By Laurie A. Couture
Parental and family alienation is a growing scourge of our times; a scourge that invalidates the needs, rights, and feelings of the children involved and their long-term best interests. The alienating parent can be either father or mother and the alienated family can be either side. Sometimes both parents alienate family members from access to the children. There are certainly situations in which immediate and legitimate safety or legal issues necessitate supervision or limits on visitation until the family member in question receives treatment, parenting classes, or some other intervention to guarantee safety of the children. In rare cases, a child’s parent or loved one is so dangerous to the child that no contact is safe. In adoptive families, the biological family’s legal rights were terminated. While these scenarios are real, it is important to understand that the vast majority of family alienation cases do not meet these criteria, and tragically, false allegations are sometimes orchestrated by gatekeepers to create the illusion of these types of scenarios so they can justify their alienation and gain supporters.
In the majority of cases in which a parent, grandparent, or family side is alienated from a child’s life, there is generational trauma in the alienating gatekeeper’s family. The gatekeeper is anxious, angry, jealous, or vindictive toward the other side of the child’s family and acts possessively over the child. Most commonly, it is the mother of the child and the maternal side of the child’s family who are the gatekeepers, pushing out the father and paternal side because they want the child and the child’s loyalties all to themselves. The mother might employ projection against the other party: Attributing to the paternal side actions that her own family did to her or that she herself has done to the child’s father or paternal side. The mother of the child might even want to punish or hurt the father, paternal grandparents, or paternal side for relationship conflicts, disagreements, or misunderstandings that could be healed and solved through empathy and understanding, positive dialogue and active listening, Non-Violent Communication (NVC), mediation, a parenting plan, or family therapy.
While alienation is anguishing for the erased parent, grandparent, or family side, the child who has lost a parent or family side due to alienation suffers the deepest anguish of all: A developmental wound, a wound of lost identity, a wound of lost belonging, a wound of feeling abandoned, a wound of feeling unloved, and a wound of grieving years of lost love, hugs, connection, support, involvement, activities, traditions, visits, family stories, and fun that are unique to that parent or family side. The remarkable YouTube travel adventures of Grandma Joy and Dr. Brad Ryan are an example of one man and his nonagenarian grandmother trying like time-warriors to claim interest on the decade of time debt they suffered due to alienation. I hope to do some catch-up adventuring with my own granddaughter someday—My family was erased from her life at birth, after the death of her dad, my son.
Gatekeeper parents can choose to do the right thing by empathizing with their children and realizing the deep grief, pain, confusion, and loss their children may feel or grow to feel when they are missing a parent or half of their family, identity, and legacy. Eventually, like Dr. Ryan, children usually go searching for their missing parents, missing family members, and the missing answers, whether in their late teens or later in life. The gatekeepers who erase their children’s loved ones today may one day have to answer to those children as a grown adults, demanding, “Why did you do this to me? Why did you cut me off from my Dad/Mom/Nana/Grandpa/Family who loves me? Why did you keep me from someone I needed? Why did you keep me away from a part of myself?”
References:
Erasing Family (2020): https://erasingfamily.org/
Bounds, O., & Matthewson, M. (2022). Parental alienating behaviours experienced by alienated grandparents. Journal of Family Issues, 0192513X221126753.
Hyman (2022): https://people.com/human-interest/inside-grandma-and-grandsons-journey-to-every-national-park-after-estrangement/
Kruk (2022): https://youtu.be/pPmldCxQzNQ?si=N1S_yzATOgP2rtLh
Grandparents Academy: https://training.grandparentsacademy.com/courses#alienated
