Parental Alienation
Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff
Parental alienation occurs when a child refuses to have a relationship with a parent due to manipulation, such as the conveying of exaggerated or false information, by the other parent. The situation most often arises during a
divorce or custody battle but it can happen in intact families as well.
What Is Parental Alienation?
The perpetrator may leverage a variety of tactics: A father could tell child that the child's mother hates him and never wants to speak to them, when in reality the mother calls to speak to the child every day. A mother could convince her daughter to report—or even believe—that the father physically abused her. Offenders may blame the other parent for the collapse of the
marriage, punish the child for wanting to pursue a relationship with the parent, or move away so that maintaining a relationship is extremely difficult.
Psychology Today - Parental Alienation
Father Absence, Father Deficit, Father Hunger
The vital importance of paternal presence in children’s lives.
According to the 2007 UNICEF report on the well-being of children in economically advanced nations, children in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. rank extremely low in regard to social and emotional well-being. Many theories have been advanced to explain the poor state of our nations’ children: most notably child poverty, race, and social class. A factor that has been largely ignored, however—particularly among child and family policymakers—is the prevalence and devastating effects of fathers' absence in children’s lives.
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Whereas parents, in general, are not supported as parents by our social institutions, divorced fathers, in particular, are often devalued, disparaged, and forcefully disengaged from their children’s lives. Researchers have found that for children, the results are nothing short of disastrous along a number of dimensions:
- Diminished self-concept and compromised physical and emotional security: Children consistently report feeling abandoned when their fathers are not involved in their lives, struggling with their emotions and episodic bouts of self-loathing.
- Behavioral problems: Fatherless children have more difficulties with social adjustment, and are more likely to report problems with friendships, and manifest behavior problems; many develop a swaggering, intimidating persona in an attempt to disguise their underlying fears, resentments, anxieties, and unhappiness.
- Truancy and poor academic performance: 71 percent of high school dropouts are fatherless; fatherless children have more trouble academically, scoring poorly on tests of reading, mathematics, and thinking skills; children from father-absent homes are more likely to play truant from school, more likely to be excluded from school, more likely to leave school at age 16, and less likely to attain academic and professional qualifications in adulthood.
- Delinquency and youth crime, including violent crime: 85 percent of youth in prison have an absent father; fatherless children are more likely to offend and go to jail as adults.
- Promiscuity and teen pregnancy: Fatherless children are more likely to experience problems with sexual health, including a greater likelihood of having intercourse before the age of 16, foregoing contraception during first intercourse, becoming teenage parents, and contracting sexually transmitted infection; many girls manifest an object hunger for males, and in experiencing the emotional loss of their fathers egocentrically as a rejection of them, may become susceptible to exploitation by adult men.
- Drug and alcohol abuse: Fatherless children are more likely to smoke, drink alcohol, and abuse drugs in childhood and adulthood.
- Homelessness: 90 percent of runaway children have an absent father.
- Exploitation and abuse: Fatherless children are at greater risk of suffering physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, being five times more likely to have experienced physical abuse and emotional maltreatment, with a one hundred times higher risk of fatal abuse; a recent study reported that preschoolers not living with both of their biological parents are 40 times more likely to be sexually abused.
- Physical health problems: Fatherless children report significantly more psychosomatic health symptoms and illness such as acute and chronic pain, asthma, headaches, and stomachaches.
- Mental health disorders: Father-absent children are consistently overrepresented in a wide range of mental health problems, particularly anxiety, depression, and suicide.
- Life chances: As adults, fatherless children are more likely to experience unemployment, have low incomes, remain on social assistance, and experience homelessness.
- Future relationships: Father-absent children tend to enter partnerships earlier, are more likely to divorce or dissolve their cohabiting unions, and are more likely to have children outside marriage or outside any partnership.
- Mortality: Fatherless children are more likely to die as children, and live an average of four years less over the life span.
Psychology Today - Father Absence, Father Deficit, Father Hunger