Family Law

Parental Alienation and Gender Bias

By Erin Kelley

By: Gerri L Elder

A new study has found that mothers are the parent more likely to alienate a child from fathers; however, fathers who alienate children from mothers are more likely to be ordered to attend counseling.

Seventy-four court rulings finding parental alienation since 1987 were studied. In 50 of the cases, the mother of the child was responsible for the parental alienation. Toronto divorce lawyer Gene Coleman presented the findings to a group of 150 psychologists, divorce lawyers, mediators and activist parents, reported The Globe and Mail.

Parental alienation syndrome refers to when a parent mentally poisons a child against the other parent and brainwashes them to hate. Three Ontario court judges recently ordered children removed from an alienating parent and taken to the U.S. for deprogramming treatment.

Coleman told the group that fathers who alienate children are at least twice more likely to be ordered to undergo psychiatric counseling than mothers who program children to hate the fathers. Twelve out of 50 mothers who alienated children were ordered to attend therapy, while 13 out of 24 of the alienating fathers were forced to seek counseling.

Further showing gender bias, in 78% of cases where the father was the alienating parent, the court changed custody to the mother. Child custody was changed to fathers in only 62% of cases in which the mother was the alienating parent.

Full post as published by The Divorce Blog on April 13, 2009 (boomark / email).