Behaviors and Strategies Employed in Parental Alienation

Amy J. L. Baker · Douglas Darnall

115 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Divorce & Remarriage

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Family Dynamics and Relationships Attachment and Relationship Dynamics Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse

Abstract

A survey study was conducted of adults who self reported being targets of parental alienation. Three research questions were addressed: (1) What alienating strategies were identified by the targeted parents and to what extent were these behaviors consistent with those identified by adult children of PAS? (2) Was gender of the targeted parent associated with number and/or type of strategy identified? And (3) What child and parent characteristics were associated with level of PAS (mild, moderate, severe) as described by the targeted parents? Ninety-seven individuals completed a written survey. One section of the survey asked participants to list every type of behavior that they believed the alienating parent used to effectuate the alienation. From prior research and review of the responses, a list of possible strategies was developed. The 1,300 actions described by the 97 participants were independently coded. Results revealed 66 types of strategies, 11 mentioned by at least 20% of the sample. There was considerable but not complete overlap in the strategies identified by the targeted parents with those described by adult children (from another study). There were no statistical differences in the number or type of strategy mentioned based on the gender of the targeted parent or the gender of the target child. Level of severity of PAS (mild, moderate, severe) as perceived by the targeted parent was associated with age and gender of the target child, with girls and older children being more likely to be reported as more severely alienated. These results provide a systematic examination of the different types of alienation strategies known to targeted parents and as such they offer several avenues for clinical interventions and future research.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 115 citations exist upstream.

References

1994Life-Span Adjustment of Children to Their Parents' Divorce 2005The Long-Term Effects of Parental Alienation on Adult Children: A Qualitative Research Study

Cited by

2010CHILDREN RESISTING POSTSEPARATION CONTACT WITH A PARENT: CONCEPTS, CONTROVERSIES, AND CONUNDRUMS 2011PARENTAL ALIENATION AND THE DYNAMICS OF THE ENMESHED PARENT-CHILD DYAD: ADULTIFICATION, PARENTIFICATION, AND INFANTILIZATION 2011To Turn a Child Against a Parent Is To Turn a Child Against Himself: The Direct and Indirect Effects of Exposure to Parental Alienation Strategies on Self-Esteem and Well-Being 2011Adult Recall of Childhood Exposure to Parental Conflict: Unpacking the Black Box of Parental Alienation 2019Parental Alienation: The Blossoming of a Field of Study 2010Parental Alienation, Dsm-5, and ICD-11 2007A Construct Study of the Eight Symptoms of Severe Parental Alienation Syndrome 2017Parental alienation: Targeted parent perspective

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.