Why Alienation Claims Are Brought
Alienation claims are rarely raised at the outset. They are almost always reactive, brought as a counterattack when a child begins resisting contact with one parent. Rather than addressing the reasons for that resistance (often a result of the parent’s own dysregulation, emotional volatility, or past harm), the accusing parent reframes the child’s behavior as manipulation by the other parent.
This narrative allows the non-preferred parent to retain a sense of victimhood, while also achieving key legal advantages:
- Discrediting the protective parent by casting them as controlling, emotionally unstable, or vindictive.
- Shifting scrutiny away from the rejecting parent’s conduct.
- Inviting a “both sides are to blame” framework the court can safely adopt.
- Laying the groundwork for a custody reversal.
In practice, alienation claims are often deployed by controlling or abusive parents to reassert power through the legal system. A steady stream of filings and exaggerated grievances (e.g., “she was ten minutes late for the exchange, she’s interfering with my custody time!”) creates chaos and confusion.
Because family courts often default to shared parenting as a baseline, and because judicial rotation can interrupt case continuity, these allegations tend to be repeated, even when they lack evidence and/or have already been adjudicated. The sheer volume of accusations and the emotional tone of the litigation distort the record and overwhelm the court.
It started as a theory. It became a weapon. And now it’s collapsing under the weight of the research.
Parental alienation theory entered the legal system through the work of child psychiatrist and custody evaluator Richard Gardner in the 1980s. He proposed that children who resisted contact with one parent after divorce were being “alienated” by the other parent – almost always the mother. Gardner claimed this was a form of emotional manipulation, not a reaction to harm. He insisted these children were not afraid of the rejected parent; they were brainwashed.
Gardner’s theory was not peer-reviewed. was not based on empirical evidence, and it minimized or outright dismissed the child’s experience and the underlying, abusive dynamic between the parents. Despite this, the theory gained traction in family courts, especially among evaluators and attorneys looking for a framework that avoided confronting non-physical domestic violence. [Saunders & Faller, 2016; Meier, 2020]
For decades, the alienation label has been used to discredit protective parents – particularly mothers – who raise legitimate safety concerns in the context of custody. The echo of that theory still shapes the way courts approach these cases. Judges are trained to see both parents as essential and to assume both are acting in the child’s best interests even when the children themselves are clearly signaling otherwise.
That assumption is costly for everyone involved. It leads courts to order “reunification therapy” with untrained providers, to mandate co-parenting mediation, and to ignore or override the child’s expressed experience. The result is emotional exhaustion and a continuation of trauma for the children, for the protective parent, and often for the professionals pulled into the system without proper guidance or training.
A Rose By Another Other Name… The Rebranding of Alienation
Over time, the term “Parental Alienation Syndrome”, which was never accepted by the psychological community, was rebranded to sound more neutral and clinical. It became “Parental Alienation,” then “Gatekeeping,” “Pathological Enmeshment,” or “Resistance and Refusal Dynamics.” This rebranding merely continues to build on a very unstable foundation. The most current research confirms that children’s resistance is often a rational response to harm, not the result of manipulation. [Faller & Dragiewicz, 2020]
Empirical studies, including work by Joan Meier, Peter Jaffe, and the 2022 critique of Harman & Lorandos, show that alienation claims are often misapplied, misunderstood, and misused. They function more as a litigation tactic than a diagnostic tool. And they disproportionately harm survivors of coercive control and domestic violence.
[Meier & Dickson, 2022]
In 2023, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women issued a formal warning about the global misuse of alienation claims to undermine women’s credibility in custody litigation. [UNHRC, 2023] U.S.-based data confirms this pattern: alienation continues to be used to punish protective parents for resisting contact between children and a parent they fear.
Alienation, as a rhetorical tool, thrives in systems that want quick answers and tidy narratives. It strips away context. It pathologizes fear. It paints protection as obstruction.
The labels changed. The assumptions didn’t.
Each rebranding attempts to distance itself from discredited origins, but the legal impact remains the same: forcing the protective parent to prove they are not the problem, often while under a coordinated assault of false or distorted claims. The court’s attention is diverted from the child’s experience, and the entire case is reframed around fixing the “problem” of the preferred parent.
Regardless of the label, the effect is consistent:
- Protective behavior is pathologized.
- Trauma is reframed as manipulation.
- The child’s fear is ignored.