When a Child Says, “I Don’t Want to See Mom or Dad”
An unexpected email landed in my inbox this morning.
It was a newsletter from Dr. Dana Baerger, a clinical and forensic psychologist whose work involves the issues we face in custody disputes. The subject line caught my attention: “Family Estrangement or Parental Alienation?”
Dr. Baerger’s article explores an issue that arises with some frequency in contested custody matters: What should we make of it when a child says they no longer want to see one of their parents?
There is a natural tendency to look for an explanation that makes sense of the situation. One parent may believe that the child is old enough to know what they want and that their wishes should simply be respected. The other may believe that a previously loving relationship could not have deteriorated without interference from the other parent.
Either explanation may contain some truth. Sometimes the circumstances are considerably more complicated.
A Child’s Preference Matters. It Is Not the End of the Inquiry.
In New York custody cases, there is no particular age at which a child gets to decide where they live or whether they will see a parent. A child’s preference is one of many factors a court may consider when determining what arrangement is in that child’s best interests.
As children get older and demonstrate greater maturity, however, their voices can become increasingly important. Courts may hear those voices through the child’s attorney and, in appropriate cases, through a private interview with the judge.
That makes sense. A thoughtful fourteen, fifteen or sixteen year old should not be treated as though their experiences and feelings about their own family are irrelevant.
At the same time, there is an important difference between listening carefully to a child and accepting the child’s stated preference without examining how they arrived there.
If a child says, “I do not want to see Dad anymore,” that tells us something important about the current state of the relationship. It does not necessarily tell us why the relationship has reached that point.
That distinction is at the heart of Dr. Baerger’s article. As she explains, a child’s rejection of a parent is meaningful information, but the rejection itself cannot tell us what caused it.
For parents, lawyers and courts, understanding that cause matters enormously.
Alienation Is Real. So Is Estrangement.
The word “alienation” comes up frequently in custody litigation, and sometimes with good reason. Parents can behave in ways that damage a child’s relationship with the other parent. A parent may criticize the other parent in front of the child, share inappropriate adult information about the divorce, interfere with parenting time, make the child feel guilty for enjoying time with the other parent, or place the child in the middle of an adult conflict. Those behaviors can have serious consequences for a parent child relationship.
There is also another possibility that deserves careful consideration – sometimes a child has legitimate reasons for pulling away.
Perhaps the rejected parent has historically been frightening when angry. Perhaps that parent has been chronically critical, emotionally unavailable, rigid or dismissive. Perhaps there have been years of conflict between that parent and the child that existed long before anyone filed for divorce.
Conduct does not necessarily need to rise to the level of legally defined abuse before it can have a meaningful effect on a parent-child relationship. This is one of the points in Dr. Baerger’s article that particularly resonated with me.
She explains that behaviors such as chronic criticism, humiliation, frightening anger, rigidity and repeated failures to repair relational injuries are experiences that should be considered when trying to understand why a child has withdrawn from a parent. Perhaps most importantly, these explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
A parent may be undermining the child’s relationship with the other parent while the other parent has also contributed to the deterioration of that relationship through their own behavior. That possibility is more difficult to fit into the traditional narratives of custody litigation, but it may also be closer to the reality of what some families are experiencing.
Custody Litigation Encourages Us to Choose a Narrative
Custody disputes have a way of producing competing explanations. One parent sees alienation; the other sees protection. One parent believes the child’s rejection is being manufactured; the other believes the child is finally being heard. Once we become invested in one explanation, it can become increasingly difficult to consider information that does not fit comfortably within it.
Dr. Baerger discusses the role of confirmation bias in this context. Once we decide what we believe is happening, we naturally begin interpreting new information through that lens.
Consider a teenager who begins refusing to spend weekends with her father. If we begin with the conclusion that Mom is alienating her, every negative statement the teenager makes about Dad may be interpreted as further evidence of Mom’s influence. If we begin with the conclusion that Dad has damaged the relationship, Mom’s willingness to accommodate the teenager’s refusal may instead appear entirely reasonable. Neither interpretation necessarily gives us the whole picture.
A more useful approach is to remain curious about how the family arrived at this point.
What Was This Relationship Like Before the Divorce?
One of the most useful places to begin is with the history of the relationship.
- Was the child historically close to the parent they are now rejecting?
- Did something change suddenly?
- Did the rejection coincide with the separation, a new romantic partner, a custody filing or some other significant family event?
Or has this relationship been difficult for years?
Perhaps Dad remembers a very close relationship with his daughter before the divorce, while other people in the child’s life recall longstanding tension between them.
Perhaps Mom sincerely believes that she has encouraged the relationship, but text messages reveal that the child has been exposed to far more information about the litigation than is appropriate.
No single fact necessarily answers the question. Taken together, however, the history can provide important context for understanding what the child is experiencing now.
Give Children a Voice Without Giving Them the Burden
There is another distinction that is particularly important in these cases. Giving children a voice in custody litigation does not mean asking them to decide the outcome.
Children, particularly teenagers, deserve to have their experiences taken seriously. They should be able to express when they are uncomfortable, angry, afraid, frustrated or unhappy with a parenting arrangement.
At the same time, children should not be placed in the position of deciding whether they will ever see a parent again. They should not feel responsible for determining where a parent lives or believe that maintaining a relationship with one parent constitutes a betrayal of the other.
Those are adult decisions with adult consequences.
A child’s perspective may be enormously important to the court’s analysis, particularly as that child grows older. The ultimate responsibility for making decisions in the child’s best interests, however, should remain with the adults.
The Label Is Less Important Than Understanding What Happened
Terms such as “alienation,” “estrangement” and “abuse” have important meanings, but labels can sometimes cause us to believe we understand a family dynamic before we have fully examined it.
One of the most useful ideas in Dr. Baerger’s article is that parental alienation should be approached as a hypothesis to investigate rather than a conclusion to assume.
That framework translates well to custody disputes more generally.
When an older child says they no longer want a relationship with a parent, the first objective should be understanding what happened.
What changed? What came before it? What is each parent doing now? What is the child actually experiencing? What information has the child been exposed to? What responsibility might each parent bear? What could help repair the relationship?
Most importantly, what does this particular child need from the adults around them?
Counsel’s Take
Children have voices in custody cases, and as they grow older and more mature, those voices can carry significant weight.
They are also still children.
When a teenager says, “I do not want to see Mom” or “I do not want to see Dad,” that statement should be taken seriously. It should not necessarily be taken at face value as the complete explanation for what is happening.
Instead, it should invite thoughtful inquiry.
The challenge for parents, lawyers and professionals in these cases is to remain open to more than one explanation for as long as the facts require it. Sometimes there is alienation. Sometimes there is legitimate estrangement. Sometimes a parent who believes the other parent is entirely responsible for the fractured relationship may need to consider ways in which their own behavior has contributed to it.
Sometimes both parents may have played a role.
Families rarely experience conflict in the neat categories that litigation tends to create. Taking the time to understand the history, the relationships and the child’s experience gives us a much better chance of identifying not only what went wrong, but what might help make things better.
Dr. Baerger describes this approach particularly well when she encourages us to “keep more than one hypothesis alive long enough to find out.”
That unexpected email turned out to be well worth opening.
This article was inspired by Dr. Dana Baerger’s article, “Family Estrangement or Parental Alienation? A Research Guide for Family Lawyers.” Dr. Baerger is a clinical and forensic psychologist and the author of the forthcoming book, The End of Attachment: The Hidden Psychology of Family Estrangement and How to Heal.
For experienced counsel on your child custody matter, email us at consultation@artesezandri.com.