Kate Molan discusses how best to address implacable hostility & the increase in parental alienation
- Intractable contact cases are some of the hardest to resolve.
- Parental alienation can include belittling, brainwashing and other strategies.
After a relationship breaks down, the task of agreeing arrangements for any children can be a complex one, and many separating parents struggle to come to terms with the new dynamics and mutual respect that co-parenting entails. Indeed, there are some cases in which extreme, negative behaviour is exhibited by one parent with the aim of undermining a child’s relationship with the other. Such characteristics and behaviour have come to be known as implacable or intractable hostility—a term that should only be applied to a parent who will do almost anything to frustrate a relationship between the child and their other parent.
Implacable hostility can often result in parental alienation. Parental alienation describes a situation where a child has been deliberately manipulated, coerced or otherwise pressured to align themselves to one parent by the other. The impact on children
