Parental Alienation and Children Exhibiting Visitation Refusal Behaviour

Article here. The author operates two topically-related sites: http://www.parentalalienation.ca/ and http://www.parentalalienationeducation.com/. Excerpt:

'There are multiple explanations for parental rejection in separated and divorcing families. In this dynamic, children and the parents they reject often struggle over a declining relationship and dissipating contact.

Frequently the child's parental rejection is mirrored in their pertinacious, visitation refusal behaviour and in extreme cases of parental rejection children have been known to terminate all contact on a permanent basis (Turkat).
Management of Visitation Interference, Ira Daniel Turkat, Ph.D., The Judges Journal, Number 36 p.17-47 Spring, 1997

In a Canadian legal study exploring parental rejection between 1987- 2009, a correlation was found between gender bias and visitation resistance. (Coleman)
Trends Analysis, Gene C. Colman, 2009 CSPAS conference, Metro Toronto Convention Center.

This study examined 74 cases and found fathers to be biased as rejected parents by a statistic of 62%. Another similar, clinical study during 1985-2001 (which included 99 cases), found no bias at all. The gender ratio was closer to 50 - 50. (Gardner).

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS): Sixteen Years Later, Richard A. Gardner, M.D. Published in The Academy Forum , 2001, 45(1): 10-12 A Publication of The American Academy of Psychoanalysis.

Based upon the social science literature it is far more accurate to conclude that both genders share the same degree of high risk in being rejected by their children, and although there is still a substantial amount of public discordance over the issue of gender bias in the courts, the clinical data supports the fact that mother's and father's report the loss of child relationships in fairly equal proportion.

There are more than five hundred thousand children every year in divorced and separated families who have parents polarized by the issue of custody, and because of this conflict, many children are psychologically divided by behaviours that have three stages of adjustment. These stages are referred to as: Visitation Resistance, Visitation Pleasure and Visitation Confliction.'