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Parental Alienation Syndrome Essay, Research Paper

Parental Alienation Syndrome

Parental alienation is a divorce or argument between parents usually resulting with the intent of using the children against the other parent. Over the last ten years this problem has been growing and becoming a serious issue. The title parental alienation came about in 1985 by Dr. Richard Gardener, who was an experienced child psychiatrist. After knowing the definition of the subject, the question is why would a parent want to alienate there own child or children just to try and turn against the other parent?

The biggest issue inside parental alienation is the issue of abuse towards the children. To give an example of abusive parents researchers at the University of Toronto, and many other universities have taken important steps toward creating a profile of an abusive parent. Professor Gary Walters and Lynn Oldershaw of the Department of Psychology at Toronto have developed a system to characterize parents who physically abuse their children. This helps courts dealing with the problem of parental alienation syndrome to identify parents in child abuse. Over the last five years, Walters and Oldershaw have examined over 100 mothers and they re three to six-year-old children who have been physically abused (Freed). In the laboratory, the mother and child spend 30 minutes participating in activities such as playing, eating and cleaning-up. The family interaction is videotaped and later looked at closely. The researchers have developed a system, which allows them to record the samples of parenting skills. They are particularly interested in disciplinary strategies because abuse most commonly occurs when the parent wants the child to do something they don t want to. As a result of their work, Walters and Oldershaw have identified specific categories of abusive parents and their children. Abusive mothers are too harsh and constantly badger their child to behave. Abusive mothers also seemed to both scold their child and then later give them a hug or be polite to them. This type of mothering produces an aggressive, disobedient child. An abusive mother shows no positive feelings towards her child. She makes blatant attacks on the child and takes away affection or attention. The child tries to engage in his mother’s attention and win her approval. An emotionally detached mother has very little involvement with her child. She appears depressed and uninterested in the child’s activities. In order to put together a profile for all this, the two researchers examine the mother/child relationship and their feelings toward one another. For example, Walters and Oldershaw take into account the mother’s sense of herself as a parent and her impression of her child. The researchers also try to determine the child’s perception of himself or herself and of the parent. Abusive parents are often believed to have poor parenting skills and are referred to programs to improve these skills. These programs are good for parents who were raised by abusive parents themselves and as a result are ignorant of any other behavior toward her child. One of the goals of the psychologists is to provide information to therapists, which will help them to find solutions to helping the parent. Researchers like these work on problems with abuse every day trying to help find solutions for this problem. I would have to agree that in most cases of abuse, the parents themselves had a similar experience in their own childhood and don t know any other way of handling it. Researchers like these need to keep working and analyzing this problem so that maybe a cure to child abuse can be thought of and parental alienation would not happen.

Another problem towards the cause of parental alienation syndrome is divorce among families. Along with abuse, divorce has also become a much larger problem in the past decade. When we pass the year 2000, there is said to be two groups of working age adults. One group will have psychological, social, economic, educational and moral benefits and the other group will have none of those (Kurdek 68). The first group will have grown up with a father present in the house and the second group will have not had a father present at all. The groups will be roughly equal in size. It used to be in the past that all the legal issues were so expensive that no one could really afford a divorce. In Canada the rate of divorce in 1951 was one out of twenty couples. By 1987 one out of two couples got divorced. That seems like a huge increase in a little amount of time. Though the rate has increased it is still not all that easy to get through a divorce. According to sociologist Lenore Weitzman, divorced women get by on about 64% of the income they had during marriage. For their children, this means less money for school activities, clothes, opportunities for traveling, day care and sometimes food (Despert 45). If this happens children could be called on to do adult chores before they are ready, like caring for younger siblings. Older children may be required to work long hours at a job to help bring money to the family. As a result, they may fall behind in their schoolwork. After a while, the child may feel it is hopeless to try to keep up and decide to quit school. If a divorce occurs a young girl in a family may decide to get pregnant and bear a child. She may feel like doing that because her life will have more meaning and she will receive unconditional love from her own child. The father plays an important role in all this because he provides a love that is different than the mother’s. The mother usually provides unconditional love. Father’s love usually has to be earned through achievement. The child must work for the Father s love. This type of love may sound like unreal love, but I think it is real. I think if a child is lucky, he or she will have the benefit of both kinds of love. We as a

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