The Controversial Parenting Theory That’s Showing Up in Court Everywhere

Over the past year, Hannah Dreyfus has published a stream of “parent’s worst nightmare” journalism on ProPublica. In both cases, the controversial theory of “parental alienation”—the idea that one parent had “brainwashed” the kids to turn against the other parent—had swayed a family court judge to the “alienated” parent’s side. It’s hard to know how often accusations of “parental alienation” make a difference in a custody case when possible abuse is involved, because generally records from family court are sealed unless they are appealed, and parents accused of alienation may not want to rock the boat by speaking to a reporter. And we went through this journey together, a very painful journey of watching the courts decide to take away her son based on claims that she had been psychologically manipulating him to believe he was abused, in a process of “parental alienation.” And that’s what sort of brought me down the rabbit hole of this theory that continues to have a lot of influence in family courts across the country, and yet has never gained acceptance in mainstream scientific circles. And I said, “This is a chance to really show people what’s at stake here in a very dramatic way.” You cite the work of legal scholar Joan Meier, whose 2020 study found that when an accusation of parental alienation is leveraged against a mother—in a case where the father has been alleged to be abusive—the mother is almost twice as likely to suffer a loss of custody.