Parental alienation as a label

• Considers why parental alienation has become a label that is too quickly applied or used as a default position.
• Addresses the possibility that the parental alienation label will mask possible welfare issues.
• Discusses the importance of applying for psychological assessments to assess parental alienation claims and avoid unfair labelling.

While we are all familiar with the term ‘parental alienation’, there’s a question mark as to whether it is properly understood or has just become a label that the legal community is erroneously applying—or is sometimes too quick to apply.

Background

The term parental alienation originated in the US and steadily replaced the term commonly used in the UK, ‘implacable hostility’, in itself a severe description of a possible situation between parents where contact is proving almost impossible to negotiate. Parental alienation does not have a clinical basis any more than another frequently bandied label in the family courts, ‘narcissistic behaviour’, which has become the ‘in’ phrase for coercive control.

While