**1. Introduction**

"It has been a terrible time […] In some way worse than losing your children by death, because they hurt you over, and over, and over again. Of course, you understand that it's not what they really think, and I remember all the good times we had together […], but it's very hard to handle that sorrow." (Göran1 , targeted parent of parental alienation).

Göran is a Swedish physician and father of two who was alienated from his children over the course of a high-conflict divorce. At the time of his interview, 10 months had passed since the last time he had been together with his children, although they lived nearby. The children strongly refused to visit Göran, and during the few contacts they had, the older child repeatedly engaged in hostile and rude behaviour against him, tearing apart their previously positive relationship. Göran's story is the same drama of many parents who had been through the ordeal of parental alienation (PA), each a story of pain and suffering and, behind all of them,

<sup>1</sup> The name is fictitious in order to protect the identity of the research participant.

a wounded child. As a society, it is imperious that we find solutions to this problem that, most likely, is more prevalent than the statistics of the family justice system and child protective services indicate.

PA is the process of sabotaging the relationship between a child and one parent, caused by the behaviour of the other parent [1]. What leads the alienating parent (AP) to use the child against the targeted parent (TP) instrumentally is revenge [2], which often occurs when the aggrieved parents engage in high-conflict separation or divorce. The objective of the alienating behaviour is to hurt the TP without concern about its impact on the child. The AP's behaviour causes a pattern of verbal and potentially physical aggression by the child towards the TP and strong resistance towards having contact with them.

PA is a construct that emerged in the scientific literature during the early '80s when researchers described the alignment of a child with one parent against the other parent who wished to maintain contact and an overt relationship [3]. In 1985, Gardner [4] introduced the concept of *Parental Alienation Syndrome*, in which he focused on the AP's behaviour. Gardner highlighted the process of brainwashing the child by the AP to denigrate the other parent and force estrangement. During the '90s, several scholars concentrated on the children and found that the presence of psychological adjustment problems in a child increases their vulnerability for alienation [5, 6]. Following this new perspective, PA was considered a serious childhood mental health condition [7]. More recently, using a systemic framework, some researchers proposed that PA must be considered a problem of the family system rather than a disorder of any of its members [8, 9]. There has been a movement among academics to introduce PA as a diagnostic entity on the *Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders* (DSM) with the belief that it would facilitate the admission of PA by family courts and therefore would lead to prescribing measures to protect the best interest of the child. However, a consensus has not been reached about the construct's definition, or whether it meets the criteria for a syndrome. This lack of a general agreement makes it difficult to determine its frequency, and the outcomes of research studies diverge. In a revision of the literature, Drozd and Olensen [1] estimated an incidence between 11% and 27%, while Meier [10] reported that less than 2% of divorcing parents required court intervention because of PA. In 2014, Howe and Covell [11] estimated the incidence may be as high as 25–29% among divorcing families, while a study drawn from a representative pool in the US found that 13.4% of parents have been alienated from at least one of their children [12]. Although researchers have been studying PA for more than 40 years and therefore it cannot be considered a new challenge in our society, the increasing number of divorce rates in the past two decades [13] makes it likely that the number of children at high risk for PA has increased as well.

In advancing the definition of PA, some scholars have remarked that the AP's behaviour must be intentional, instrumental, strategic, and bind the child in a way that drives them to reject the TP [14]. Furthermore, there must be a disruption in the relationship between the child and the TP that was previously characterised by positive bonding and more or less adjusted parenting. A previously affective and warm relationship marks the distinction between PA and similar constructs such as parental estrangement (i.e., the child has good reason to reject a bond or have a close relationship with a parent due to that parent's conduct, for example, due to maltreatment or neglect) or counterproductive parenting (i.e., to protect the child a parent behaves in ways that produce the rejection of the other parent, usually in the context of domestic violence) [1, 15, 16]. Therefore, to determine whether a child who is rejecting a parent has been alienated, it is necessary to consider: (1) the quality of the prior relationship between the child and the rejected parent, (2) the absence of abuse, neglect or serious dysfunctional parenting on the part of the

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

rejected parent, (3) the adoption of alienating strategies by the favoured parent, and (4) the demonstration of alienating behaviours by the child [17, 18].

Some authors claim PA can only occur in high-conflict divorces [15, 19], while others claim that although divorce and post-divorce parental disputes are the most common scenario, PA can also occur within intact and separated families [20, 21]. Regardless of the divorce status, it is commonly accepted that PA results from the strain that a family system endures because of the pathological dynamics born from impaired relationships between its members [19, 22].

The strategies used by the AP to alienate the child vary in type, number, and severity. In accordance, the harshness of the behaviour displayed by the child against the TP also varies. In fact, PA is considered a dimensional construct rather than a dichotomous diagnostic entity [1], can range from mild to extreme forms, and not all children are affected in the same way. Alienation seems to be less likely among young children since the mechanism of persuasion, indoctrination, and brainwashing require a certain level of cognitive ability to process the cognitive biases and distortions transferred by the AP. The typical age range among children who display alienating behaviours is 8–9 to 15–18 years old [15, 23], and this is found in both male and female children, and it can affect either parent [23].

PA can be conceptualised as a type of family violence perpetrated by the AP against the child, in which the parenting processes from both parents are severely disturbed. Besides the dysfunctional bond established between the child and the AP, the bond with the TP is disrupted and may eventually dissipate in extreme cases. The child will not adequately mourn the loss of the TP, who, furthermore, will possibly be substituted by the AP's new partner in an unhealthy way. Since the consequences of PA for the child's physical and mental health are often devastating, it is urgent to develop institutional mechanisms that efficiently identify, treat and support families and the individuals affected. Given the complexity of the problem, the variation in the type of families nowadays far from the traditional two biological parents living together with biological children and the fact that each alienation process differs from family to family, individual-based assessment and intervention are highly recommended.

In this chapter, I present the grounds to defend that PA is a form of family violence and should be considered as such by the family justice system. What are the consequences? How is parenting affected? How should social institutions proceed to prevent major harm and protect the children? These questions are addressed in the following pages. The text aims to contribute to the current discussion about the PA concept among scholars, practitioners, and other professionals, but technicalities were avoided so that it is possible to be understood by a broader audience as well.
