**3. Parenting by the targeted parent is disrupted**

Parent–child interactions determine to a great extent the child's behaviour during childhood and adolescence. As Silva and Sandström [41] noted, "the child's psychological wellbeing and mental health, the behavioral adjustment in different situations, and the capability to establish positive relationships with others are closely related to the level of parental competence during early stages of maturation" (p. 60). In PA processes, the TP-child interaction is seriously compromised, and the positive affective bonds are broken. Under such circumstances, the TP's parenting role is disrupted and eventually completely ceases. If the AP does not succeed in suppressing the input of the TP in the life of the child and the TP is somehow able to maintain contact with the child, the objective of the AP will then turn towards sabotaging the TP's attempts at parenting by forcing negative parenting practices. For example, encouraging the child's defiant behaviour and aggression towards the TP makes a harsh response by the TP to control the child's behaviour more likely. On the other hand, the TP may find it more suitable to withdraw from conflict in an attempt to satisfy the child, which gives the AP an argument to say that they are irresponsible or uncaring.

Responses elicited in the TP by the child's behaviour vary depending on multiple factors, such as the parent's personality characteristics, mental health status, the psychological and economic strain they sustain because of the legal battle, their capability to cope with it, the presence of a supportive social network, and the parent's previous parenting style. Regarding their parenting role, many TPs experience an identity loss [42–44]. Göran reported, "My children said they didn't want to have any contact with me, they had never had a good time with me and that I had never been interested in them. So, they showed that they felt awful when they were with me". The loss of the parenting role may be particularly difficult to cope with when the AP chooses a new partner, who will serve as a replacement. The new partner ends up making parenting choices while any attempt by the TP is invalidated. It is only natural for the TP to become extremely distressed due to the alienating process, as it affects every aspect of their life, influencing how they interact with the child. As the alienating process evolves, TP's find themselves in a helpless situation; whatever they do, the child will fight against it. The gap in the relationship grows, and the TP is unsuccessful in their attempts to restore the affective bonds.

Any positive attempts at parenting the child (e.g., assertive control, demonstrations of acceptance, and warmth, autonomy support) are futile.

It is difficult for TPs to assert themselves in the face of the alienating strategies [45], especially if the starting point is a partner relationship characterised by a power imbalance favouring the AP who consistently undermines their authority as a parent. TPs have been reported to behave passively in the face of conflict, being less involved with the child and becoming progressively more distant [9, 19]. During the legal battle, they are likely to reach a point where they are too overwhelmed and may seem to have withdrawn from the fight over communicating, spending time, or reconstructing the affective relationship with the child. However, their outwardly apathetic posture may well be an extension of the pattern of interpersonal interaction developed during the marriage [2]. Furthermore, the economic burden of paying for legal proceedings, the uncertainty that justice will be delivered if they litigate, and the fear that fighting back with the AP will further compromise their relationship with the child may deter the TP from being more active and seeking closeness [46]. Avoiding upsetting the AP is a possible strategy adopted by TPs to control their behaviour [2].

In a non-quantified number of cases, TPs have faced false accusations of physical or sexual abuse of the child, which almost automatically severs free access to the child and the possibility of spontaneous interactions. If the court determines that contact with the child must be supervised, the parent's behaviour is extremely conditioned, further preventing normal parenting mechanisms. The TP will then avoid any confrontation with the child for fear of worsening their odds of recovering the free access to them. Nevertheless, even in the absence of false accusations, the TP may feel compelled to change their parenting approach to a more permissive style (e.g., lax-control, non-directive, indulgent). The TP is just too afraid of further alienating the child and, consequently, will restrain from disciplining them [2]. To avoid upsetting the child and deepening the deterioration of the relationship, the TP may avoid normal parenting actions they otherwise would take. The child then perceives the TP as not having authority or significant influence in their lives, and the opportunity to parent the child is lost. Further, the AP instrumentally uses this to remark and reinforce the notion that the TP does not care, does not love the child, and is not worthy of the child's love.

In contrast to a passive attitude, in some cases, the TP adopts a rigid approach. Because, in general, the time they spend with the child is limited, the TP sets harsh rules while they are together. For example, the TP may restrict or obstruct the child's socialisation with peers, interaction with the AP or AP's family in special events (e.g., birthday parties, celebration of special dates), or involvement in physical or cultural activities not scheduled by them. While it is easier to enforce rules with younger children despite the child's opposition, this could ignite a war in the case of adolescents. For the TP, the disrespect and defiance displayed by the child add to the continuous conflict with the AP. The child's repeated aggression and rejection possibly elicit anger in the TP and an urge to retaliate, although the TP eventually understands that the child's behaviour emerges as a consequence of the alienation tactics, rather than the child itself. With older children, the TP may blame the child instead of the true source of the problem, which triggers negative parenting practices (e.g., inflexible discipline, derogation, coercion, hostility). This creates more retaliation and rejection by the child and reinforces the image of a bad parent that the AP instilled in them. Under such circumstances, the terrain is fertile to grow coercive exchanges between the child and the TP. The parent's actions reinforce problematic behaviour in the child, which reinforces the parent's coercive behaviour [41]. The TP retaliates by criticising the child, emphasising weaknesses, frailties, and exploiting weak points, thus generating hurt feelings. In the child's mind, the

TP becomes the culprit of every difficult dark moment they experience, reinforcing that parent's hideous image imbued by the AP. At this point, the relationship is almost irreversibly damaged, and any parenting attempt by the TP is unsuccessful. The psychological adjustment of both child and TP is seriously compromised and family therapy, if pursued, will only achieve modest results.

## **4. Parenting by the alienating parent is dysfunctional**

PA processes are pathological in nature. Individuals with features such as those classified by the DSM's cluster B personality disorders do not react to the end of their intimate relationship with sadness or sense of loss. Instead, they are likely to ruminate about past grievances, remain enraged, and seek vengeance [47, 48]. If they experience the separation or divorce as shameful or humiliating, they will probably retaliate quite negatively towards the other parent [19].

The AP cannot stand different or oppositional opinions in the TP, and they will manipulate and force the child to acquire their point of view. APs are prone to disrespect and violate court orders that do not align with their perspective or serve their purposes. Their narcissistic sense of entitlement gives them the mentality that they have the right to decide the course of the relationship between the child and the other parent above everyone else, including the justice system.

APs despise everyone who opposes their alienating attitudes, including the TP, the TP's extended family, the child (if the child resists being alienated), and whoever confronts them (e.g., school personnel, child protection services, and court personnel). They talk incessantly about the TP's flaws, shortcomings, and weaknesses to thwart the good image that others, including the child, have and undermine the child's confidence in the TP's love and capacity to keep them safe. At the same time, APs presents themselves as devoted, protective, and stable parent, giving the child a false sense of security. However, despite the image of protector of the child's best interest that the AP likes to sell, in reality, they lack empathy and concern about the child's feelings and needs. They play with the child's affection and may threaten to withdraw their love if the child does not comply with the alienation. They do not hesitate to disavow or show their coldness to the child if it fails to comply with their expectations. In this climate, the child learns that the AP's affection is contingent on their rejection of the TP.

Borderline personality features include affective instability due to a marked reactive mood. Such cases usually swing between intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety that confuses their social environment. In an alienating context, the dysphoria and irritability are possibly contingent on the child's alienating behaviours. The AP may show intense anger and have difficulty controlling it if they perceive that the child fails to reject the TP. Therefore, the child learns to please the AP to avoid triggering their intense negative moods.

Certain antisocial personality characteristics such as deceitfulness and conning others, the use of manipulative tactics, and repeatedly lying to serve the purpose of getting the TP out of the child's life have also been found among APs. The APs take advantage of any information to falsely demonstrate that the TP has mental health, substance abuse, or anger management problems. Anything may be used to vilify the TP and make them seem threatening to the child. APs with such personality features feel no remorse in distorting information and biasing the child's cognitive and belief system against the TP. In extreme cases, the AP may risk the child's safety, act recklessly, or abduct the child to antagonise the TP without any regret.

If authoritarian parenting was the AP's dominant parenting style before the PA process, harsh parenting might worsen as the alienation evolves. Authoritarian

#### *Parental Alienation:* In the Child's Worst Interest *DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101231*

parents place high expectations on their children, force obedience, and punish non-compliance, sometimes in a psychologically brutal way. Authoritarian APs may use the expression "you are like your father/mother (the TP)" to criticise the child when they do not meet their expectations. This sends a powerful message to the child; they have the same weaknesses, flaws, and negative features as the TP and are not worthy of the AP's love and affection. The frequent derogation, high demands, and low responsiveness characteristic of authoritarian parents create on the child the necessity to demonstrate that they are worthy of their love. Accordingly, an alienated child will fight the TP in every way possible. Paradoxically, the child fights against a parent with whom they once had a warm relationship while trying to earn the attention of a parent who, most likely, was never as effective as the TP and will never be. Less affection is the price of feeling safe since the alienating process makes the child consider the TP a hazard. The door to trauma bonding is then open.

Controlling and coercive behaviour are also characteristic of authoritarian APs, in line with narcissistic personality features. APs with such characteristics will demand that the child report details of their time spent with the TP. It is not unusual for such APs to demand that the child spy on the TP, such as searching for clues about whether the TP has a new partner, is buying expensive new goods, or places the TP visits. The AP will want to have as much information as possible to use in the legal battle against the TP. For this purpose, they do not hesitate in using the child. They may coerce the child by saying that it does not comply with their requests, the consequences will be severe, and the child will be to blame. This behaviour gives the child no choice, and if for any reason it cannot comply, the AP will show anger, coldness, inflexibility, and will criticise and punish the child.

On the opposite extreme, we find APs that present dependent personality features such as separation anxiety and feeling helpless when alone because of an exaggerated fear of being unable to care for themselves. Dependent APs have difficulty making everyday decisions without an excessive amount of advice, need others to assume responsibilities for most major areas of their lives, and go to excessive lengths to obtain nurturance and support from others. In such cases, the alienating process arises from other persons in their environment like the extended family (e.g., the child's grandparents, aunts, uncles). Parenting is further seriously compromised in these situations because parents with dependent personalities are very likely to have permissive parenting styles with lax-control and non-directive discipline. The child ends up being parented by those who actively encourage the alienating practices. In such cases, the child is submitted to different parenting approaches from several people, creating even more confusion. They will not know whom they can trust and will probably feel insecure with everyone. Insecure attachment in future close relationships is then almost guaranteed.

Garber [49] reported that three dynamics in the child-AP relationship can develop in the context of an alienating process. First, the AP may use the child as a confident and disclose information about themselves and their thoughts and feelings, forcing the role of an ally on the child. In this case, the child is provided with information inappropriate for their age, when they still lack the emotional maturity to handle it, in interactions more proper for an adult-adult than a parent–child relationship. Garber called this *adultification*. A superior level of this dynamic is called *parentification*. In such cases, the child–parent role is exchanged, and the child is encouraged to care for and look after the parent due to the parent's dependency. When this happens, parenting by the AP is inexistent, which added to the disrupted parenting by the TP, leaves the child without any guidelines during critical developmental stages. Child development may then be more a matter of survival with a considerable cost for the child emotional and potentially physical wellbeing.

On the other hand, Garber also described a dynamic called *infantilisation*, when the child is treated as much younger than their chronological age. The AP gives the child no space for independence and restricts the child's emotional and social development. Moreover, in their demands during a legal custody battle, these parents appear concerned for safety issues for the child that are not age-appropriate.

Each of these dynamics comes at a cost to the child. *Adultification* has been related to symptoms of depression, anxiety, and impact on academic achievement [49], while *parentification* has been associated with suicidal ideation, negative emotionality, psychosomatic symptoms, and isolation from peers [50]. Likewise, infantilised children are at risk of developing different internalising and externalising problems [2].

#### **5. Consequences of PA for the child**

During the alienation process, the child is manipulated into believing the TP does not love them, possibly never did, disregards their safeness, and is a threat. As a result, feelings of abandonment, loss, and fear grow inside the child, who will then interpret any of TP's behaviours through these cognitive biases, and will consistently express unreasonable anger, hatred, and rejection [15]. On the other hand, the child seems not to regret their hateful behaviour against the TP [11], but paradoxically a sense of betrayal and loss is likely to develop, leading to feelings of guilt and shame [51]. In her retrospective study of adults who experienced PA as a child, Baker [51] reported that most individuals in her sample recalled claiming they hated and feared the parent they rejected. However, they did not want that parent to disappear from their lives and hoped someone would realise their words and acts were not truthful.

The child's alignment with the AP has many characteristics of traumatic bonding, like the emotional response described in Stockholm syndrome. The child mimics the AP to survive their harassment and psychological pressure. Having effectively lost one parent, the child is compelled to do all the possible to be worthy of the AP's affection and to avoid the AP's coldness when they fail to show rejection of the TP.

Through their alienating manipulation strategies, the AP succeeds in transforming the emotional climate generated during interactions of the child with the TP into a negative experience. Soon the child will generalise the negative emotionality to anything that relates to the TP. The consequences of this are severe in the medium- to long-term. School-related difficulties, depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse, and low self-esteem have been found in adults victims of PA during childhood [9, 25, 51], leading to the conclusion that turn a child against a parent is to turn a child against itself [30]. The child's belief that a parent does not love them has a significant impact on their self-esteem [52]. In addition, due to the alienating process, the child loses the capacity to trust itself or anyone else [51]. As a result, the child becomes angry, resentful, and permanently alert and afraid of being emotionally manipulated and controlled.

Without clinical intervention, the effects of PA may last the lifespan [30]. Among other symptoms, insecure attachment, relationship difficulties and breakdowns, lower self-sufficiency, identity loss, alienation from one's own children, major depression symptoms, and poor health in adulthood have been identified in adults who have suffered PA [9, 25, 51, 53, 54]. In a review of the scientific literature. Filder and Bala [55] discovered that PA impacts four spheres of the child's life and reverberates at later ages. In the cognitive sphere, alienated children demonstrated simplistic and rigid information processing, difficulty in distinguishing

#### *Parental Alienation:* In the Child's Worst Interest *DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101231*

the internal world of thoughts and feelings from the external world, and illogical manipulation of mental representations. Second, in the interpersonal sphere, alienated children show inaccurate or distorted interpersonal perceptions, and disturbed interpersonal functioning. Third, in the personal sphere, low self-esteem, self-hatred, pseudo-maturity, gender identity problems, and poor differentiation of self-have been identified in alienated children. Finally, in the behavioural sphere, alienated children are at risk of developing antisocial personality features such as disregard for social norms and authority, poor impulse control, aggression and conduct disorders, and lack of remorse or guilt.

In PA processes, the child grows in an emotionally hostile environment, without the guidance of parents with whom they feel understood, valued, loved, respected, and protected. If the child cannot trust that parents are open to listening to them with an accepting attitude they will not disclose (or will lie) about their whereabouts, daily activities, relationship with peers, and problems in school. During adolescent years, a child who feels overly controlled by one parent as is the case when the AP demands to know about time spent with the TP and at the same time suffers limitations imposed by the other parent, for example when the TP controls the time they spend together, will naturally rebel and seek the warmth and connectedness that they cannot find with either parent outside the home. The peer group then assumes the primary function of socialisation without parents having any control. The function that parents have in steering the child away from problematic peers, discouraging drug and alcohol use and dissuading rule-breaking behaviours is nullified.

Of course, not all children who suffer alienating processes will develop internalising or externalising problems. This depends on multiple other factors present in their environment during their upbringing. For example, establishing a warm relationship with a positive role model, such as a relative in the extended family, the parent of a friend, or a teacher, can work, to a certain extent, to prevent psychopathology. However, PA must be treated as an important risk factor that multiplies the probability of mental health and behavioural problems similar to other types of child maltreatment.
