Is Parental Alienation Child Abuse? It can be.

I haven't been able to unearth the details about why the judge in Palin's sister's divorce case was concerned about child abuse but my guess that the judge saw evidence of psychological harm to the children. It was an acrimonious divorce case and Sarah Palin's sister and her family may well have been putting the children of the divorcing couple through hell. I'm a social worker and a child of divorce. In my case my parents tried (not always completely successfully) to stay respectful of one another. Yet it was still difficult for me not to feel some distancing from my father.

Divorce is hard enough on kids but too many parents make the children suffer terribly by doing everything they can to make the child despise and fear the other parent, including enlisting his/her parents and siblings in the war for the children's affection and trust. This is parental alienation. It's a continuum but anyone who has been subjected to this as a kid knows how life-scarring it is. When other members of the family get into the fight, the child has no safe harbor and is forced to take sides and "lose" the other parent. Child abuse? It can be.