Over the last few months Father's Rights activists have been attempting to have Parental Alienation Disorder added to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM V), the American Psychiatric Association's "bible" of diagnoses.
While searching through articles on parental alienation, I came across this one published about 18 months ago. I recall when reading it then I thought how whacky the rationale of opponents to parental alienation was. Reading the article again now, I came to the same conclusion. More importantly, I am troubled by how little progress has been made in understanding PAS, a phenomenon that really boils down to one parent deliberately interferring with a child's right to love and be loved by both parents. Although this is a very simple concept and one that should be easily identified, somehow the family court system has completely missed the boat and instead, has accepted the unreasonable rhetoric of groups whose primary goal is to completely eliminate a parent from a child's life without cause.
If there is any validity to the arguments of parental alienation opponents who say that mothers who prevent their children from having access to their fathers are simply attempting to protect their children from abuse, then a proper investigation should reveal evidence of troubling dynamics between the offending parent and child well before the marital breakdown. As is the situation with many parental alienation cases, the opposite is true; that a warm and nurturing relationship existed between the child and the alienated parent until the reality of a permanent relationship dissolution became imminent.
Why is such a simple concept so difficult to comprehend?
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