Tomorrow, in case you hadn't noticed my sidebar, is Parental Alienation Awareness Day. Not that anybody who's ever been on the receiving end of parental alienation can really help being aware. It's real, and it's poison. It may not leave bruises or marks, but it's a pernicious form of abuse nonetheless.
People whose aren't divorced, or children of divorce, probably won't have come into contact with parental alienation. But as soon as a family splits up, the opportunity rears its horrible head, and all too often the temptation is too much to resist.
This isn't the place to go into my own experiences with parental alienation, but I've been on both sides of the parenting wall – custodial and non-custodial – and I know both how easy it could have been to slip into, and how much damage it can do when an ex does it. I raised my oldest daughter for ten years as a single dad, and I don't think I ever said a negative word about her mother where she could hear it. She's grown now, and getting to know her parents as people. Part of that is necessarily finding that we both have some warts, but I'm proud to say that anything negative she learns about her mother is coming as a surprise. (Mine, she mostly knew about.)
But there are parents who aren't so careful. I don't want to sound like a misogynist, but women are particularly susceptible to the temptation, both because they usually have more time with the kids, and also because when women are hurt or angry, they're more vindictive. There's also more of a tendency for women to think of the kids as extensions of themselves. Men are more detached than women are from most things, including children. (My Lovely and Brilliant Wife agrees with me on this, so I'm not just being gratuitously sexist.)
Fathers' Rights advocate Glenn Sacks has written a lot about this subject, and it's not for the sensitive. Here's an example he posted:
“After Jim L.’s wife divorced him and moved his daughters out of state, she sent the two girls fake or altered e-mails purporting to be Jim. Afterwards, Jim’s daughters refused to see him, explaining only ‘you know what you’ve done, you know what you said, you know what you wrote.’
“Once when Jim flew to see his girls for his scheduled weekend visit, his ex-wife decided at the last minute to block the visit. Jim flew home on Sunday without having seen his girls. When he arrived at the airport back home he checked his messages and found a message from his ex-wife. On the recording his girls could be heard crying in the background. His ex-wife said:
“’Jim, the girls are here at the restaurant waiting for you to come pick them up. You said you’d meet them here for breakfast and spend the day with them, and you didn’t show up. The girls are very upset. Jim, where are you?!?’”
That came from an article Glenn wrote refuting a PBS program that echoed the uterofascist line that parental alienation is bunk, just a ploy used by abusive men to harm their families. (I wish they could have swapped places with me a few years ago, and we'd see if they still thought so.) The rest of the Sacks article is well worth reading, for anybody inclined to agree with PBS. But beware; the anecdotes will break your heart.
Lots of men's stories (mine included) aren't as hair-raising as the ones Glenn lists, but then, they don't have to be. Each child has only one psyche. A child's security is mostly tied up in his parents, and when parents split up, that security is shattered. He'll never be as certain of his parents' love as he was before, but it's their job to rebuild his foundation as solidly as they can. When Mommy says (or acts out) that Daddy doesn't love him anymore, it has the twofold effect of making him cling harder to Mom (which is what she was shooting for) and convincing him that he can't be certain of anybody. If Daddy really isn't an abusive bastard or a callous clod, if he really does love his kids, that just confuses the child more. Since Mommy wouldn't lie, Daddy must be faking being nice. If Daddy does that, other people must, too. Except Mommy. Mommy never lies. She told me so. And the cycle continues, and the child spends the rest of his life wondering why Daddy doesn't really love him. It's a lot of damage to do, but for some mothers, it's worth it just to get back at "that man."
Don't let tomorrow go by without doing something about this vicious, spiteful form of child abuse. If you're a non-custodial parent, call your kids and remind them that you love them. If you're a custodial parent, encourage your kids to call the other parent and tell them the same. And if you're not divorced at all, if your family is intact, thank God that your kids have been spared the emotional back-stabbing. Lots of others aren't.
Children have enough to do just being children. They shouldn't have to be weapons.
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