A Response to Alienation Deniers
Why alienation remains labeled as pseudoscience while historical research and testimony confirm it is real - STRT Oct 2025
“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze back into thee,”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Splitting the Child in Half
In 1915, Albert Einstein wrote in a letter to Heinrich Zangger,
“My dear friend Zangger,
Your friendly lines greatly impressed me, not by their content but because I see what an active interest you are taking in my fate. In the matter itself you are mistaken. My fine boy had been alienated from me for a few years already by my wife, who has a vengeful, ordinary disposition, but also is so sly that outsiders and particularly men are always deceived by her. If you only knew what I had to live through with her, you would hold it against me that I did not find the energy for so long to separate myself from her. The postcard I received from little Albert had been inspired, if not downright dictated, by her. It said: “As long as you aren’t friendlier with Mama, I don’t want to go with you. Anyway, we’re going into the countryside in July and I don’t want to give up that stay.” Where they wanted to go was not conveyed to me, not even the new address, which I only learned about from you. When I write to Albert, I get no response at all.
Under these circumstances it appeared as if I couldn’t see the children at all if I came now to Zurich in July, as I was firmly resolved to do. So at the last minute I decided, while I was at Göttingen giving talks about the general theory of relativity, to relax here in Sellin, where my cousin had rented lodgings with her children. I’m going to stay here until August 1st, because I need that much rest. From the 1st of August I am ready to come to Zurich, even if my children are so incited against me that they don’t want to have anything to do with me; then I’ll come to see you again. Give me a time period between 1 August and 1 October; I will certainly come. I would surely have been there on the 15th of July if I hadn’t been deterred by the ugly postcard. I left the children to my wife; she shouldn’t ill them with animosity toward me, less for my sake than for the children’s, whose moods are dampened by it.
In your reply please also write me what’s wrong with my little boy. I’m particularly fondly attached to him; he was still so sweet to me and innocent.
Do answer soon, your truly grateful
A. Einstein. ”1
Many parents who are alienated have held this story of Einstein up as proof of alienation, only to be continually dismissed by alienation deniers.
Their reasoning boils down to a few banal explanations:
Einstein was known for being non-committal in his marriages, which would certainly earn the scorn of his ex-wives and any children he had with them. Therefore, Einstein was estranged due to his own actions.
Einstein was a towering public figure; thus, he was protected so that the image of a deadbeat father would not tarnish his legacy and genius. Moreover, Einstein’s ex-wife, Mileva Marić, lived in an era when divorced women had limited economic power; thus, she is seen as a victim under the shadow of a public icon.
There is truth in part of this critique. Einstein’s infidelities, emotional distance, and failures as a husband are well-documented, and such behavior understandably damages trust, marriage, and family life. Those actions rightly shape how history judges him as a partner. And I believe that his actions contributed to his son’s temperament. However, in subsequent letters, a pattern of behavior emerges where Hans Albert exhibits mild to moderate signs of alienation.
His words often echo Mileva’s grievances rather than his own independent reflections, at times withholding affection or contact until Einstein demonstrated greater deference to his mother. His silence in response to Einstein’s letters, combined with conditional statements like “as long as you aren’t friendlier with Mama, I don’t want to go with you,” suggests a child being coached into gatekeeping the relationship. These are not definitive proofs of alienation in the modern clinical sense, but they are indicators of a dynamic where loyalty to one parent was pitted against the natural affection for the other.
This nuance matters. Estrangement rooted in a parent’s failings looks very different from alienation, where the child’s authentic attachment is disrupted and redirected by the influence of the other parent. In Hans Albert’s case, both appear to be at play: Einstein’s shortcomings gave his son reason for disappointment, but the letters reveal an added layer of alignment with Mileva’s perspective that went beyond his own lived experience. In other words, Hans Albert’s rejection of Einstein cannot be fully explained by Einstein’s behavior alone.
Einstein’s infidelities, his aloofness, and his poor performance as a husband are matters for moral judgment — and again, they rightly affect how history sees him as a partner. However, these are separate questions from whether his child should be taught to avoid him, withhold correspondence, or condition affection on his behavior toward the other parent.
Alienation is not the natural consequence of a flawed marriage; it is the result of intentional behaviors that place a child in the middle of an adult conflict, forcing them to choose sides and to reject a parent from a narrative fed to them instead of their own experience.
When we dismiss Einstein’s account simply because he was imperfect, we normalize the idea that alienation is an appropriate punishment for being a difficult spouse or an absentee partner. That logic, applied consistently, would justify alienation in almost any divorce, and would erase the fundamental distinction between a parent who fails in the marriage and a parent who is dangerous and unfit to have a relationship with their child.
However, this explanation alone will not suffice to prove that alienation is real, and so we must dig deeper into the big question…
Why is Alienation believed to be Pseudoscience?
Let’s start with the history first.
In 1985, Dr. Richard Gardner coined the term Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) to articulate what he perceived as a growing pattern in child custody disputes where children were being "programmed" by one parent to denigrate the other. Gardner described deliberate psychological tactics like “brainwashing,” outright programming, and an “independent-thinker” façade as central mechanisms of this alleged syndrome.2
Gardner’s theory was criticized heavily. Despite publishing many peer-reviewed articles on PAS, he was continuously discredited with claims like basing his research on predominantly anecdotal evidence and being self-published. Others accused him of not being a real doctor, an inaccurate charge as Gardner was a licensed clinical professor of child psychiatry at Columbia University. Yet his academic credentials did little to shield him from criticism. Legal scholars, mental health professionals, and advocacy groups argued that his work lacked rigorous empirical validation, relied too heavily on case studies from his own clinical practice, and failed to produce standardized diagnostic criteria that could withstand courtroom scrutiny.3
By the late 1990s, the American Psychological Association and other professional bodies had declined to endorse PAS as a recognized disorder. When the DSM-5 drafting process began, proposals to include either PAS or “Parental Alienation Disorder” were rejected, citing insufficient scientific evidence, concerns over misuse in custody disputes, and the risk of conflating alienation with legitimate estrangement due to abuse or neglect.
Compounding the controversy were Gardner’s own published remarks on sensitive subjects like pedophilia. In several writings, he suggested that sexual contact between adults and children had been viewed differently across cultures and history, and that societal framing could influence the degree of trauma experienced. Critics interpreted these statements as minimizing the harm of abuse, a perception that further damaged his credibility and intensified skepticism toward PAS as a concept. Gardner denied endorsing such behavior, claiming his comments were descriptive rather than permissive, but the reputational damage was lasting.
By the early 2000s, PAS had become a lightning rod in family law, where some evaluators and attorneys embraced it as a framework for understanding severe parent–child rejection, and rejected by others as “junk science” prone to being weaponized by abusive parents to regain custody. Gardner’s death by suicide in 2003 marked the end of his direct influence. Still, the shadow of his controversies has remained, allowing critics of alienation to dismiss the entire field by association.
Since then, “Gardnerian” figures such as Bill Burnett, Amy Baker, Jill Harman, and Richard Warshak have built upon his core observations while discarding or revising his more problematic early assumptions. Their work has broadened the focus from a rigid “syndrome” model to a continuum of alienating behaviors and responses, often integrating research from social psychology, developmental psychology, and high-conflict divorce studies. Still, the Gardnerian lineage generally maintains the emphasis on intentionally alienating behavior as the primary driver of the child’s rejection.
What this shows is that despite the efforts to prove the existence of alienation, there is still irreparable damage to the movement as a whole due to consistent ad hominem attacks, post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) argumentation like “if the child is rejecting the parent, the parent must have done something wrong,” and the tendency to assume correlation equals causation without investigating systemic family dynamics. These flawed arguments have given critics easy ammunition, allowing them to dismiss legitimate findings by focusing on weak reasoning rather than evidence.
It is in this context that Dr. Craig Childress enters the field. By grounding his framework in established clinical constructs such as attachment theory, family systems theory, and personality disorder dynamics, he sidestepped many of the fallacies that plagued early discourse and offered a more rigorous, clinically anchored model.
Dr. Childress continues to use the term parental alienation as an umbrella descriptor, but he insists it is not a new disorder or “syndrome” in itself. Instead, he argues it is best understood as the manifestation of established, well-recognized pathologies operating within family systems. Specifically, he frames severe child–parent rejection in divorce or custody conflict as a form of attachment pathology, in which the child’s normal attachment bond with a parent is disrupted through the influence of the other parent’s unresolved personality disorder traits. Unlike Gardner, who positioned PAS as a discrete diagnosis, Childress maintains that alienation can be fully explained through three existing mainstream clinical frameworks.4
Attachment Theory – Drawing from John Bowlby’s foundational work, Childress emphasizes that children have an innate biological drive to maintain secure attachment bonds with both parents. When a child suddenly rejects a parent in the absence of abuse, this represents a disruption of the attachment system—a red flag for pathology, not normal development.5
Personality Disorder Dynamics – Childress situates the alienating parent’s behavior within patterns seen in narcissistic and borderline personality pathology, particularly splitting (idealizing one figure while devaluing another), enmeshment, and role-reversal. These distortions lead the child to adopt the alienating parent’s perspective as their own, to preserve the fragile attachment with that parent.6
Family Systems Theory – He further applies concepts from Salvador Minuchin and Murray Bowen, highlighting how coalition formation (child + one parent against the other) and triangulation create rigid, pathological family structures. In this framework, the child’s rejection is not a free-standing choice but the outcome of systemic role pressures and loyalty conflicts.7
By tying alienation to these three accepted clinical domains, Childress avoids introducing an unrecognized “syndrome” and instead reclassifies alienation as a predictable outcome of identifiable pathologies. This shift is important as it places alienation inside the boundaries of established psychology rather than outside them. It also means that interventions can be guided by existing evidence-based practices such as attachment repair, structural family therapy, and treatment protocols for personality disorders rather than speculative or novel techniques.
In Childress’ view, alienation is not pseudoscience because it does not require inventing new categories of mental illness. Instead, it is an application of existing science to a specific family dynamic, one that has long been observed in high-conflict custody disputes but historically mislabeled or misunderstood. By reframing the issue this way, he attempts to rescue the legitimacy of the field from the shadow of Gardner’s controversies and restore attention to the underlying clinical reality that children can and do become weaponized in the context of a parent’s psychopathology, with devastating consequences if not correctly identified and treated.
With the history of alienation as a general baseline, I typically encounter three distinct arguments from alienation deniers.
Alienation is junk science, based on the history of Richard Gardner, and those who research and advocate for alienation are profiting from touting it.
Alienation is the excuse used when the parent blames everyone else but themselves for their estrangement from their kids.
Alienation is a legal strategy used by abusive fathers who want to separate a protective mother from the children as a means to harm her and seize control of the kids.
Let’s go through each of them.
Junk Science
Critics often argue that alienation is “junk science,” a relic of Richard Gardner’s discredited “Parental Alienation Syndrome,” kept alive only by professionals who profit from custody disputes. This caricature ignores forty years of refinement. Gardner’s early formulations were deeply flawed, but they prompted a generation of researchers to document, measure, and validate what he could only describe anecdotally. Scholars such as Amy Baker, Richard Warshak, Bill Bernet, and Jennifer Harman have published decades of peer-reviewed research, moving away from the rigid “syndrome” label while preserving Gardner’s essential insight: that some children reject a loving parent, not because of abuse or neglect, but because of the influence of another adult. Their empirical work has demonstrated alienating behaviors, long-term harm to children, and treatment approaches, placing the concept firmly in mainstream psychological literature.
Dr. Craig Childress took the next step by discarding the syndrome model entirely. In his attachment-based framework, alienation is not a novel disorder but a predictable expression of established pathology. A child’s sudden rejection of a parent without cause can be explained through well-recognized dynamics like the suppression of the attachment system, cross-generational coalitions, and personality disorder pathology in the aligned parent. By mapping alienation onto attachment theory, family systems, and clinical models of narcissistic and borderline traits, Childress made alienation scientifically legible without Gardner’s diagnostic baggage.
Critics also point to the fact that alienation never made it into the DSM-5 as proof that it is “not real.” But as Dr. Childress emphasizes, alienation does not need its own entry because the abusive behaviors that produce it( attachment suppression, role reversal, coercion, psychological control) are already defined in clinical science. What makes alienation unique is not the invention of a new pathology, but the specificity—one parent deploying these abusive behaviors onto a child to target and erase the other parent. The absence of a DSM code reflects that alienation is a web of recognizable dynamics already present in established psychology.
For this reason, the charge that alienation is “junk science” is outdated. To dismiss it based on Gardner’s errors is to ignore the field’s evolution, just as one would not dismiss modern psychology because Freud speculated wrongly about dreams or sexuality. Alienation today is not built on untested theory—it is framed within the same established clinical frameworks that inform how therapists understand trauma, enmeshment, or abuse.
Finally, the frequent smear that alienation researchers are “quacks” or profiteers is nothing more than an ad hominem tactic. Specialists exist in every corner of psychology, from domestic violence to trauma to addiction, and alienation is no different. Attacking the credibility or motives of professionals rather than engaging with their data is a rhetorical strategy, not a scientific rebuttal. Even more concerning is when critics claim to be “advocating for the children” while ignoring or dismissing the body of research that documents how alienation harms children. This is a textbook case of the appeal to motive fallacy—dismissing an argument by questioning the supposed intentions of those who make it, rather than addressing the evidence itself.
By masquerading as advocates for children while disregarding decades of empirical findings, deniers commit yet another logical error… they substitute ideology for science, sentiment for data, and in the process leave children more vulnerable to the very abuse they claim to oppose.
Conflation with Estrangement
Another frequent argument is that alienation is nothing more than an excuse—a way for a rejected parent to blame everyone else rather than taking responsibility for their own estrangement. In this framing, if children cut off contact, it must be because the parent was neglectful, abusive, or simply unworthy of their love. The accusation paints alienation claims as self-serving cover stories.
This reasoning commits the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy—“after this, therefore because of this.” It assumes that because rejection follows family conflict, the parent’s behavior must be the cause. In reality, estrangement and alienation are distinct phenomena, and collapsing them together erases that distinction.
Estrangement occurs when children withdraw from a parent for proportionate reasons: abuse, chronic neglect, or serious parental failings. The child’s response is understandable given the facts of their experience.
Alienation, as Dr. Childress notes, is revealed in the disproportion. The child rejects, despises, or entirely erases a normal-range parent for reasons that are trivial, distorted, or nonexistent. The intensity of rejection does not match the supposed “crime.” Instead, the reaction reflects the influence of another adult’s narrative, not the parent’s actual behavior.
What deniers overlook is how highly manipulable children are. Whole fields of developmental science exist because children are so suggestible: education, child psychology, and parenting research all aim to harness that plasticity for healthy growth. Yet deniers claim children can see with absolute clarity whether a parent is “good” or “bad.”
Developmental neuroscience tells another story. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that governs judgment and perspective-taking, is not fully developed until around the age of 23 to 25.8 That immaturity makes children vulnerable to persuasion and dependent on those they trust most.
Let’s not forget that at a young age, children will readily believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. Teenagers, meanwhile, undergo hormonal surges that amplify emotions and distort perspective. In abuse situations, children often adopt a fawning response, aligning with the abuser’s perspective to preserve safety.
Beyond this, research shows that children’s memories are highly malleable. Developmental psychologists Elizabeth Loftus and Stephen Ceci have demonstrated that children can be led to “remember” entire events that never occurred simply through repeated suggestion or leading questions.9 In courtroom studies, even subtle wording by adults has been shown to contaminate a child’s recall, producing confident but false testimony.10 In the context of divorce, these vulnerabilities are magnified when a trusted caregiver continually communicates a negative narrative about the other parent. Over time, the child may come to believe and even “remember” things about the targeted parent that never happened. Dean Tong, in his book Elusive Innocence, has documented how false accusations in custody disputes often draw on this dynamic—children repeating stories they have absorbed from an aligned parent rather than recounting independent experiences.11
We have even seen cases where children’s testimony, later revealed to have been coerced, led to a parent being wrongly condemned. These stories (which I will share later below) demonstrate why distinguishing between alienation and estrangement is a matter of justice. When alienation is dismissed as a blame-shifting excuse, these realities are ignored. The result is that manipulated children are treated as if their rejection is independent and self-authenticating. But children are not miniature adults with fully formed brains. Their developing minds are shaped by the caregivers around them, for better or for worse. That vulnerability is precisely why alienation must be taken seriously, and why confusing it with estrangement does real harm.
Gendered Critique
One of the recurring outcries by feminist groups is that alienation is nothing more than a legal strategy used by abusive fathers to discredit protective mothers and seize custody of children. In their telling, alienation is not a clinical reality but a courtroom tactic: a way for men to weaponize psychology against women who raise concerns about abuse.
This critique deserves to be taken seriously, because there are cases where abusive parents—both fathers and mothers—have misused the language of alienation to mask their own behavior. But the existence of misuse does not invalidate the phenomenon itself. False claims of alienation are not evidence that alienation is “fake.” They are themselves a form of alienation, where the child’s bond with a loving parent is attacked to manipulate custody outcomes to separate a child from them.
The irony of this critique is that alienation has never been a gendered phenomenon. Decades of peer-reviewed research show that mothers and fathers alienate children in roughly equal numbers, depending largely on which parent has greater day-to-day control of the child.12 Studies by Jennifer Harman and colleagues identify alienation as a form of family violence, not a male strategy against women.13 By insisting it is exclusively a patriarchal weapon, critics obscure the very real harm done to children by alienating mothers—harm that is structurally identical to that caused by alienating fathers.
There is also a deeper hypocrisy in these claims. The same groups that declare alienation is “fake” rarely speak to the countless women who have themselves been alienated from their children. They present themselves as champions of women’s rights but ignore the plight of mothers whose children have been psychologically turned against them. They claim to speak for children, but never ask them about the experience of alienation itself. In most cases, they try to reframe the trauma of alienation as evidence of continuing abuse from the demonized father. Most of these groups cannot reconcile the possibility of a loving, caring father. As a result, these positions erase the voices of both women and children—the very people they claim to defend—while projecting upon an entire demographic.
Alienation is not about who “wins” custody; it is about children being psychologically manipulated into rejecting one parent to serve the needs of the other. By reducing it to gender politics, critics not only obscure the science but also abandon the children caught in the middle.
Parental Alienation is far simpler than most people think
I no longer call it parental alienation. I still use the phrase because it is the most familiar and widely understood, but the term itself is no longer sufficient to capture what it really is. For simplicity, I refer to it as alienation, but I usually call it child psychological abuse.
After speaking with countless parents, grandparents, siblings, and experts, one thing has become clear… alienation is more diverse than the narrow picture of one parent turning a child against the other. While that remains the most common pattern, alienation can take many different forms.
Grandparents can be alienated from their grandchildren.
Siblings can be turned against each other.
A grandparent can alienate a grandchild from their own parents.
Alienation doesn’t always require divorce or two separate homes. It can happen under the same roof with both parents choosing to stay married or live in the same household.
Step-parents can engage in alienation.
The state or governing body can interfere with the child-parent relationship.
At its core, alienation is not bound to legal status, marriage, or custody. It is a set of psychological behaviors like manipulation, enmeshment, loyalty tests, and coercion that target a relationship and seek to sever it for the alienator’s own needs. It is the same collection of bullying behaviors you see in teenage gossip circles, scaled up to the adult level. This is why the term “parental alienation” falls short. It is a recognizable form of psychological abuse that can fracture any family bond and be orchestrated by any dominating force (not just parents).
Here is a list of common alienating behaviors:
Badmouthing – Repeatedly denigrating the targeted parent in front of the child, portraying them as unloving, unsafe, or undeserving.
Limiting Contact – Creating barriers to visitation, calls, letters, or even casual communication between the child and the targeted parent.
Emotional Withholding – Teaching the child that affection or approval is conditional on rejecting the other parent.
Forcing Loyalty Conflicts – Making the child “choose sides,” such as rewarding alignment with the alienator and punishing closeness with the other parent.
False Allegations – Fabricating or exaggerating abuse or neglect claims to justify restricting the child’s relationship with the other parent.
Withholding Information – Refusing to share school reports, medical records, addresses, or schedules so the other parent is excluded from the child’s daily life.
Role Reversal (Parentification) – Pressuring the child to take on the emotional role of the alienator’s confidant or protector against the other parent.
Gaslighting & Memory Manipulation – Rewriting past events so the child “remembers” the other parent as absent, harmful, or unworthy.
Enmeshment – Blurring boundaries so that the child feels they cannot think, feel, or choose differently from the alienating parent.
Interference with Extended Family – Cutting off grandparents, cousins, or siblings who remain loyal to the targeted parent, isolating the child further.
Creating Fear or Guilt – Instilling anxiety (“if you see Dad, I’ll be sad or hurt”) or guilt (“loving Mom means you don’t love me”).
Reward & Punishment Systems – Using gifts, privileges, or praise when the child aligns with the alienator, and coldness or withdrawal when they don’t.
Erosion of Heritage & Identity – Encouraging the child to reject the culture, traditions, or name associated with the targeted parent.
None of these behaviors are unique to alienation. In fact, you can easily find these same tactics used in grooming, domestic violence cases, and in cults. They are recurring tools in an abuser’s playbook. The only thing that makes alienation distinct is the target. They are specifically utilized to disrupt the child’s bond with another parent or family member. In other words, the child becomes the battlefield where adult conflict is fought.
History and literature offer numerous examples, spanning cultures and centuries, of this same dynamic where a parent’s shortcomings—real or perceived—are leveraged by another adult or authority to cut off the bond with a child, often with lasting harm.
King Solomon’s Judgment (c. 950 BCE, Biblical narrative) – Two women claimed the same infant. Solomon ordered the child cut in half so each would “share” him. One woman agreed, exposing her indifference to the child’s life, while the true mother begged for the child to be spared, even if raised by another. The story dramatizes the alienator’s core impulse: it is better to destroy the bond than to let the child remain attached to their rightful parent.
Spartan Agōgē (c. 7th century BCE – 2nd century BCE) – At age seven, boys were removed from their families and placed in state-run barracks. Bonds with parents were deliberately broken to forge loyalty to the Spartan state above all else, a systemic alienation of children from family identity.
Roman Patria Potestas (c. 5th century BCE – 4th century CE) – Fathers in Rome held absolute power, including the right to sell, disinherit, or reassign children. Mothers and maternal kin were often erased from a child’s life, instilling loyalty to paternal authority and alienating children from half their family heritage.
Alexander the Great & Philip II (356–336 BCE) – Alexander’s mother, Olympias, stoked distrust and contempt between Alexander and his father, Philip II. She told Alexander he was the son of Zeus, not Philip, feeding resentment. Their estrangement climaxed in Philip’s assassination, which is widely believed to have been encouraged by Olympias and possibly condoned by Alexander, who consolidated power immediately afterward.
Augustus & Julia (18 BCE, Roman Empire) – Emperor Augustus exiled his daughter Julia for alleged promiscuity, cutting her off from her children and reshaping her public image as immoral. Her children were raised away from her influence, trained to see her not as a mother but as a disgraced figure.
Henry VIII & Mary Tudor (1530s, England) – After his break with Catherine of Aragon, Henry forced their daughter Mary to renounce her mother and acknowledge Anne Boleyn as queen. Mary’s refusal led to years of isolation and threats, with Henry and Anne working to alienate her from Catherine’s memory.
Mary, Queen of Scots & James VI (1567–adulthood, Scotland) – Mary was imprisoned and forced to abdicate her throne. Her infant son, James, was raised by Protestant lords who portrayed Mary as immoral and unfit. James grew up rejecting his mother, even refusing to see her before her execution.
Ottoman Harem & Palace Schools (15th – early 20th century) – Princes were often removed from their mothers (who were usually concubines) at a young age and raised in palace schools or distant provinces. This severed maternal bonds and ensured that loyalty lay with the Sultan and the empire, not with mothers who might form rival power bases.
Napoleon II “The Eaglet” (1814–1832, Austria) – After Napoleon’s abdication, his son was taken to Vienna and raised under Austrian guardianship. Dubbed “The Eaglet,” he was indoctrinated to see his father as a tyrant and was alienated from both his French heritage and the Bonapartist legacy.
U.S. Indian Boarding Schools (1819–1969) – Native American children were forcibly removed, forbidden to speak their language or practice their traditions. They were taught to view their families’ ways as savage and shameful, severing bonds of love and heritage.
Canadian Residential Schools (1831–1996) – Indigenous children were taken into Catholic and state-run institutions where abuse was rampant. They were told their parents and communities were backward and unworthy, alienating them from both family and culture.
Pre-1839 English Custody Law (before 1839) – Before the Custody of Infants Act (1839), children were considered the father’s property. In divorces or separations, mothers had no legal right to custody, regardless of the father’s fitness, severing maternal bonds by law.
British Child-Migration Schemes (1860s–1970s) – Tens of thousands of children were shipped to Australia, Canada, and other colonies, often told they were orphans while their parents or other relatives remained alive in Britain. Many never saw their families again, believing for decades they had been abandoned.
Shift to the “Tender Years” Doctrine (late 19th – mid-20th century) – Custody preference swung toward mothers of young children, producing the mirror image where fathers were alienated by default, often losing meaningful contact regardless of their parenting.
Australia’s Stolen Generations (c. 1910–1970s) – Aboriginal children were seized from families to be assimilated into white society. Parents were painted as unfit “savages,” and children were indoctrinated to reject their culture and identity. In some cases, children were placed with grandparents who had already been assimilated, creating grandparents as agents of alienation against their own children.
Irish Mother & Baby Homes (1922–1998) – Unmarried mothers were confined in religious institutions and coerced to give up their babies for adoption. Many children grew up believing their mothers had abandoned them, never knowing the truth.
Soviet Re-education after the Holodomor (1932–late 1930s) – Orphaned Ukrainian children were raised in state institutions where loyalty to the Party replaced family bonds. Parents and relatives were denounced as kulaks or traitors, and children were taught to scorn their memory.
Nazi Germanization Programs (1939–1945) – Thousands of Polish and other occupied children were abducted, renamed, and placed with German families. They were told their parents were inferior or dead, and many never reconnected with their true families.
Greek Civil War “Paidomazoma” (1948–1949) – Children were taken en masse from villages and raised in camps aligned with either the Communists or the Royalists. In both cases, children were indoctrinated to despise their parents’ faction and taught to see loyalty to the other side as betrayal.
French “Stolen Babies” from Réunion (1963–1982) – Children from poor families in Réunion were taken by French authorities and placed with rural families in mainland France. Many were told their parents had abandoned them.
Argentine “Dirty War” Appropriations (1976–1983) – Children of the disappeared were placed with military-aligned families and raised to see their murdered parents as subversives or traitors.
Modern Fiction: The Parent Trap (1961 & 1998; based on Kästner’s Lottie and Lisa) – Divorced parents split twins at birth, each raising one child while erasing the other parent and sibling from the child’s knowledge. Although this is presented as a cute reunification story, the premise begins with both girls being deliberately alienated from half their family.
Modern Fiction: Firelord Ozai in Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005–2008) – Firelord Ozai banishes Zuko’s mother, lies that she is dead, and poisons Zuko’s perception of her. He also manipulates Azula to scorn her mother. This creates both direct parental alienation (mother–child) and sibling alienation (Zuko–Azula).
Modern Fiction: Tangled (2010, Disney) – Mother Gothel kidnaps Rapunzel and raises her by convincing her that her real parents do not care for her and that the outside world is dangerous. She isolates Rapunzel, manipulates her identity, and conditions her to reject any pull toward her true family. This is classic alienation with lies, fear, and dependency.
In all of these examples, some form of alienation exists. Many carry complex political, cultural, or religious undertones that shaped the way children were separated from their parents or communities. Kings, emperors, churches, and states often justified these separations as serving a greater good—loyalty to the crown, purity of faith, national unity, or even “civilizing” missions. But beneath these layers of ideology, the core dynamic remains the same: a child’s natural bond with a parent or family system is deliberately undermined to serve the needs of an outside authority.
This is what makes alienation so deceptively simple. The tactics (badmouthing, coercion, false narratives, isolation) are familiar tools of psychological abuse. The difference lies in their target: they are aimed not just at controlling the child, but at severing the child’s attachment to someone else. Whether in the court of Solomon, the royal houses of Europe, or the colonial schools of the 19th and 20th centuries, the playbook remains consistent. Alienation weaponizes a child’s dependency, reshapes their loyalties, and rewrites their memories, leaving scars that often endure for generations.
Modern Case Studies of Alienation
Even if one dismisses historical examples for being ideologically complex or too distant, alienation is happening right now, with documented impact.
Case Study 1: Mary Ann Elizondo
In the fall of 1983, Mary Ann Elizondo, aged 27, faced one of the most devastating examples of modern alienation weaponized through the legal system. Her sons—aged 10 and 8—had been living most of the time with their biological father. One weekend visit to Mary Ann and her then-husband, Joe, led to shocking allegations where the boys accused both parents of sexual abuse. The result was swift and brutal. Mary Ann was convicted in 1984, and she received concurrent sentences totaling up to 35 years.
For years, the two boys maintained absolute emotional distance from their mother. Then, in 1988, on his 17th birthday, one of the sons discovered a hidden letter she had written. That letter became the turning point. He recanted his testimony, revealing that his father had coerced both him and his brother into fabricating the abuse, threatening “lifelong punishment” if they refused. At that point, the legal machinery began to unravel. Joe’s conviction was vacated in 1995, and Mary Ann’s conviction followed suit in 2005, with the court officially exonerating her. In 2008, she received a financial compensation package from Texas, acknowledging the grave wrong done to her.14
This case is a stark illustration of alienation in action, with a parent deliberately turning children into instruments of revenge, destroying a bond, causing wrongful imprisonment, and inflicting decades of emotional harm. It's a clear demonstration that alienation is not hypothetical—it can be engineered through strategy, sustained in court, and only exposed decades later.
Case Study 2: Madison Welborne McGeehan
Madison Welborne McGeehan, known as Madi, grew up believing her father was dangerous, unloving, and not worth her trust. From the time her parents divorced when she was nine years old, her mother systematically worked to erase her father’s presence from her life. She withheld overnight visits, discouraged communication, and fed Madi a steady stream of negative narratives about her father.
For Madi, the alienation was invisible at first. As she describes, “From the time my parents divorced at age nine, I never once stayed the night at my dad’s.”15 She came to accept her mother’s story—that her father was to be feared—as fact. The absence of time with him reinforced the lie. Over the years, she grew further and further away, developing what she now recognizes as “brainwashed” beliefs that he was an unsafe parent.
It wasn’t until adulthood that Madi began to understand what had happened. Encountering the concept of parental alienation gave her language to explain the emptiness and confusion she had carried for years. Looking back, she realized that her father’s affection and attempts to remain connected had been systematically undermined. She had been taught to reject him, not because of abuse or neglect, but because her mother required her loyalty to validate her own grievances.
Based on her experience, Madi founded the Anti-Alienation Project, an organization that now supports thousands of alienated parents and children worldwide. Through storytelling, education, and advocacy, she works to expose alienation for what it is: a form of psychological abuse that devastates family bonds. Her story demonstrates how one child’s tragedy can be transformed into collective action, giving a voice to others who endure the same silent war.16
Here is a video where Madi discusses her experiences of alienation with her father.
Case Study 3: Erasing Family
One of the most potent modern testimonies to the reality of alienation comes not from court transcripts but from film. In 2020, filmmaker Ginger Gentile released the documentary Erasing Family, a follow-up to her earlier work Erasing Dad in Argentina. The film follows the stories of children and young adults who are cut off from loving parents due to manipulation, legal systems, and entrenched social narratives.
Gentile’s work exposes the hidden epidemic of children being weaponized in custody disputes. In interviews, young adults describe the pain of being pressured to reject one parent, often repeating false narratives they were taught as children. Parents speak of birthdays missed, letters returned unopened, and the bewildering experience of being vilified by their own children without recourse.17
The film highlights that alienation is not confined to one country or culture. It spans the globe, exhibiting eerily similar tactics and outcomes, including badmouthing, interference with contact, loyalty tests, and false allegations. What makes Erasing Family particularly important is that it centers on the voices of the children themselves—many of whom are now grown—who articulate the confusion, guilt, and loss that defined their childhoods.
Erasing Family has since been screened internationally, used in legal education, and shared among support groups for alienated parents as both validation and advocacy. It has helped reframe the conversation from a disputed “legal tactic” to a form of child psychological abuse with long-term consequences.
You can watch the documentary for free on YouTube and Tubi. I have also linked it below for convenience.
Case Study 4: Warning! Children Are Not Weapons!
If films like Erasing Family give voice to alienated children on screen, the anthology Warning! Children Are Not Weapons! captures their voices on the page. Compiled by survivors of alienation themselves, the book brings together sixteen authors—men and women who grew up alienated, abducted, or psychologically manipulated to reject one parent. Each contributes a chapter of narrative, poetry, or art that lays bare the hidden epidemic of child psychological abuse tied to alienation.
The stories are unflinching. Survivors describe being told a parent abandoned them when, in fact, they were forcibly cut off; being coerced to testify falsely against a parent; being abducted; or being pressured to adopt the alienating parent’s worldview in exchange for love and approval. Some chapters include full-color photographs, anchoring memory in lived reality. The result is a mosaic of pain and resilience that no denier can dismiss as theoretical.
What makes the anthology powerful is that it doesn’t end in despair. While each story documents the devastation alienation caused—identity confusion, guilt, loss of belonging, difficulty trusting others—the collection also highlights survival and reclamation. Many authors describe how finding language for their experience, or reconnecting with an alienated parent later in life, helped them transform trauma into advocacy.
The book’s significance has been recognized publicly. It received the James Madison Literary Award from the United States Presidential Service Center, an independent organization that honors cultural contributions that raise awareness of urgent social issues. That acknowledgment underscores what the book already proves through testimony: alienation is not pseudoscience or courtroom rhetoric—it is child psychological abuse, and it leaves scars that echo into adulthood.18
Concluding Thoughts
Even with all of the evidence presented here—the letters of Einstein, the historical precedents, the clinical research, and the lived testimonies of survivors—there will always be alienation deniers. For decades, they have sought to cast alienation as “junk science,” as if the behavior of children can be explained only in simplistic moral binaries of “good parent / bad parent.”
But most deniers are not engaged in a good-faith search for truth. They are engaged in an ‘ends justify the means’ effort to hold the moral high ground. To admit that alienation exists would mean confronting hard questions: How many courts were misled by false narratives? How many children grew up carrying preventable wounds? How many advocacy campaigns against alienation, framed as a defense of women or children, actually erased the voices of the very women and children who were alienated?
The reflex is to avoid accountability by dismantling the argument itself—labeling alienation as pseudoscience, blaming the targeted parent, or conflating it with estrangement. It is, at its core, a defensive maneuver. Because if alienation is acknowledged for what it is—a form of psychological abuse—then silence, denial, and inaction become complicity.
No parent is perfect, and there will always be mistakes that create hardship for a child. But denying alienation is a poor way to avoid taking ownership and personal accountability. Children suffer not because parents are flawed, but because one parent chooses to exploit those flaws and weaponize the child’s loyalty. Becoming better parents is a high demand as we navigate the challenges of daily life, but it is and will always be our most sacred priority.
This is why arguing with alienation deniers often feels fruitless. Brandolini’s Law reminds us that “the amount of energy needed to refute nonsense is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.” Online, this imbalance is magnified: one bad-faith claim can spiral into hours of rebuttals. Worse, debates quickly devolve into what can only be described as a “fight club mentality,” where the goal is no longer truth or understanding but humiliation and domination. Engaging too deeply in these battles risks not only exhaustion but the further entrenchment of misinformation.
Alienation is not a theory. It is not a courtroom strategy invented by abusive parents. It is a reality documented across history, confirmed by decades of research, and voiced by countless survivors. Dismissing it will not make it go away. Recognizing it is the first step toward protecting children, holding abusers accountable, and rebuilding fractured families.
My goal with this article is not to fuel more debates, but to provide you with the tools to articulate the science of alienation. Online arguments will always attract those who thrive on denial and distortion, but real change happens in quieter, steadier ways: when a parent explains to a judge why a child’s rejection is disproportionate; when a therapist recognizes the signs of coalition and role reversal; when an advocate can point to both history and lived testimony to show that alienation is not pseudoscience, but abuse. Every time the truth is spoken clearly and calmly, another layer of misunderstanding is stripped away. The deniers may never yield, but the families suffering from alienation deserve clarity, validation, and protection—and that is where our energy belongs.
Until next time,
Andrew Folkler
P.S. If you want to read the current literature about alienation, I have put together a list of books that may be helpful.
Disrupting the Intergenerational Trauma Cycle of High Conflict Divorce: A Guide for Mental Health Practitioners and Adult Child Survivors of Child ... Severe Parental Alienation (Book 1) by Dr. Alyse Price Tobler
Navigating the Maze During Treatment of Adult Survivors of Child Psychological Abuse: A Comprehensive Resource Guide for Mental Health Practitioners, ... Treating Adult Child Survivors. (Book 2) by Dr. Alyse Price Tobler
Don't Alienate the Kids!: Raising Resilient Children While Avoiding High-Conflict Divorce by Bill Eddy
An Attachment-Based Model of Parental Alienation: Foundations by C.A. Childress Psy.D.
Divorce Poison New and Updated Edition: How to Protect Your Family from Bad-mouthing and Brainwashing by Dr. Richard A Warshak
Litigating Parental Alienation: Evaluating and Presenting an Effective Case in Court by Ashish S. Joshi
Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties That Bind by Amy J.L. Baker
Einstein, Albert. “PUP Einstein Database - PUP Einstein Database.” Princeton University. Accessed August 26, 2025. https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol10-trans/42-43.
Gardner, Richard A. “American Journal of Forensic Psychology, 21(1):39-64 The Judiciary’s Role in the Etiology, Symptom Development, and Treatment of the Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS).” Richard A. Gardner - The judiciary’s role in the etiology, symptom development, and treatment of the parental alienation syndrome(PAS). Accessed August 26, 2025. https://richardagardner.com/ar11w.
Rand, Deirdre C. “Parental Alienation Critics and the Politics of Science.” The American Journal of Family Therapy 39, no. 1 (December 30, 2010): 48–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/01926187.2010.533085.
Craig Childress, An Attachment-Based Model of Parental Alienation: Foundations (Claremont, CA: Oaksong Press, 2015), esp. chaps. 1–3.
John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, Vol. 1: Attachment, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1982), chaps. 11–12; Mary Main and Judith Solomon, “Procedures for Identifying Infants as Disorganized/Disoriented During the Ainsworth Strange Situation,” in Attachment in the Preschool Years: Theory, Research, and Intervention, eds. M. T. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti, and E. M. Cummings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 121–160.
American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. (Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013); Marsha Linehan, Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder (New York: Guilford Press, 1993).
Salvador Minuchin, Families and Family Therapy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); Murray Bowen, Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (New York: Jason Aronson, 1978).
Steinberg, Laurence. “A Social Neuroscience Perspective on Adolescent Risk-Taking.” Developmental Review 28, no. 1 (March 2008): 78–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2007.08.002.; Casey, B. J., Rebecca M. Jones, and Leah H. Somerville. “Braking and Accelerating of the Adolescent Brain.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 21, no. 1 (February 15, 2011): 21–33. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7795.2010.00712.x.
Loftus, Elizabeth F, and Jacqueline E Pickrell. “The Formation of False Memories.” Psychiatric Annals 25, no. 12 (December 1995): 720–25. https://doi.org/10.3928/0048-5713-19951201-07.
Ceci, Stephen J., and Maggie Bruck. Jeopardy in the courtroom: A scientific analysis of children’s testimony., 1995. https://doi.org/10.1037/10180-000.; Lindsay, D. Stephen, and J. Don Read. “‘Memory Work’ and Recovered Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Scientific Evidence and Public, Professional, and Personal Issues.” Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 1, no. 4 (1995): 846–908. https://doi.org/10.1037//1076-8971.1.4.846.
Tong, Dean. Elusive innocence: Survival guide for the falsely accused. Lafayette, La: Huntington House Publishers, 2002.
Harman, Jennifer J., Zeynep Biringen, Ellen M. Ratajack, Pearl L. Outland, and Allyson Kraus. “Parents Behaving Badly: Gender Biases in the Perception of Parental Alienating Behaviors.” Journal of Family Psychology 30, no. 7 (October 2016): 866–74. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000232.
Harman, Jennifer J., Edward Kruk, and Denise A. Hines. “Parental Alienating Behaviors: An Unacknowledged Form of Family Violence.” Psychological Bulletin 144, no. 12 (December 2018): 1275–99. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000175.
National Registry of Exonerations, “Mary Ann Elizondo,” accessed August 31, 2025, Exoneration Registry entry for case 11195.
The Anti-Alienation Project, “Can I Get Back 20 Years?,” accessed August 31, 2025, https://www.theantialienationproject.com/read/can-i-get-back-20-years.
The Anti-Alienation Project, homepage and advocacy work, accessed August 31, 2025, https://www.theantialienationproject.com
Erasing Family, directed by Ginger Gentile (2020), accessed August 31, 2025, https://erasingfamily.org.
Warning! Children Are Not Weapons!: Unveiling the Hidden Truth of Child Psychological Abuse Related to Parental and Family Alienation and Abduction (Independently published, 2024)