Stan Korosi

The study addresses a largely unrecognised dimension of parental alienation, namely the social impacts on the parent rejected by their child. Parental alienation is typically understood as a form of child psychological abuse and family violence. It occurs when a favoured-alienating parent manipulates and coerces their children to use irrational and unfounded reasons to reject their other, targeted alienated parent. Parental alienation harms alienated children, and silences, stigmatises and marginalises parents whose children have rejected them.
The literature formulates parental alienation as child psychological abuse or a mental health condition in alienated children. There has been little research into how the targeted-alienated parent experiences parental alienation. The available research focuses on the psychological and emotional impacts of parental alienation with little consideration given to the power relations in the family and the social factors influencing family relationships and behaviours. This study addresses this with a critical realist and social constructionist methodology using a mixed methods design. The research methods include a survey of targeted-alienated parents; indepth interviews that invite participants’ consideration of sociological concepts for describing their experiences; and researcher reflectivity. A social justice orientation to the research leads to an enquiry into the social dimensions of targeted-alienated parents’ lived experiences using social alienation and stigma consciousness.