Editor’s note: To protect the identity of the minor and due to ongoing legal challenges between the parents, The Chief is not using the real names of the father or child in this story.
Tim Eaton can barely speak without breaking down in tears when he describes what he misses about everyday life with his two-year-old child, Sam.
“It is all the little things,” he said, such as not routinely being able to watch and hold or comfort Sam, that he misses the most.
Eaton and Sam’s mother split up about eight months ago. It has been a messy break up and Eaton accuses his ex-partner of limiting his access to Sam. At one point he couldn’t see the child for almost two months, he told The Chief.
The issue of his access is working through the legal system, but that takes time. Therefore, the limited access he currently has with Sam – twice a week for a few hours per visit – will likely continue for at least several more months.
The most heartbreaking moment for Eaton was when he saw Sam after the extended absence. He can never forget the look on the child’s face, he said.
“I walked in the door and [Sam] looked at me and it was almost like, ‘What are you doing here?’ It was the strangest look,” Eaton recalled.
He hasn’t been able to put Sam to bed since Christmas, he said.
The control, denial of access and the denigrating of Eaton, as he describes it, is called parental alienation – working to make a child hate, fear or disrespect one parent – and it is not uncommon in cases of divorce.
While the facts of this particular Squamish case may be in dispute, parental alienation is a very serious problem worldwide, according to Jennifer Harman, associate professor of psychology at Colorado State University. Through her research, she estimates 13 per cent of parents are targets of parental alienation.
The behaviour is seen in all parental configurations and across all races and classes, according to Harman.
The behaviour is a form of domestic violence, she argues. The target is the other parent and the weapon is the child, Harman said in a TED Talk about the issue.
Both mothers and fathers can be guilty of it, Harman asserts.
The issue of parental alienation is propped up by outdated and erroneous stereotypes and entrenched ideas of gender roles, according to Harman. Friends, family and teachers are more likely to believe a father is abusive or not essential to a child’s upbringing or that a mother is too career driven or is mentally ill. Those stereotypes need to be dispelled for parental alienation to be challenged, Harman argues.
Damage to kids
Parental alienation can be devastating for the kids involved, according to experts.
“Children see themselves as half their mother and half their father and if they hate one of their parents, they are essentially hating themselves,” said Edward Kruk, associate professor of social work at UBC. “Children think that parents don’t love them, they feel rejected and abandoned.”
The parent doing the alienating seems to hate the other parent more than she or he loves the child, Kruk added. “They are not really emotionally tuned in to the needs of the child.”
Children can feel extremely isolated and grow to suffer from severe social and emotional problems due to parental alienation, Kruk said.
Solutions
Countries in Europe, particularly Iceland, are tackling the problem head on, Kruk said, by promoting equal parenting responsibilities.
Making shared parenting the heart of family law would go a long way to reducing parental alienation, according to Kruk. But in B.C., the idea is one parent will be a primary caregiver, he said, even if the couple shared responsibility prior to the break up.
Like more and more fathers in Squamish, Eaton said he took parental leave for nine months when Sam was born and during that time the pair bonded.
The adversarial family law system is very lucrative for some, Kruk argued, creating a “divorce industry” for legal practitioners.
The only way to effectively address the issue is to overhaul the family court system toward one that is less adversarial and promotes shared parenting responsibilities, according to Kruk.
“So that one parent is not removed from a child’s life,” he said.
“If you undermine the role and status of one parent, you are actually creating conditions for parental alienation.
“The system is the main alienator, I don’t even blame parents for what they do.”
The family courts in B.C. are set up in a way that creates the worst possible outcome for children and parents, Kruk said
While Kruk said there is very little that can be done on an individual basis until the entire system is overhauled, he advises alienated parents to never give up trying to have a relationship with their children.
Public awareness of parental alienation is important so that parents know they aren’t alone and can lobby for change, he added.
Signs of parental alienation
Several specific behaviours define parental alienation:
*Parents guilty of this will support a child not seeing the other parent without reason;
*allow the child to choose to not see the other parent without a court decision on the matter;
*refuse the other parent access to medical, school records or schedules of extracurricular activities;
*blame the other spouse for not having enough money or other problems in front of the child;
*make false allegations of abuse or drug use;
*ask the child to choose one parent or the other;
*ask the child for information on the other parent that is later used against that parent;
*ask children about the spouse’s personal life;
*give the children an impression that having a good time with the other parent will hurt the parent left behind;
*“rescue” the child from the other parent when there is no danger.
~ from “Parental Alienation: Not in the Best interest of the children,” by Douglas Darnall in the North Dakota Law Review.
