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Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties That Bind
An examination of adults who have been manipulated by divorcing parents. Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) occurs when divorcing parents use children as pawns, trying to turn the child against the other parent. This book examines the impact of PAS on adults and offers strategies and hope for dealing with the long-term effects.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published April 17, 2007
53 people are currently reading
389 people want to read
About the author
Amy J.L. Baker
13 books27 followersI was born in Philly and went to college in at Bennington and then Barnard. I graduated from Teachers College Columbia University with a doctorate in Developmental Psychology. I am currently the director of research at the Fontana Center for Child Protection in New York City. I am the author or co-author of several books and close to a 100 publications. My areas of specialization include parent-child relationships, child abuse, psychological maltreatment, and parental alienation. I am an expert witness in court cases around the country and provide parenting coaching.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
June 19, 2011
Clears up what goes on in emotional child abuse, and I'll tell you it's not what people think.
This book put child abuse into a clearer perspective for me.
It's really disturbing how people make their children responsible for them because they are weak, scared, emotionally unstable and unable to move on. It is interesting to know that PAS isn't about what the other "bad" parent did or does to the children, it's actually about complete emotional terrorism of the child.
I like how she points out that the majority of the Alienators have mental illnesses - most notably Personality Disorders. I was not surprised to read this, since one would have to be so dysfunctional on so many levels as to treat their children like objects.
PAS hopefully will be in the next version of the DSM 5.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
This book put child abuse into a clearer perspective for me.
It's really disturbing how people make their children responsible for them because they are weak, scared, emotionally unstable and unable to move on. It is interesting to know that PAS isn't about what the other "bad" parent did or does to the children, it's actually about complete emotional terrorism of the child.
I like how she points out that the majority of the Alienators have mental illnesses - most notably Personality Disorders. I was not surprised to read this, since one would have to be so dysfunctional on so many levels as to treat their children like objects.
PAS hopefully will be in the next version of the DSM 5.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
April 5, 2013
How can it be that after years of knowing that caring and capable parents are being separated from their children by the other spouse in what amounts to vicious alienation and court-supported cruelty, no one has written this book until now?
This book is a MUST read for any judge, attorney, or expert practicing Family law. It's also a complete necessity for any angry and confused parent, whose child has been encouraged by the other parent to abandon them. But more importantly, it needs to be read by those grown children who ultimately have to deal with the fact that they have lost so much, and why? Because the law did nothing.
This book is a MUST read for any judge, attorney, or expert practicing Family law. It's also a complete necessity for any angry and confused parent, whose child has been encouraged by the other parent to abandon them. But more importantly, it needs to be read by those grown children who ultimately have to deal with the fact that they have lost so much, and why? Because the law did nothing.
August 19, 2022
WOW!
First up, this is written basically as a textbook, based on a study of adults who self-identify as having been the victims of one parent alienating or attempting to alienate them from the other parent. It's pretty heavy going and contains technical language. But it is also extremely useful.
If you are dealing with divorcing someone and you have kids and the divorce is not amicable, then read this book, if for no other reason than to understand why you need to put your child's needs before your own feelings.
If you are an adult and you feel like you had an alienating parent in your childhood, this book may help you understand the psychological games that were played on you and how that might be affecting you now.
If you are a family or divorce lawyer, read this book.
If you want to be or are a judge in the family court, read this book.
If you want to be or are a child psychologist or family councellor, read this book.
It completely breaks your heart to read about the psychological manipulation of children by an adult looking to fulfil their own selfish feelings. :(
First up, this is written basically as a textbook, based on a study of adults who self-identify as having been the victims of one parent alienating or attempting to alienate them from the other parent. It's pretty heavy going and contains technical language. But it is also extremely useful.
If you are dealing with divorcing someone and you have kids and the divorce is not amicable, then read this book, if for no other reason than to understand why you need to put your child's needs before your own feelings.
If you are an adult and you feel like you had an alienating parent in your childhood, this book may help you understand the psychological games that were played on you and how that might be affecting you now.
If you are a family or divorce lawyer, read this book.
If you want to be or are a judge in the family court, read this book.
If you want to be or are a child psychologist or family councellor, read this book.
It completely breaks your heart to read about the psychological manipulation of children by an adult looking to fulfil their own selfish feelings. :(
April 16, 2011
What is amazing about this book is not so much the level of intrigue or how interesting it is, but the amount of research Ms. Baker did. In the relatively newly acknowledged field of parental alienation (one parent pitting a child against the other parent), Ms. Baker has done victims and professionals a great favor with her research and interviews of adult children who were victimized by one of their parents. Through these interviews--which, unfortunately, are presented cut and paste-like--the reader can obtain an ample cross-section of the various voices of the adults who, as children, were abused in this manner.
November 24, 2022
Amy J.L. Baker is an expert in developmental psychology, and whose work has been focusing (over two decades at the time of publishing this, over three decades by now) on parent-child relationships and children' well-being. For those interested, she, for instance, and in collaboration with Paul R. Fine (a clinical social worker and psychotherapist) has also published Co-parenting with a Toxic Ex: What to Do When Your Ex-Spouse Tries to Turn the Kids Against You, a manual of sort to help parents those relationships with their child(ren) post-separation/ divorce are being sabotaged by their ex.
Here, she addresses one of the most extreme forms of such sabotaging: when a parent has, through various abusive tactics relying mostly -but not only- on active campaigns of emotional/ psychological manipulations of a child (and that she outlines) successfully alienated the other parent. The phenomenon, called 'parental alienation', is commonly well-known (who would deny that some parents manipulate their children against an ex, to the point of cutting them off their lives?!); yet, although it's the dirty little secret that everybody is fully aware of, so far, nobody has wanted to address it or tackle it, for its mere acknowledging would completely tear apart the whole ideology that has come to dominate and control the domestic abuse campaigning field. As a result, then, it's also a phenomenon which has remained widely under-researched and studied, leaving a vacuum wide open for ideologues to peddle misinformation, myths, and downright nonsense.
To be clear, Amy J.L. Baker does not, here, go into such instrumentalization of the issue, although she admits to trying debunking three myths -namely, that it's mostly done by mothers against fathers (it isn't, fathers too can alienate a mother from her children); that it happens only in divorced families (it doesn't, some parents are being alienated/ side-lined while in a relationship with the other parent); and that only non-custodial parents can be victims (they aren't, sometimes they can be the ones doing the alienating). What she purports to do, is to show the long-term impact of such form of abuse (abuse of a child, but also, abuse of an alienated parent) upon those who have experienced it as children.
As stated above, because of the dominant ideology now plaguing the field, the research on the topic has been sparse, and the many studies available have been either vastly ignored on purpose or subjected to all sorts of misinformation campaigns to try and discredit them (our assessing of the work of Gardner, for example, truly epitomises such ideological warfare...). The author, then, went on here to rely on one of her own studies to try and shed some lights upon what, exactly, is parental alienation, how it operates, how its victims ultimately came to realise that they had been manipulated, and, how, if at all, such coming-to term with their childhood abuse impacted them as adults.
Centred around 40 adults who were alienated from a parent as children, here's a book, therefore, that everybody wanting to get a basic understanding of the issue absolutely must read. The patterns of tactics employed will resonate with those who have either experienced it or witnessed it. Victims' stories are harrowing, deeply moving, even, at times, angering, especially given that theirs was an ordeal which remains denied by the demagogues currently in charge. The insights of the author can also be very illuminating. Last but not least, and as she had done with her other works, the researcher also offers advice and pointers to parent victims to try and limit the alienation process (although, given the inputs of the people interviewed, such advice may sound very dispiriting to some...).
It's an absolute must read, then, but...
But, as I outlined before, since the research is sparse, so is our understanding. This study is absolutely crucial, not least because it focuses on children victim (a demographic that parental alienation deniers, tellingly, are never concerned about, focusing instead upon mothers only, and that they systematically refuse to see as potentially abusive even to their own children simply because 'women' -dogma, dogma...). This study, though, also has its own flaws, that the author herself fully acknowledges.
First, it relies on the experiences of the people interviewed, and that she interprets without having interviewed the parents concerned. How is this approach limiting or not is difficult to tell, since more research is needed to that effect. Parental alienation surely does exist, but I felt, here, that the methodology to truly understand its holistic impact still needs to be improved.
Then, another flaw is, well, her view of seeing parental alienation as being 'a syndrome'. Her arguments are valid, and she outlines a few reasons indeed why it should be considered as such. But: is it, though? I don't want to go into details, and maybe, indeed, it is a syndrome, but, here too, I felt that, precisely because of our limited understanding of the issue, such strong claim can only be very speculative.
Overall, then, Amy J.L. Baker does a brilliant job in defining parental alienation (syndrome or not), how it works, why it is so damaging and yet successful, and what can be done, from the perspective of an alienated parent, to try and limit its horrific consequences (although, again, don't put your hopes too high...). Hers has its flaws, of course. Her methodology isn't perfect, and her contested view (even among experts accepting the prevalence and impact of such form of abuse) of labelling it as a 'syndrome' remains debatable. Nevertheless, these flaws are not her fault per se -they merely result from working within a neglected field, itslef neglected because the issue itself, as it is, remains denied in the domestic abuse sector (further illustrating, if needed, that such sector is completely inadequate to start with... but that's another debate!). Nevertheless, if more research definitely needs to be done, here are the voices of those rarely listened to: the children victim of parental alienation themselves. It's about time they were heard!
Here, she addresses one of the most extreme forms of such sabotaging: when a parent has, through various abusive tactics relying mostly -but not only- on active campaigns of emotional/ psychological manipulations of a child (and that she outlines) successfully alienated the other parent. The phenomenon, called 'parental alienation', is commonly well-known (who would deny that some parents manipulate their children against an ex, to the point of cutting them off their lives?!); yet, although it's the dirty little secret that everybody is fully aware of, so far, nobody has wanted to address it or tackle it, for its mere acknowledging would completely tear apart the whole ideology that has come to dominate and control the domestic abuse campaigning field. As a result, then, it's also a phenomenon which has remained widely under-researched and studied, leaving a vacuum wide open for ideologues to peddle misinformation, myths, and downright nonsense.
To be clear, Amy J.L. Baker does not, here, go into such instrumentalization of the issue, although she admits to trying debunking three myths -namely, that it's mostly done by mothers against fathers (it isn't, fathers too can alienate a mother from her children); that it happens only in divorced families (it doesn't, some parents are being alienated/ side-lined while in a relationship with the other parent); and that only non-custodial parents can be victims (they aren't, sometimes they can be the ones doing the alienating). What she purports to do, is to show the long-term impact of such form of abuse (abuse of a child, but also, abuse of an alienated parent) upon those who have experienced it as children.
As stated above, because of the dominant ideology now plaguing the field, the research on the topic has been sparse, and the many studies available have been either vastly ignored on purpose or subjected to all sorts of misinformation campaigns to try and discredit them (our assessing of the work of Gardner, for example, truly epitomises such ideological warfare...). The author, then, went on here to rely on one of her own studies to try and shed some lights upon what, exactly, is parental alienation, how it operates, how its victims ultimately came to realise that they had been manipulated, and, how, if at all, such coming-to term with their childhood abuse impacted them as adults.
Centred around 40 adults who were alienated from a parent as children, here's a book, therefore, that everybody wanting to get a basic understanding of the issue absolutely must read. The patterns of tactics employed will resonate with those who have either experienced it or witnessed it. Victims' stories are harrowing, deeply moving, even, at times, angering, especially given that theirs was an ordeal which remains denied by the demagogues currently in charge. The insights of the author can also be very illuminating. Last but not least, and as she had done with her other works, the researcher also offers advice and pointers to parent victims to try and limit the alienation process (although, given the inputs of the people interviewed, such advice may sound very dispiriting to some...).
It's an absolute must read, then, but...
But, as I outlined before, since the research is sparse, so is our understanding. This study is absolutely crucial, not least because it focuses on children victim (a demographic that parental alienation deniers, tellingly, are never concerned about, focusing instead upon mothers only, and that they systematically refuse to see as potentially abusive even to their own children simply because 'women' -dogma, dogma...). This study, though, also has its own flaws, that the author herself fully acknowledges.
First, it relies on the experiences of the people interviewed, and that she interprets without having interviewed the parents concerned. How is this approach limiting or not is difficult to tell, since more research is needed to that effect. Parental alienation surely does exist, but I felt, here, that the methodology to truly understand its holistic impact still needs to be improved.
Then, another flaw is, well, her view of seeing parental alienation as being 'a syndrome'. Her arguments are valid, and she outlines a few reasons indeed why it should be considered as such. But: is it, though? I don't want to go into details, and maybe, indeed, it is a syndrome, but, here too, I felt that, precisely because of our limited understanding of the issue, such strong claim can only be very speculative.
Overall, then, Amy J.L. Baker does a brilliant job in defining parental alienation (syndrome or not), how it works, why it is so damaging and yet successful, and what can be done, from the perspective of an alienated parent, to try and limit its horrific consequences (although, again, don't put your hopes too high...). Hers has its flaws, of course. Her methodology isn't perfect, and her contested view (even among experts accepting the prevalence and impact of such form of abuse) of labelling it as a 'syndrome' remains debatable. Nevertheless, these flaws are not her fault per se -they merely result from working within a neglected field, itslef neglected because the issue itself, as it is, remains denied in the domestic abuse sector (further illustrating, if needed, that such sector is completely inadequate to start with... but that's another debate!). Nevertheless, if more research definitely needs to be done, here are the voices of those rarely listened to: the children victim of parental alienation themselves. It's about time they were heard!
December 20, 2021
It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s heartbreaking. Amy Baker has authored this book based on her interviews with adults who, in their childhood, were successfully manipulated by one parent/caregiver to turn against their other parent. Children who fall victim to Parental Alienation Syndrome report unjustified loathing of their targeted parent and can refuse to have any contact with them at all. For targeted parents, there’s a real sense of helplessness. Dr Baker has asked her interviewees what their targeted parent could have done better to minimise or counteract the effects of the manipulation. In so doing, she has created a resource for parents who fear their child’s other parent is an alienator.
July 20, 2015
I cannot even begin to describe what this book has done for my mental/emotional well-being. This book should be a mandatory read for any couple that has children that's going through a divorce.
Amy Baker helps parents understand the substantial amount of harm that can be done to the family unit through bad mouthing or alienating a child against the other parent. Taking it a step further, Amy helps children and adults that have been victims of parental alienation cope with the reality of their parents' behavior. There's no simple quick fix, but there's always the opportunity for closure and acceptance.
Amy Baker helps parents understand the substantial amount of harm that can be done to the family unit through bad mouthing or alienating a child against the other parent. Taking it a step further, Amy helps children and adults that have been victims of parental alienation cope with the reality of their parents' behavior. There's no simple quick fix, but there's always the opportunity for closure and acceptance.
January 4, 2020
Excellent! Want to be independent? Read this book. Want to make sense of crazy? Read this book. Want to process and understand what happened? Read this book. Want to live healthy, make good choices, and have healthy relationships? Read this book. Want to break away from toxic relationships? Read this book. Want to understand narcissistic parents and how they interact with and impact their children? Read this book. Want to do yourself the biggest favor you will ever do? Read this book. This book was written for you and me and so many others like us.
Please, please, please read this book. I love you!
Please, please, please read this book. I love you!
January 30, 2013
I seriously believe everyone should read this book, even if you think your childhood was not that problematic, there are patterns and behaviors that might be screwing your life and you don't even know the root of them is your past as a kid. One of the best late readings i've done. facing demons is necessary...sooner or later. PDF: http://familycourtstories.files.wordp...
August 30, 2013
This is a good book in terms of getting more information about this serious problem, although it does tend to lean towards victimization. There are very little productive solutions to this problem, probably because it is fairly new in being identified, but the lack of help it offers is a little disheartening.
November 21, 2016
An accurate (but depressing) dive into the long-term affects of parental alienation syndrome. Developmental psychologist, Amy Baker, continues to advance the research into this important area spearheaded by the late Dr. Richard Gardner.
December 4, 2013
A must read for any high conflict "blended" families.
November 12, 2016
A very difficult book to read. Especially for a parent who may be a victim of this terrible syndrome of horrid emotional abuse of their children.
June 14, 2017
Lots of insight and found the book very comforting. Gives adult children of parental alienation syndrome hope for a better life.
May 8, 2022
My first book on this topic. I am a victim of this emotional abuse and it has progressed to a point where I am alienated with both my grown, adult children. Thank you Dr. Baker for this study and the lessons learned in this book. I found it very helpful and I really don't feel so alone after realizing so many people are being manipulated by narcissistic parents. When your adult children choose to alienate their parent it feels as if they have died, only worse. Since they still live and go about their lives as if everything is fine, but want no contact with a parent, it feels remarkably painful and insulting. I am now pursuing more information through support groups and further reading on this subject. Again, thank you Dr. Baker for all your efforts with the ISNAF.
December 24, 2024
My therapist had been featured in this book and he recommended I read it. He specifically pointed out his story within the book and helped use it's examples to heal my own traumas which matched similar situations.
I felt this book was very informational on a behavioral trend that isn't spoken on enough. Had this book existed back when my parents went through their custody trials, we may have spared ourselves a decade or so. Really enjoyed the clear understanding and depiction of symptoms that also helped answer a series of curiosities I'd had.
Great read.
I felt this book was very informational on a behavioral trend that isn't spoken on enough. Had this book existed back when my parents went through their custody trials, we may have spared ourselves a decade or so. Really enjoyed the clear understanding and depiction of symptoms that also helped answer a series of curiosities I'd had.
Great read.
March 9, 2024
Heavy duty. Very comprehensive and detailed read. Great insight, especially for being one of the first serious publications on the subject. Should be required reading for judges presiding over divorce cases, and strongly recommended for teachers, church leaders (youth leaders) and divorce attorneys.
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September 27, 2022This book would be really helpful, I think, for someone going through this type of relationship. It was educational for me to know and better understand what deliberate alienation in relationships does to people.
March 8, 2025
A bit on the academic side, and parts are written specifically for therapists, but very insightful, revealing and validating.
It's amazing to see the similarities between these situations and what I've experienced. It's like they are working from the same playbook.
It's amazing to see the similarities between these situations and what I've experienced. It's like they are working from the same playbook.
February 23, 2021
One of the most important books I've read on this subject. Baker's discussion of how PAS parallels cult brainwashing is startling, disturbing, and liberating.
August 23, 2022
Well if that doesn't sum up my parents divorce and my childhood, I don't know what does...
January 31, 2023
Although very helpful it is a difficult subject to process of you have similar experiences. Give yourself time to read and frequent breaks.
February 4, 2024
This book goes to show that not everyone's paths involving alienation is the same but the suggestions and feedback on how to fight and/or cope the effects of alienation can help anyone.
May 27, 2024
Life changing.
August 26, 2014
Great book to explain all about parental alienation from an adult child's perspective. sometimes the stories were repetitive.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews