Suchergebnisse

In this article, controversies and problems with parental alienation syndrome are discussed. A reformulation focusing on the alienated child is proposed, and these children are clearly distinguished from other children who resist or refuse contact with a parent following separation or divorce for a variety of normal, expectable reasons, including estrangement. A systemic array of contributing factors are described that can create and/or consolidate alienation in children, including intense marital conflict, a humiliating separation, parental personalities and behaviors, protracted litigation, and professional mismanagement. These factors are understood in the context of the child's capacities and vulnerabilities.

This article reviews the range of trauma experienced by many children in supervised visitation services and describes common themes in the development of their personalities from clinical and research findings. It then proposes a series of ways to structure supervised access services in order to help children feel psychologically safe in the relationship with the visited parent.

This article reports data on allegations of domestic violence in two samples of high‐conflict families in child custody disputes. It delineates five basic types of interparental violence and corresponding patterns in parent‐child relationships. The findings should be viewed as preliminary exploratory hypotheses, which, if confirmed in future research, suggest that differential assessment of domestic families is important when helping divorcing parents make custody and visitation plans.

This article describes goals and strategies for family‐focused counseling and therapy when children are alienated from a parent after separation and divorce. The confidential intervention takes place within a legally defined contract and is based on a careful assessment of the dynamics of the multiple factors that contribute to the alienation and how the chil?s development is affected. Strategies for forming multiple therapeutic alliances with often reluctant, recalcitrant, and polarized parents are discussed together with ways of helping the child directly.

AbstractThis article argues that in order to intervene effectively and ethically with children who are manifesting Parent–child contact problems (PCCPs) after parental separation, we begin by being mindful of what is normal about divorce transitions and use developmentally appropriate and culturally sensitive analysis to rule out children's common transitory reactions. It is then important to concurrently assess for both family violence (FV) and severe parental alienating behavior (PAB) on the part of both parents, which can co‐occur in some cases. The article asserts that it is also important to consider common problematic parenting responses that may potentiate the PCCP but not necessarily rise to the level of abuse. FV is defined as a child's direct experience of physical, sexual, or psychological maltreatment and indirect exposure to sibling abuse and/or to intimate partner violence (IPV). PAB is defined as an ongoing pattern of unwarranted negative messages on the part of one parent that conveys that the child's other parent is disinterested, irrelevant, dangerous, and not to be trusted. Any one or all of these factors may contribute to a child's strident negativity and sustained rejection of one parent, these being defining features of a PCCP. This article proposes ethical principles and priorities for decision‐making in these cases, considering the growing social science controversy about assessment and intervention for PCCPs. It concludes with an analysis of recent, contrasting policy approaches to PCCPs (e.g., Kayden's Law and the Joint Statement of the AFCC and NCJFCJ) and their potential impact on family justice system professionals and the families they serve.

Premised on the understanding that domestic violence is a broad concept that encompasses a wide range of behaviors from isolated events to a pattern of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that controls the victim, this article addresses the need for a differentiated approach to developing parenting plans after separation when domestic violence is alleged. A method of assessing risk by screening for thepotency,pattern, andprimary perpetratorof the violence is proposed as a foundation for generating hypotheses about the type of and potential for future violence as well as parental functioning. This kind of differential screening for risk in cases where domestic violence is alleged provides preliminary guidance in identifying parenting arrangements that are appropriate for the specific child and family and, if confirmed by a more in‐depth assessment, may be the basis for a long‐term plan. A series of parenting plans are proposed, with criteria and guidelines for usage depending upon this differential screening, ranging from highly restricted access arrangements (no contact with perpetrators of family violence and supervised access or monitored exchange) to relatively unrestricted ones (parallel parenting) and even co‐parenting. Implications for practice are considered within the context of available resources.

In this study of 120 divorced families referred for child custody evaluations and custody counseling, multiple allegations of child abuse, neglect, and family violence were raised in the majority of cases. About half of the alleged abuse was substantiated in some way with one fourth involving abuse perpetrated by both parents. Different kinds of allegations were raised against mothers compared with fathers. Implications of these findings for social policy, family court interventions, and the provision of coordinated services within the community are discussed.

AbstractParent–child contact problems (PCCP) after separation and divorce are the focus of heated debate in academia and the popular media as to how best to identify, assess and respond to children who resist or refuse time with a parent. Practitioners disagree about the extent to which parental alienation (PA) is a valid and widespread phenomenon versus a legal strategy to counter IPV and child abuse allegations. This study sheds light on prevailing attitudes by surveying the opinions and beliefs of 1049 interdisciplinary family law professionals who deal directly with these matters in practice. These experienced practitioners were confident about their understanding of PCCPs despite little formal instruction on relevant issues. They were less clear about the differentiation between similarly used terms, research evidence, and interventions to address the problems. Emergent themes provide insight into practitioners' beliefs about the harm caused by a parent's alienating behaviors, the extent to which PA is a real phenomenon vs. a litigation strategy, the quality of social science empirical evidence, views of the child in PA cases, and recommended interventions. Responses demonstrate practitioners taking moderate positions that balance competing interests, struggling with ambiguities and contradictions rife in PA cases and PA‐related practice in family law.