Rejecting the idea of rejection as a measure of parental alienation: Comment on Bernet, Gregory, and Rohner, and Reay (2020)

Abstract

Bernet, Gregory, Rohner, and Reay (2020) proposed that an assessment of children’s beliefs about whether a parent accepted or rejected the children would help identify the children as showing “parental alienation” (PA). This comment critiques the arguments of Bernet et al. in terms of their logic and their connection with established information about child development. Examples from the Bernet et al. paper and from other publications are used to argue that PA beliefs are pseudoscientific in nature. The author concludes that the proposed method does not contribute to the currently unrealized goal of a standard protocol for identifying PA.

Keywords:

• Acceptance-rejection
• divorce
• parent-child relationships
• pseudoscience

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