The truth about family estrangement
It’s often said that food brings people together. But it can also split families apart. Cookbook author Nandita Godbole has experienced this first-hand. Her affluent Indian family, who generally had hired cooks in their homes, disapproved of her choice of profession. By working with food, she was going against their expectations. When Godbole’s recent book […]
Japan’s Failure to Protect Japanese-American Children from International Parental Kidnapping in Violation of the Hague Convention on Child Abduction
The Hague Conference on Private International Law established the Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction in 1980 (Hague Convention) in response to the legal issues surrounding international parental kidnapping. Ninety-six countries, including the United States and Japan, have adopted the Convention as of 2016. Before signing and ratifying the Convention in 2014, […]
Prevalence of adults who are the targets of parental alienating behaviors and their impact
Estimating the prevalence of parental alienation is challenging because not all children who are exposed to parental alienating behaviors become alienated (Harman, Bernet, & Harman, 2019). The purpose of the current study was to determine whether the proportion of adults who indicate being alienated from a child will be similar to results from a previous […]
Parents Behaving Badly: Gender Biases in the Perception of Parental Alienating Behaviors
According to gender role theory, individuals who confirm expectations associated with their gender roles are rewarded and judged against these expectations when they deviate. Parental roles are strongly tied to gender, and there are very different expectations for behaviors of mothers and fathers. This study examined how mothers’ and fathers’ behaviors that support or discourage […]
Parental alienating behaviors: An unacknowledged form of family violence
Despite affecting millions of families around the world, parental alienation has been largely unacknowledged or denied by legal and health professionals as a form of family violence. This complex form of aggression entails a parental figure engaging in the long-term use of a variety of aggressive behaviors to harm the relationship between their child and […]
Parental Alienation: The Blossoming of a Field of Study
Parental alienation has been an unacknowledged and poorly understood form of family violence. Research on parental alienation and the behaviors that cause it has evolved out of decades of legal and clinical work documenting this phenomenon, leading to what could be considered a “greening,” or growth, of the field. Today, there is consensus among researchers […]
Gender Differences in the Use of Parental Alienating Behaviors
Past research indicates females prefer the use of indirect over direct forms of aggression, whereas the opposite pattern has been found for males. We investigated a specific form of aggression: parental alienating behaviors. Parents who alienate their children from another parent utilize both direct and indirect forms of aggression. We examined whether there are gender […]
Allegations of Family Violence in Court: How Parental Alienation Affects Judicial Outcomes
Harman, J. J., & Lorandos, D. (2020). Allegations of family violence in court: How parental alienation affects judicial outcomes. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/law0000301 We tested a set of findings reported by Meier et al. (2019) related to the use of parental alienation as a legal defense in cases in which […]
