End this mental manipulation and emotional abuse of children

It is as insidious as slapping your child across the face, but the long-term consequences are even more disastrous. It is parental alienation, a form of child abuse that involves breaking the loving bonds between a child and a parent and contributing to many of the long-term woes that societies around the world are facing.

Parental alienation is the mental manipulation and emotional abuse of children with the sole purpose of destroying the loving and warm relationships they once shared with their parents. Examples include speaking negatively about a parent to, or in front of, a child, interfering with communication and access, and sharing inappropriate information with the child about the marriage, divorce, or court proceedings. It takes advantage of the suggestibility and dependency of children, coercing them into thinking the other parent is the enemy and depriving them of their right to be loved by, and show their love to, both parents. And it can have a devastating effect on the targeted parent.

Alienated children can experience low self-esteem, self-destructive behaviour, anger, aggression, cruelty, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and may have suicidal tendencies. Study after study has shown that children who do not have equal access to both parents are more likely to do poorly in school, more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs, and more likely to experience teenage pregnancy.

While not gender specific, parental alienation is usually perpetrated by the custodial parent against the non-custodial parent - most usually the father. In a cruel twist of fate, and underscored by some Hong Kong government departments, these non-custodial parents are then attacked as uncaring dead-beats when the truth is that most parents desperately try to do right by their children, to deliver the support - emotional as well as material - that children need to grow strong and tall.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. Yesterday was International Parental Alienation Awareness Day. Let us reaffirm our commitment to our children by not tolerating this type of behaviour, by enshrining shared-parenting as the default custody arrangement in the case of dissolution, and by making sure legislation does not promote or protect false domestic violence allegations, which are sadly often used to further parental alienation. After all, it's for the sake of our children.

Christopher Lynch, Discovery Bay