Ideology and Rhetoric Replace Science and Reason in Some Parental Alienation Literature and Advocacy: A Critique

• Author: Joan S. Meier,Madelyn S. Milchman,Robert Geffner
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12476
• Published date: 01 April 2020
• Date: 01 April 2020

IDEOLOGY AND RHETORIC REPLACE SCIENCE AND REASON IN

SOME PARENTAL ALIENATION LITERATURE AND ADVOCACY: A

CRITIQUE

Madelyn S. Milchman, Robert Geffner, and Joan S. Meier

This article analyzes rhetorical strategies that are often used to legitimize classifying children’s parent rejection as

“alienation,”conceived as a mental disorder or diagnosis. Use of evaluative labels or diagnoses instead of descriptions of

behavioral functioning is problematic in child custody evaluations. We address Distorted Claims of consensus, Alienation

Labeling, Renaming, Proof by Assertion, Misrepresenting Endorsement by Authorities, Reduction Ad Absurdum, and Ad Per-

sonam Attacks. Rhetoric distracts from the evidence and observable behaviors required to accurately classify mistreated/alien-

ated children and protective/alienating parents. It creates an ideology that obfuscates the absence of and need for scientific

validity studies; reliable prevalence data; non-conclusory assessment of parent–child relationship quality; empirical evidence

testing the coaching hypothesis; and valid, objective evaluations of treatment programs. The article concludes with sugges-

tions to improve dialogue betweenscholars in order to advance research and custody evaluations.

Keywords: Child custody; Child maltreatment; Domestic violence; False allegations; Parental alienation; Parent–child

relationship; Rhetoric.

The purpose of this article is to bring attention to rhetorical strategies in some alienation litera-

ture and advocacy, including some of the articles in this Special Issue of the Family Court Review,

that we believe are of questionable legitimacy and are likely to continue to polarize the two profes-

sional communities: Those whose primary focus is on parental alienation, whether called Parental

Alienation Syndrome (PAS), Parental Alienation Disorder (PAD), or Parental Alienation (PA), and

those whose primary focus is on child abuse and domestic violence. It is important to note that

using diagnoses or evaluative labels such as PAS/PAD/PA in child custody cases when resistance

or rejection of a parent by a child occurs, rather than observable behaviors and evidence to describe

the functioning of the parents and children, is problematic because they do not specifically indicate

the relationship issues that the court must understand in order to make a custody or parenting time

decision in the best interests of the child. They create an ideology that replaces science. The use of

rhetoric and ideology distracts researchers, professionals and the courts from the substantive issues

that must be addressed to advance the understanding of resistance to or rejection of a parent. While

this article focuses on rhetoric to analyze the strategies that produce the distractions, as shown in

both the articles in this Special Issue and elsewhere, we do not intend to suggest that rhetoric and

ideology are the only problems in this field. The deeper problems are the lack of logic and a scien-

tific basis for the theory of PAS/PAD/PA, and the misuse of the concept of alienation to deny true

abuse and other forms of destructive or inappropriate parenting. The last section of the article

addresses some of these unresolved research issues and invites discussion of future directions.

One caveat: This article should not be interpreted as a critique of all scholarship on children who

resist or refuse contact with a parent in a disputed child custody case, or as a rejection of the possi-

bility that some parents use toxic strategies in an attempt to turn a child against the other parent.

Corresponding: madelynmilchman@gmail.com

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 58 No. 2, April 2020 340–361

© 2020 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts

There is considerable scholarship that recognizes the complexity of children’s resistance or refusal

to have contact with one of their separating or divorcing parents and that acknowledges to varying

degrees the need to assess child abuse and domestic violence, as well as other forms of parent-

provoked or sustaining child rejection (Birnbaum & Bala, 2010; Dalton, Drozd, & Wong, 2006;

Deutsch, 2018; Drozd, 2009; Fidler & Bala, 2010; Gordon, Stoffey, & Bottinelli, 2008; Johnston,

2003; Johnston, Walters, & Olesen, 2005; Kelly & Johnston, 2001; Lampel, 1996; Lee & Olesen,

2001; Ludolph & Bow, 2012; Racusin, Copans, & Mills, 1994; Siegel & Langford, 1998). Gardner

(1999) himself said cases with child abuse were not alienation cases, and Bernet (2020) re-asserts

this and affirms that other alienation advocates agree.

Nevertheless, none of this agreement has reduced the misuse of alienation allegations to mask

abuse or other parenting deficits in practice (Meier, 2009, 2010; Milchman, 2017a, 2017b; Silberg &

Dallam, 2019). Despite their acknowledgement of child abuse and parenting deficits as reasonable

causes of parent rejection, some alienation theorists still appear to propound a single-factor explana-

tion of children’s rejection of a parent because they do not give weight to causes other than alien-

ation in their approach to practice (Lorandos, Bernet, & Sauber, 2013). Scientific validity studies

are needed to identify assessment criteria that could differentiate cases in practice that have different

causes of resistance to or rejection of a parent (Milchman, 2019a, 2019c). It should be noted that

we are not alone in our critique of single-factor analysis (Johnston & Sullivan, 2020).

Our concerns about misclassification in practice might seem overwrought because some single-

factor advocates claim that they have conducted studies which scientifically validated assessment

criteria to classify alienation cases and differentiate them from other cases with legitimate causes of

parent resistance or rejection (e.g., Baker & Ben Ami, 2011; Baker, Burkhard, & Albertson-Kelly,

2012). However, despite their claims, their research designs are not consistent with standards for

scientific validity research (Milchman, 2019a; O’Donohue, Benuto, & Bennett, 2016; Saini, John-

ston, Fidler, & Bala, 2012, 2016). They use scientific language, but have not conducted the kinds

of empirical studies needed to support their scientific claims. Their te rminology confuses the issue.

Warshak (2020) has taken an important step towards empirically defining classification errors by

conceptualizing them as “false positives.”Single-factor advocates have not generally conceptualized

the problem of misclassification as a problem of false positives. The reason this formulation is

important is that a “false positive”is both detrimental to children and parents whose lives may be

destroyed by these mistakes, and is a statistical concept related to empirical research designs and

decision-making rules that support accurate classifications. Research that validates assessment

criteria using established scientific frameworks is needed to counter advocacy-driven rhetorical

overstatements that mislead legal decision-makers.

Drozd, Olesen, and Saini (2013) make the risk of misclassification clear when they state, “there

will almost always be factors and clusters involving abuse/safety”(p. 21). If cases occur which typi-

cally confound alienation and abuse issues, as they state, then there is a clear need for evaluation

models to set an explicit priority on avoiding mislabelling abuse cases as alienation cases. It also

implies there is a need to re-interpret parenting behaviors that might be judged as alienating

(e.g., visitation interference) when the parents are actually acting to protect children. However,

despite their clear acknowledgment of the importance of abuse assessment, Drozd et al.’s (2013)

evaluation model does not provide adequate guidance to evaluators as to how to prioritize

the assessment of abuse and interpret all the evidence when there is evidence of abuse, though

Milchman’s (2018, forthcoming) does.

Sadly, child custody evaluators make frequent errors in weighing abuse and alienation evidence

and in interpreting protective behaviors, especially if they are not trained in assessing child abuse,

child trauma, and interpersonal violence (Geffner, Conradi, Geis, & Aranda, 2009; Meier, 2010;

Sanders, Geffner, Bucky, Ribner, & Patino, 2015; Saunders, Faller, & Tolman, 2012, 2016). Such

errors also are frequently made by those who are predisposed to assume that improper PAS/PAD/

PA by the child’s preferred parent is the explanation for a child’s rejection or resistance to the other

parent. Ironically, as new data suggest (Meier, 2020), interpreting a case as an alienation case even

when supporting evidence is lacking (Milchman, forthcoming) is especially common and

Milchman et al./IDEOLOGY AND RHETORIC REPLACE SCIENCE AND REASON 341