(Cont'd from p. 3) The results speak of financial hardship, of acute emotional distress, of social isolation, and of an alarming shortage of self-worth.
We all know that parental alienation is horrible. That it undermines otherwise viable co-parenting arrangements and strips people of those they love and who love them. And that in children, it leaves profound psychological trauma in its wake. However, the initial data collected from our survey speaks of something even more.
Combined with the estimate that 22 million parents are affected by parental alienation in the US alone, the survey results speak of a crime that’s raging unchecked, seemingly in the blindside of our collective vision.
Every society throughout history seems to have designated ‘untouchables’ to use for entertainment. Victor Hugo’s A Man Who Laughs is a confronting tale of this phenomenon. Its main character makes ends meet because he is so hideous that people will pay to see him, to laugh at him. But he, unlike some unfortunate individuals, wasn’t born this way – he was purposefully mutilated as child, by people who elevated the practice to a craft, appropriating homeless children to feed ‘market demand.’
Hugo’s character seems like an unnecessarily graphic analogy for parental alienation until we take a closer look. Firstly, while nobody is truly safe, parental alienation also preys on the most vulnerable: the non-biological, the less well-off, the less-informed, the non-white, the non-custodial, the LGBTQ+ parents. Secondly, parental alienation diminishes and mocks the targeted parent so that others can feel better about themselves, their parenting, and their relationships with their children. Thirdly, it similarly keeps the victims under control through shame, blaming them for their own suffering. And lastly, it has also fueled an entire industry that attends to this despicable hobby.
Outside of truly exceptional circumstances, all who have ever had a child – however this child came into their life – can testify to affection so powerful that it is inexplicable; to a love that changes them in the same instant that it lays their entire lives at the feet of this brand-new human being. As if it lodges a hook through their hearts, connecting the parent to the child by an undetectable cord.
And then, this most intimate, most vulnerable of bonds is exploited. The hook tugged on, as if to elicit an absurd performance subsequently used to prove that we don’t deserve that child.
If you are a father, this sadistic ploy seems to say, don’t you dare be distant, but be prepared to hurt like hell if you let your children into your heart. Make sure to bring home the dough, but every event you miss will be proving that you chose work over your child(ren).
Fathers are accused of paedophilia, violence and absenteeism for no other reason than the inconvenience of their ongoing existence past the point when the mothers of their children want it.
And mothers are callously pegged with mental illness whenever they aren’t crucified for ambition – a particularly dirty word when applied to women, and a trait seemingly incompatible with being a parent. Never mind that we encourage girls to soar, to become everything they want—professional athletes, CEOs, and heads of state. But apparently, only until their first baby, because no good mother could possibly want anything besides staying home and baking for school functions.
None of the above is meant to disregard the role that step- and other parents play. It is merely meant to illustrate the absurdity of what even the “original” parents – the ones that, by all logic derived from the ethos of a nuclear family – shouldn’t have problems like parental alienation. However, we know that parental alienation does not discriminate. Like all great equalizers, great equalizers, it torments the biological parents and any other who dares commit to seeing a
Is our society really drowning in no-good, dead-beat parents, or is it manufacturing them to satisfy its craving for a “them” that is distinctly different from “us”?
summer 2017 PSG 5