the world does the other parent need to be "entirely unproblematic" to recognize the deleterious effect to the child of one parent brainwashing the kids against the other? In my (pretty vast) experience, parental alienation is very common to varying degrees. Of course that doesn't mean the reactions should be further weaponized.
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- bergenty 4y agoIt sounds like you’re supposed to sympathize with the mother in this article but you need to be careful, especially when a court system—- that is generally incredibly biased against the father— makes a ruling in his favor. I can think of plenty of scenarios in what’s described where the mother is incredibly manipulative and plays the victim card as soon as there are consequences.
- walkhour 4y agoIt's inconceivable an article tackling these topics had examples that represented the norm, instead, it will have examples where the victim is what's generally perceived as the weakest side. It's really hard to get a grasp of the situation with the initial example, we'd need to know how often these situations happen. So these examples elicit many feelings but don't provide a lot of information.
- throw93232 4y agoI simply do not buy it. This is UK, the most gynocentric society in the world. It is almost unheard of system would take children away from mother with force, and gave them to father. Based on my experience from court battles, there is something not told. 》expert found her to have psychological issues 》Months later, she was allowed two hours of supervised contact once a fortnight.
- EdwardDiego 4y agoYep, generally someone goes to the media in these situations, whether it be the mother or father, when they feel completely hard done by, when often, they've been told precisely what the issue is, and given time to resolve it, and just doubled down. And of course, what they present to the media and what the truth is, are both two very different things. I am close friends with Mr A in this "article", which happened after his ex-wife was told by a judge to stop trying to alienate the children from their father. https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/10/10/52651/sisters-stage-online-protest-against-family-court https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/10/10/52651/sisters-stage-on... All the patients complaints referenced were made by his ex-wife, none were upheld. And even the way the reporter phrased things was amazing: > When approached for comment regarding Mr A’s case, the authority’s media spokesman confirmed he could no longer work in New Zealand It implies certain things, but in reality, he was no longer renewing his practising certificate in NZ (because he lived in Australia), but if he chose to, he could renew it any time he likes.
- bloomingeek 4y agoTragic article on many levels. When hatred between parents is involved, the courts must decide who is telling the truth about abuse. In my family growing up my parents, both deceased now for some years, absolutely hated each other. My sisters and I were mini recorders of the abuse and would have gladly reported to any who would have listened. Unfortunately, the divorce didn't occur until after my younger sister was mentally damaged from all the chaos. This occurred during the late 60's and I'm leaving out most of the details, I'm just saying I think it would perhaps be better to ask the children who they would like to live with.
- mrsmee89 4y agoAs someone who has gone through something similar to this, it was heartbreaking to discover that parental alienation is quite common. Child raising is too delicate and nuanced to be relegated to process level decisions. It’s too late for my situation but family court with children involved is something I hope gets revamped sooner rather than later. Many of the family court laws are a relic from a time when the roles of men and women were very different from the standard of today and unfortunately many women use this to their advantage (which I suppose is the rational thing to do). Now, whenever I see a woman claiming to be a victim in a family matter I look way more closely than I would have in the past and I hope society as a whole starts to do this too. Of course, I’m not saying only women use victimhood to their advantage but I am saying that there is a very clear incentive to claim to be a victim in todays society and in family court especially. As long as a woman is ok with lying, it’s almost foolish for her to NOT claim to be the victim. The incentive needs to be removed.
- 300bps 4y ago(which I suppose is the rational thing to do) I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said but this. I understand why you said it. But for any mother, it is never rational to attack your children's father in front of your children. By doing that, you are attacking 50% of your own children. The more successful you are at getting them to hate their father, the more successful you'll be at getting them to hate half of themselves. The damage done to children from this is incalculable to the point that any parent that engages in it is a bad parent regardless of any other redeeming qualities they may have. I'm sorry for what you went through and hope things have gotten better for you.
- mrsmee89 4y agoThanks for your kind words. Things have gotten slightly better but only because of my personality of persistence. I’ve met with many fathers who didn’t have the same capacity for persistence as me and their situation is much worse. I agree, it feels kinda gross to say it’s the rational thing to do but in my experience incentives always win and it seems like it’s difficult for some mothers to see their childrens father on the same level as them as a parent. It’s toxic but I think it’s much more common than people realize. And this is even when the parents are still together, once a separation is initiated, I think it’s natural for this feeling to grow. I can see my childrens mom rationalize what she did very easily. She had to keep her babies safe etc… when your in the process of breaking up a family long term thinking is much harder, survival is the goal and I think for many moms the thought of losing access to their children part of the time is unbearable. Of course that thought (and reality) is unbearable for me too but I don’t have the family court on my side because I’m a man, if I did, I’d probably make the decision to keep their their mom in their life but it would be a very difficult decision to say goodbye to my children half the time. It’s emotional torture which makes rationalizations very very enticing. So yeah, I think long term you’re right, but in practice it’s really hard to be purely rational in the moment.