When Parents Split - Radio 4 - interesting in several ways

[GabrielleNelson]

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00051dz

I listened to this today. It's a Radio 4 documentary, 27 minutes long, about the effect on children and parents when parents split acrimoniously, especially parental alienation where one parent badmouths the other to such an extent that the child ends up refusing to see the badmouthed one and the courts may enforce that. It was stated that a minority of both fathers and mothers do this and it's increasingly being recognised by the courts as a problem. (I know there are people here with direct experience of the family courts, so you may well have views on this.)

I thought it was pretty even-handed. Most of the focus is on children.

I was very struck by a section from about 15 minutes in. A psychotherapist who specialises in trying to reconcile family members explained that children and teenagers come out with reasons why they don't want to see a parent any more, e.g. 'Dad takes me to see Gran and she puts beans in the lasagne', or 'Mum makes me eat broccoli'. If pressed, the child may say 'Broccoli makes me ill and Mum knows that' and that may escalate to 'I'm allergic to broccoli, I could die if I eat it' to 'Mum tries to kill me'.

The psychotherapist said in a conversation like this it was important for the adults talking to a child not to accept uncritically what the child said, to recognise that the child is trying to make sense of a painful and bewildering situation and that the child may have been subject to intense manipulation. She said however that social workers in particular are trained to listen to the child and accept what they say as gospel, and in cases like that the conversation can go from 'Mum tries to make me eat broccoli' to 'Mum is trying to kill me' with no challenge in five minutes, with catastrophic consequences for both child and parent.

The presenter (also a psychotherapist) also interviewed a US researcher in parental alienation who said 'If the child's been manipulated that's not their voice and it shouldn't be given weight ... Teenagers in particular are highly susceptible to being manipulated.'

Why is this all so clear in this area and many others, e.g. eating disorders, but so very unclear when a young child or teenager says they identify as trans or nonbinary?

It has to be because professionals have been persuaded that this is exactly like sexual orientation, innate, fixed, absolutely fine, and not a sign of mental distress.

I agree. It is a really odd blind spot, and I don’t understand why. Now a friend’s daughter has started on cross sex hormones at 16, I am feeling very angry at this failure to support teenagers appropriately.

It is a very, very weird safeguarding blind spot.

It must be something to do with the general feeling that "you shouldn't feel any shame about sexuality" - and that being transgender is synonymous with being gay or bisexual. (Which is crap of course.)

To be honest I think people and professionals are only just now wising up to the effects of parental alienation. It was only within the last 12 months judges in the UK have been instructed to consider it a possibility as a matter of course.

In terms of the trans thing people are just too frightened now to stand up to what is perceived to be the majority view. I’m afraid it’s past the point now that it’s only after a generation has been mutilated and irrevocably harmed that everyone will wise up and realise what a terrible mistake we have made. I hope I am wrong.

My view of the family court is that it is well acknowledged that the court system can be used to perpetuate abuse and if a child has good reason to not wish contact or limited contact, there may be good reasons for that. Is the psychotherapist seriously saying that social workers should not listen to a child who may be disclosing abuse? In actual fact, it is almost impossible to get any social work support if your child discloses abuse unless the situation is obviously life-threatening - they will tell you they have no involvement as you are protecting your child and there is no role for them, and it is a matter for the family court. God help you then if parental alienation is thrown at you by the other side because you are listening to your child and you have been told by social services it is your job to protect your child - with no resources to do so. God help you, because no one else will.

The concept of parental alienation is highly contested and gives abusive men, and it usually is men, another stick to beat women with. Please don’t give it credence here as a lever to wedge in the trans debate.

I thought it was a very interesting report

Thanks for sharing this. I honestly think there will be huge reckoning in a few years when all these manipulated teens become angry adults, traumatized by the irreversible damage done to their bodies and minds.

My experience with Cafcass is awful. I split due to Domestic violence. My daughter disclosed she had been looking at pornographic magazines in her dad's bathroom during contact. So I stopped contact and he took me to court. Dad denied she had looked at the magazines. Court ordered for her to see him again. Daughter was very unhappy after we had to have a porn talk at age 7. Also I found out later that paedophiles use porn to make their abuse feel normal. He doesn't see them anymore as both daughters refuse. I am really worried about being taken back to court for parental alienation.
The courts are all in favour of the children. However in the absence of evidence, even though she wrote some of this down, they see it as a tit for tat argument between parents so rule in favour of the right of the child to see the other parent.

I guess this is what they are doing with gender identity, but it is hard to compare given it involves medication. I guess being told on u tube to threaten suicide helps the judges rule in favour.

Parental alienation IS abuse, and an increasing body of research indeed supports that view. Essentially if there is a question of damage to the child for whatever reason more should be done to investigate to ensure that does not happen.

Unfortunately I don’t think government fund social services or the police anywhere near enough to make establishing these matters of fact a priority.

I think you are deliberately and disingenuously misinterpreting what I said dervel, although maybe I should have put domestic in front of abuse.

Even the person who coined PAS said it should not be considered in cases of domestic abuse. However as most people know, even where domestic abuse is proven in court, there is a disjuncture between criminal and family courts and where it has not been through the criminal process (which many many cases are not), PAS is an inappropriate allegation to be making. In cases of domestic abuse of one of the parents or of the child, and I do not mean PAS here I mean physical or sexual abuse or psychological abuse or neglect, the parent who is the victim or the resident parent of the child who is the victim of the non-resident parent is expected by social services to be taking steps to protect (usually) her child. The fact of the matter is that this is usually gender-based in so far as the vast majority of domestic abuse is perpetuated by men. Behaviours which seek to protect a child, as required by social services, could be misconstrued in family court as alienating, because how do you build up a safe relationship for DC with an abusive parent whilst protecting yourself and them? You end up in an absurd situation where you are in effect saying that what has happened does not matter and should all be forgotten (so contact can resume) whilst putting in place as many safeguards as possible to make sure it does not happen again. From a point of disadvantage given the power imbalance in domestic abuse cases. And there is no joined up thinking between social services, family court and any other services involved.

That is before you get to the point that PAS as a syndrome is contested amongst practitioners and academics and one of the reasons it is contested is because of the gender bias and ‘amorphous, ever evolving nature’. I do not doubt that alienating behaviours can occur in high conflict divorces - my own upbringing was shaped negatively by some of this behaviour - and I agree they should be condemned and educated against. But i think it is positively dangerous for women and children in domestic abuse cases that it is considered as a default because it becomes just another tool to perpetuate abuse and indeed use the courts to do so. In the academic literature it is acknowledged that PAS is used in a gender-based way (against women even when domestic abuse has been present), that it disadvantages mothers (particularly where domestic abuse has been present) and it distracts attention from focus on what is the best arrangement for the child.

I think if one reframed matters to a discourse of parental responsibility, what both parents should be doing for the good of the child and how that should be done, it would be more positive. But that remains in tension with the equal imperative for contact to be safe in situations of domestic abuse and the position of the resident parent (usually female) to ensure it is safe, whilst not being controlling of the other parent’s time. Not forgetting of course the imbalance of power in domestic abuse situations. The vast, vast majority of resident parents are not engaging in PAS, they are doing their best to facilitate contact even in difficult circumstances.

I do not see that the issues this causes for primarily women and children are that hard to recognise, bearing in mind this is a feminist board. I am going to leave it there.

Ktara Cafcass got me to recount my abuse over the phone in great detail, then the officer came to my home and asked me to recount it all over again. Then as casual as anything she said well that happened to you not the children! I had therapy for post traumatic stress and she basically told me my experience was irrelevant.
I spent a lot of time and energy maintaining contact despite on going abuse. Parental alienation will definitely be his next step so 8 years on I'm still not free.

@KTara I deliberately pushed back, not so sure about disingenuous, but for the avoidance of doubt I will clarify. Parental Alienation Syndrome IS a form of abuse albeit inflicted on the child. Increasingly more and more research is coming to that conclusion. There was a case in America where PAS was used as a defense when a 10 year old shot their own father.

That doesn’t mean to say I think it trumps other forms of abuse nor am I ok with any other forms of domestic abuse either. I also am not saying we should pursue PAS with blinders on to all other forms abuse may take. I am simply saying it is IS a form of abuse and deserves consideration.

Where I think you and I would be in agreement is that courts, social services and the police lack the resources and indeed the will to fully establish when abuse occurs and often fail to take appropriate steps.

Finally in closing I don’t see PAS as a specific thing mothers do to fathers, and whilst it may true that fathers are alienated against more frequently simply by virtue of their being more mothers with primary care than fathers. As we are are seeing a gradual increase of fathers with primary care and being involved with their children to a greater degree than historically it stands to reason that PAS itself will be a tool of abusive men who have care (either shared or primary) to get at their ex-partners. I would have thought you would want that possibility to be considered.

Thanks for posting this, very interesting to listen to. I feel nervous about it that kids might not be listened to about their parents when there IS a reason to listen to them but also clear that this is a different thing to gender dysphoria. Both situations seem to have a lot of scope for the baby to go out with the bath water.