Effects of Parental Alienation Abuse On Children
Children suffering parental alienation display symptoms of abuse, because as you now know, they are in fact being abused by the alienating parent.
The abuse imposes long-term damage on the psychological health of children that often solidifies and extends well into adulthood.
A wide body of research has established that children suffering from parental alienation and who become alienated from a parent suffer long-term damaging effects that can include, but are not limited to:
- A greater likelihood to experience problems with self-esteem and self-confidence.
- More difficulties with social adjustment.
- A greater likelihood of teen pregnancy.
- A greater likelihood to abuse drugs and alcohol.
- Overrepresentation in a range of mental health issues, especially anxiety, depression, and suicide.
- Self-hating behaviors.
Symptoms of Parental Alienation:
- Campaign of denigration of the targeted parent.
- Weak, frivolous, or absurd reasons for the rejection of the targeted parent.
- Lack of ambivalence towards both parents in which one is viewed as all good and the other as all bad.
- Lack of remorse for the poor treatment of the targeted parent.
- Reflexive support for the favored parent.
- Use of borrowed scenarios.
- The “independent thinker” phenomenon.
- Spread of animosity towards the friends and family of the targeted parent.
Tragically, these children grow up believing that the way they’ve been treated by the alienating parent is normal for relationships, and as a result, have a greater likelihood of partnering with exactly same kind of abusive personality down the road and becoming parental alienation victims themselves.
It’s worth noting that many family law attorneys won’t represent an alienating parent. Still, the narcissistic abuser will keep looking, going through two, three, four more attorneys until they land on a lawyer, who for the right price, is more than willing to rigorously defend what they’re doing. Added to that, you’ll have family investigators, supervised parenting providers, court-ordered child therapists, private investigators – the list goes on, and all of them are making boatloads of money because of the presence of parental alienation.
Additionally (and disturbingly), politicians don’t seem particularly motivated to address this kind of child abuse, presumably because their cares are focused on the political appeal of maximizing child support orders for custodial parents and keeping their family court industry donors happy.
Don’t believe the hype that family court orders are centered around the best interests of children, because that’s a load of nonsense; a shameless con intended to hide the truth about the money-centered collusion and the exploitation of parents and children that’s going on within the family court environment.
Parental alienation abuse and the damage it causes to children is essentially tolerated because confronting it would be inconvenient to an entire collection of self-interested parties who are profiting off of an adversarial family court environment.
Parental Alienation Abuse, then, boils down to a story in which children are forced to pay a long-term price for the greed of the alienating parent and a whole host of others.
Family law is about the harvesting of money, period, and the health and well being of children has nothing to do with any of it. If it did, we’d have family law that incentivized cooperation between parents instead of conflict, ensured children have a meaningful relationship with with both parents, and, treated parental alienation abuse with the seriousness it deserves.
*For a brief overview of the topic with links to professional research, please see “Parental Alienation As Child Abuse and Family Violence”, Psychology Today.
For a summary of research findings of the effects of parental alienation upon child health and well-being, please see “What Are The Symptoms and Consequences Of Parental Alienation”, PychLaw
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