Divorce Series: Parental Alienation - Its Causes and Cures

Parental alienation and Game Theory[1]. When Ken was in private practice, one of his known areas of expertise was “parental alienation”. These were cases in which a child, at a minimum, expressed a desire, or more seriously, had successfully refused, to spend time with one of their parents.[2] In practical terms, this meant Ken serving as the court’s expert in evaluating families and making recommendations, or seeing families in treatment to correct what was seen as the problem.

During this same period of time, Ken also had become an aficionado of Game Theory- after several years of study. One of the results was the book, Game Theory and the Transformation of Family Law, jointly written by Ken and attorney Allan R. Koritzinsky.[3]

A basic tenet of Game Theory is that people (all forms of life, for that matter, as Darwin showed in Origin of the Species) will make rational choices that they anticipate will have the best payoff, based on the structure and rules of the situation.

Historically, many people have written objections to this Game Theory premise. They assert that while this might be true when people are being rational, many times people are not being rational. Therefore, Game Theory cannot apply to all situations. In other words, pertinent to our particular topic, families in which children refuse to spend time with one of their parents after a spousal separation, appear to be behaving irrationally. Books, journal articles, presentations at conferences, recent activity on LinkedIn and historic activity on various on line professional ListServes treat parental alienation as an irrational reaction to a divorce. It is often asserted that the child has good reason for rejecting the parent or that the favored parent has somehow brainwashed the child to reject the other parent.

Payoffs are relevant. Testing the hypothesis that people are sometimes irrational, and that Game Theory does not apply, Game Theorists have gone to great lengths in designing and conducting very creative (and clever) research on this subject. Interestingly, the results of this have repeatedly proven that, in fact, people are rational when acting, even when others characterize their actions as irrational. They only look irrational when observers do not clearly see or understand the payoffs at play for the people involved.

This raises the question: Is Parental Alienation a rational response for children and their parents, given the expected payoffs at play?

When Ken was evaluating or treating cases of alleged Parental Alienation. he raised this question: Were both parents and the children behaving rationally, if only we could understand the expected payoffs at play? By his calculation, in approximately 67% of his cases for evaluation and treatment, the rejection of a parent by a child was rational. The explanations are surprisingly simple. Three quick examples among many. First, one of the more common reasons for this behavior was that by history, the child had not developed a healthy parent-child attachment with one of the parents. Children do not like to leave a parent to whom they are attached to spend substantial time with people to whom they are not attached. Any parent who has had a young child invited for a sleepover knows this. Second, another very common reason was that the rejected parent is self-centered, perhaps more interested in a new romantic partner, alcohol or something else, than their child. Third, but only in a distant third place for a reason, was a pathological parent actively brainwashing the child.

All this can be explained with an answer nobody will want to hear:

“We have met the enemy, and it is us!”

If we rephase the question and ask it differently, the answer is very revealing. What about situations in which a child is attached to both parents, where the two parents are genuinely interested in the child and neither parent has serious psychological pathology involved?

The answer to the reframed questions lies in the distributive function of the law. Historically, in western culture, children were awarded to fathers, simply because women could not own property and children were considered property.

A quick history lesson: Towards the end of the 19^th century, “mothering” infants and toddlers became understood as greatly affecting how those children turned out. Mothers were therefore awarded infants and toddlers, who were later transferred to fathers.[4] Later in the 20^th Century, children were awarded solely to mothers. All of these efforts were mostly disasters for children, for mothers and for fathers.[5]

The intended correction arising in the late 1960’s and 1970’s was shared custody in various configurations and more recently in presumptions of “50/50 Custody.”

While these efforts have been an improvement, it is still an unnatural distributive division of a child’s life.

Many children are hardy enough to handle the stress involved in this unnatural solution, but it is not because this is the best solution. It is only because many children seem able to handle it. They pay a price, including in their future as adults (e.g., managing holidays with parents who have nothing to do with one another and what is called “spit identities” being raised in two uncoordinated households).

More fragile children, or children at more fragile developmental stages, do not handle the shared placement well. Those children sometimes choose an even more challenging solution: pick one “good” parent, or one home, and vehemently reject spending time with the other parent.

In other words, the expected payoff of the reduced stress, from trying to grow up in two homes. by living in just one home, prompts alienation behavior.

Are the payoffs as expected? Using Game Theory terminology, this “game” is the legal game of distributing a child’s life. The expected positive payoff for the child choosing alienation is reduced stress and a coherent home life. The expected positive payoffs for the “preferred” parent are less loss of time with the child, the other parent having less control over the raising of the child and being more supportive of the child’s stated wishes. The “non-preferred” parent has the expected negative payoffs of losing their child, losing their role in their child’s life and losing control of raising the child.

What happens next is not surprising, The rejected parent goes all-in on the battle to stay in the child’s life. The preferred parent goes all in on supporting the child’s rejection of the other parent, perhaps in part because of leftover marriage issues. In other words, in the distribution that occurs when “playing” the Children Game, prompted by the current state of the law, all three players are behaving rationally, given the playoffs at stake.

We posit here that the primary cause of the problems described in this blog result directly from the current distribution rules of the legal game of divorce with children.

There is a Solution, and it is hiding in plain sight. The solution is achievable, but only if:

the professionals involved in the Divorce Game treat divorce as a life event, and not as a legal event.[6]
the legal system allows and the professionals help both parents plan to both be involved in the child’s 100% of the time.

In the legal distribution game, the only requirement is the designation of in which home the children will sleep and which parent is responsible for the child on which days. This leaves families a tremendous amount of flexibility in terms of how they run their family.

Ken’s most successful treatment outcomes with alienation cases focused on the skills and tasks involved in achieving the goal of both parents being involved 100% of the time. Even in an intact marriage, no parent is with their child all of the time. This is impossible. However, they are involved 100% of the time. They make decisions together, they solve problems together, they participate as much as they can in all aspects of a child’s life (often and usually together), they resolve disagreements with one another, they flexibly handle the responsibilities of parenting (covering for one another when needed), and so on.

In the life event of a divorce, the only challenge is the logistics of living in two different residences.

Are we ready to play a new game: the Life Event Game of Divorce? Impossible? NO! This is what parents in amicable divorces do all of the time. It is not impossible, but these parents avoid playing the Legal Game of Child Distribution (which currently prevails in the current family law system), and instead play the Life Event Game of Divorce.

This is what more parents could accomplish if they were guided by professionals into playing the Life Event Game of Divorcerather than the Child Distribution Game of Divorce.

The payoffs for this game are far superior to the payoffs in the Child Distribution Game when divorce is viewed first and foremost as a legal and not a life event. Ken has seen this transformation in his many treatments and in many of his mediations. He remains regretful, perhaps even embarrassed, for his work prior to learning Game Theory principles and opting out of the Child Distribution Game. Allan joins him in this admission of guilt.

The life event approach to post-divorce childrearing is not complicated.

However, except for vague advice to “get along,” in our experience, the specifics of a functional co-parenting relationship are rarely spelled out for divorcing parents. There are five tasks for separated parents.

Sharing Information;
Making decisions;
Rules and procedures for flexibility in the schedule;
Providing access to the children independent of the custody schedule;
Coordinating the parenting across homes (e.g., rules, routines, responsibilities, etc.)

We have (free) co-parenting blogs on our website that spell out the specifics for structuring a functional co-parenting relationship. We also have published a Co-Parenting Training Workbook that spell out the specifics and include exercises for getting those five functions up and running.[7]

Summary. The point of this blog is that the legal system itself, and the legal professionals working in that system, are one of the unintentional causes of parental alienation, by working in a system that unnaturally awards a child to parents in percentages. Simply stated, this means “distributing” time with the children. The alternative and certainly better plan is to develop a plan that addresses the five functions of a successful co-parenting relationship where both parents are involved 100% of the time.[8]

[1] Game Theory is based on science and extraordinarily credible and reliable. Research has provided numerous proofs, five Nobel Prizes have been awarded and Game Theory has been applied to economics, war strategy, crises response and even atomic reactor design.

[2] We will refer to “child” but also mean to include “children”.

[3] Game Theory and the Transformation of Family Law: Change the Rules- Change the Game. Available at major booksellers, unhookedmedia.com and on our website, marriageanddivorce.org.

[4] This was only true beginning in the industrial age when parents began to work out of the home. As the culture became more affluent and it became possible for only one parent to work outside the home, mothers were increasingly awarded full custody. Fathers became the “disposable parent”.

[5] In the last case, only 50% of fathers were ever seeing their children, and many fathers defaulted on child support obligations.

[6] A life-event is when some event happens that changes the trajectory of people’s lives. They can be a good event, such as having a baby, or they can be negative events, such as a serious injury. Defining divorce as a life-event makes divorce a non-zero sum game needing planning, rather than distribution.

[7] The Co-Parenting Training Workbooks are available (for a very modest price) at unhookedmedia.com.

[8] Ken can reassure the reader that this can be done for a large percentage of divorcing parents. He has done it individually countless times in co-parenting training groups and in conjunction with Eileen McCarten in co-parenting training groups (in Illinois) In post training research, close to 80% of parenting partners report major to significant improvements.