A call to the domestic abuse field to accept conceptual parity with parental alienation, and to embrace evidentiary governance and relational ethics in family policy. This essay is more direct than my recent writing on relational ethics and future families. I have mostly avoided the parental alienation versus gendered domestic abuse battleground, where possible, because children are not helped by professional culture wars. But there comes a point when refusing the battle forfeits the decision about agreed language and governing categories to others. My argument is simple: domestic abuse is real, parental alienation is real, and children are harmed when either is denied. In engaging this battleground, I have also defined the battlelines. However, it is fair to say that neither the parental alienation field nor the gendered domestic abuse field is entirely homogeneous. I have chosen the order of battle for each field based on its dominant narratives, whilst recognising that there may be a range of views within each field.
Dr Stan Korosi (Thu,) studied this question.