Caring for Men and boys. In this episode I return to the subject of parental alienation and in particular to the four criteria for identifying the phenomenon that are included in Amy Baker’s 2018 paper; the title of her paper is ‘Reliability and Validity of the Four-Factor Model of Parental Alienation’ and there is a link to it in the episode notes. The third of Baker’s four-factors identifies 17 alienating behaviours exhibited by an alienating parent.
Good guy of the week is Jay Flynn whose modest pub quizzes, became an online phenomenon, in a most unexpected way, after lockdown began last year; and he has received an unexpected reward.
Caring for Men and boys. In this episode I return to the subject of parental alienation and in particular to the four criteria for identifying the phenomenon that are included in Amy Baker’s 2018 paper; the title of her paper is ‘Reliability and Validity of the Four-Factor Model of Parental Alienation’ and there is a link to it in the episode notes. The third of Baker’s four-factors identifies 17 alienating behaviours exhibited by an alienating parent.
Good guy of the week is Jay Flynn whose modest pub quizzes, became an online phenomenon, in a most unexpected way, after lockdown began last year; and he has received an unexpected reward.
Parental Alienation: Baker’s Four-Factor Model Including Parent Alienating Behaviours and Child Manifesting Behaviours
In this episode I return to the subject of parental alienation and in particular to the four criteria for identifying the phenomenon that are included in Amy Baker’s 2018 paper; the title of her paper is ‘Reliability and Validity of the Four-Factor Model of Parental Alienation’ and there is a link to it in the episode notes. The third of Baker’s four-factors identifies 17 alienating behaviours exhibited by an alienating parent.
Before I go to Baker’s paper, I just want to point out that there is a history of questioning the existence of parental alienation which was first defined in the early eighties by Dr Richard Gardner who described it as a syndrome. The phenomenon was highly controversial; highly controversial to the extent that in 1999, Gardner felt moved to write a paper entitled ‘Misperceptions Versus Facts about the Contributions of Richard A Gardner, MD’ a paper in which he addressed 35 unfounded, in his opinion, criticisms of him and his parental alienation work. A link to this very interesting document is in the notes.
The 35 misperceptions that he addresses in this paper include
· that he’s biased against women
· that he’s been barred from testifying in many US courts
· that Parental alienation syndrome, PAS, doesn’t exist because it’s not in the DSM-IV, which is now, the DSM-V and lastly, he is accused of
· believing that the vast majority of incestuous sex-abuse accusations are false
He robustly tackles all 35 misperceptions, often giving detailed and extensive explanations.
Now let’s focus on Baker’s paper; she quotes a review into the phenomenon of PAS conducted in 2016 by Saini, Johnston, Fidler and Bala; these researchers found that although there are still questions to be answered about parental alienation theory, ‘the identification of PABs (Parental Alienation Behaviors) has produced a set of findings that mothers, fathers, children, young adults, and counsellors have all found consistently reliable and helpful in describing the explicit behaviours that may be perpetrated by one parent in their effort to distance, damage, or destroy a child’s relationship with their other parent’.
Baker devised her criteria because her experience was, that parental alienation, as a legal and mental health issue, was little understood by the respective professionals.
Her 2018 study tested the reliability and validity of her model by having mental health professionals assess and code vignettes that were presented to them in terms of the presence of, and absence of, her four factors.
Baker’s study found that, in the coding of the vignettes the reliability of the four-factors was quite high and there was agreement that, when all four-factors are present the case is one of alienation and, when one or no factors are present it’s not a case of alienation.
Let’s look in more detail now at the model’s four-factors.
The first factor of PAS is a previously positive relationship between the child and the now rejected parent; this demonstrates that the now rejected parent was not so poor in parenting that he/she was not able to form an emotional bond with their child. This means that parents who have been habitually absent, uninvolved, and uncaring cannot claim that they are victims of parental alienation. Gardner wrote in 1998, in the second edition of his book, ‘The Parental Alienation Syndrome’, ‘I am referring here only to those who have been good, dedicated parents’.
Factor two is the absence of abuse and/or neglect on the part of the now rejected parent; this is to preclude parents who have engaged in behaviours that warrant a child’s rejection from claiming that they are victims of PAS.
Baker tells us that this doesn’t mean the parent must be perfect, only that the child’s rejection of the parent is far out of proportion to anything that parent has actually done. In his previously mentioned book Gardner says, ‘I am referring here to those who are truly innocent of any behaviour that warrants the degree of victimization visited upon them by their PAS child.’ Baker continues, if the rejected parent had abused or neglected their child, the case could have both alienation and estrangement elements, or may be a case of just estrangement; estrangement that’s understandable under the circumstances; either way, it negates the validity of pure alienation as the explanation for the child’s behaviour.
The third factor is that the actions and attitudes of one parent have negatively affected the child’s perception and experience of the other parent; these actions contradict the child’s own direct experience of that parent.
Baker tells us that it’s not OK to make assumptions or infer that the behaviours have occurred, they have to be observed in the form of the child’s actions, attitudes, written statements or behaviours. Researchers, including Baker, Ben Ami and Brassard have identified seventeen primary behaviours which can foster a child’s unjustified rejection of the other parent; these are as follows
(1) denigrating the other parent to the child to create the impression that the other parent is unsafe, unloving, and unavailable
(2) limiting the child’s contact with the other parent so that the parent and child can’t share meaningfully in each other’s lives
(3) interfering in the child’s communication with the other parent in such a way that emotional connection can’t happen during the periods of separation
(4) making it difficult for the child to think about, talk about, and look at photographs of the other parent, thereby weakening the attachment between them
(5) withholding love and affection when the child exhibits interest and affection towards the other parent
(6) allowing the child to choose to spend time with the other parent, creating the impression that time with the other parent is optional and undesirable
(7) forcing the child to reject the other parent
(8) telling the child that the other parent doesn’t love them
(9) creating the impression that the other parent is dangerous
(10) confiding in the child about personal and legal matters in order to induce the child to be hurt and angry at the other parent
(11) asking the child to spy on the other parent
(12) asking the child to keep secrets from the other parent
(13) referring to the other parent by their first name rather than calling them ‘mom’ or ‘dad’
(14) referring to a new significant other as ‘mom’ or ‘dad’
(15) changing the child’s name to remove the association with the other parent
(16) withholding information from the other parent and lastly,
(17) undermining the other parent’s authority
Finally, the fourth factor refers to a child exhibiting eight behaviours determined by PAS theory and research to differentiate an alienated child from a child who is not alienated. These eight behaviours, also known as the manifesting behaviours are
(1) a campaign of denigration of the targeted parent
(2) weak, frivolous and absurd reasons offered by the child for the rejection of the targeted parent
(3) the lack of ambivalence in the child’s view in the sense that one parent is seen as all good and the other is seen as all bad
(4) a lack of remorse in the child for the cruel treatment of the targeted parent
(5) the child’s automatic support for the favoured parent in all inter-parental disputes
(6) the ‘independent thinker’ phenomenon in which the child strenuously professes to have not been influenced at all by the favoured parent
(7) the child using words and phrases borrowed from the favoured parent and lastly
(8) the spread of the child’s animosity to the friends and family of the targeted parent.
A final helpful model for differentiating an alienating parent from an alienated parent which isn’t in Baker’s paper but is from Steve Miller. In his experience the alienating parent presents with what he calls ‘the four C’s’, they are cool, calm, charming and convincing; the alienated parent presents with what he calls ‘the 4 A’s’ – anxious, agitated, angry and afraid.
I just want to end this episode by quoting some of the parental alienation syndrome specialists featured in the last episode in a YouTube video, a link to which is included again in the notes. These specialists are expressing their concerns about professionals who do not have enough grounding in PAS theory.
Karen Woodall argues that practitioners influenced by feminism, I would say radical feminism, place their gaze entirely on women in these cases and remove their gaze from where it needs to be, apart from, she says, when it is the woman who is the alienated party.
Linda Gottlieb points out that a non-specialist in alienation may mistakenly construe parental alienation as ‘a relationship problem between a child and their parent’ and seek to treat that, instead of the alienation.
Miller talks about a non-specialist, seeing a parent rubbing their child’s back or holding hands with them as the child is reporting how good the parent, they’re with is and how bad the parent they’re not with is; such a practitioner may assume that the child is close to that parent; they are liable to leave the interview thinking, ‘what a great relationship’. Such a practitioner he says, “almost always mistakes pathological enmeshment for a healthy bond”.
Gottlieb comments that a specialist knows when the alienated parent alleges alienation there is an obligation to say, ‘let’s explore this’. Any ethical practitioner in this situation needs to ask themselves, “is this my area of expertise?”. She goes on to say, “if they don’t know the 17 alienating strategies and the eight manifestations, haven’t taken a Continuing Education Unit course, trained in family dynamics, been to a specialist conference and don’t collaborate with a known expert in the field of alienation they need to find a specialist to collaborate with or to refer on to”.
An alienated parent lives in unending grief; all professionals who are involved in family courts and mental health have a duty to train in this subject. A professional who is ignorant about this malicious dynamic will likely collude with the alienating parent causing great pain and distress for the child and the alienated parent. In their ignorance, the welfare of all parties won’t be served, and justice won’t be done.
Good Guy of the Week
Jay Flynn, a 38-year-old, lives in Darwen, Lancashire in the UK, with his wife Sarah and three-year-old son Jack. He had been running a pub with a business partner until March 2020. After the lockdown shut pubs and bars across the nation, Jay decided to switch his weekly pub quiz to a virtual event on Facebook.
It was intended as a small event, using a webcam from his living room, to entertain his friends and regular pub quizzers. However, his absent-mindedness had an unexpected consequence.
Jay said, “I did not realise that I had set the event to ‘public’ and by the time of the first quiz on the 26th of March, instead of the 30 or 40 players we were expecting we had half a million people interested.
The weekly event which also streamed on YouTube, became a lockdown phenomenon, regularly bringing hundreds of thousands of people together during the socially-distanced weeks of isolation.
The event holds the Guinness World Record for most viewers of a quiz; the YouTube live stream had more than 182,000 people playing.
The quizzes are free to play but there is a Just Giving page available for people to donate to charity. Mr Flynn’s efforts have now raised three quarters of a million pounds.
One edition of his quiz in May last year, was hosted by Stephen Fry, and raised £140,000 for Alzheimer’s Research UK; Mr Flynn’s quiz has also raised money for homeless charities, an issue that is very close to his heart.
Originally from Roehampton, London, after a relationship breakdown in mid-2007, Jay had himself been homeless for two years, living down and out on the streets of London and sleeping on the Victoria Embankment.
The quizmaster was very surprised to learn that he will be returning to the capital to receive an MBE awarded in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for his efforts in the Covid-19 response.
“I’m completely overwhelmed and honoured” he said; “I nearly fell backwards off my chair; I never thought I would achieve anything in my life. I don’t think it’ ll sink in until I go to the ceremony. I’m blown away.”
Jay holds his quizzes online each Thursday and Saturday and his first book, Jay’s Virtual Pub Quiz Book is now on sale. There’s a link in the episode notes. As Stephen Fry says, “Jay is Q - the quizmaster's quizmaster. His achievements form one of the happiest and most hopeful stories to have emerged from the madness of lockdown.” Well done Jay Flynn!
Amy Baker paper, 2018, Reliability and validity of the four-factor model of parental alienation
https://pasg.info/app/uploads/2018/12/Baker-2018-Four-Factor-Model.pdf
Misperceptions Versus Facts about the Contributions of Richard Gardner MD
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/Misperceptions_vs_Facts.HTM
Parental Alienation - In the eyes of the specialists
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQXSAVUNngg
Jay Flynn’s Virtual Pub Quiz book
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08BZWQ76Y/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1