“Parental Alienation Behaviors and Coercive: The One and The Same”

The use of children as weapons has long been documents by Domestic Violence (DV) researchers as a strategy of abuse by coercively controlling individuals. The impact of this weaponization on children has been the focus of scientists who study parental alienation, who consequently have referred to coercively controlling behaviors as “Parent Alienating Behaviors” because of the focus on the child rather than the perpetrator of abuse. Despite these two different labels for the same sets of behaviors, there has been considerable resistance among detractors of parental alienation in recognizing parental alienating behavior, preferring instead to call coercively controlling abuse in the cases as “protective parenting”, particularly when the “protective parent” is a mother. In this presentation, Dr Harman will review the scientific evidence documenting the weaponization of children across both fields of study, highlight how they are one and the same phenomenon, and explore how a biased gender paradigm about violence and the denial and misrepresentation of science has created an unnecessary and harmful divide in this field of work.

Jennifer J. Harman, PhD, received her doctorate in social psychology from the University of Connecticut in 2005. She is an associate professor of psychology at Colorado State University and has published over a dozen peer-reviewed articles and scientific studies on the topic of parental alienation and domestic violence. She is a renowned expert on the topic of parental alienation, conducts trainings on the topic for legal and mental health professionals, and has provided expert witness testimony in many family and criminal court cases across the U.S. She currently serves on the board of directors for the parental alienation study group, is the President of the International Counsel on Shared Parenting, and is on the editorial Board of the peer-review scientific journal, Personal Relationships.