Smoke and mirrors: how the theory of “parental alienation” concealed domestic abuse and coercive control in France

Abstract

In France, at the end of the 1990s, the concept of “parental alienation” appeared in court decisions relating to parental separations and became part of the discursive repertoire of family law. This article sets out to show the consequences of this concept’s use. A multi-method study (textual analysis of the press, quantitative and qualitative analysis of case law, analysis of promoters' strategies, interviews with mothers) is used to analyse these uses. Discourses on the “rights” of fathers and false accusations of incestuous sexual violence provide fertile ground for the spread of the concept. It is not possible to distinguish “parental alienation” from domestic abuse, due to the scientific invalidity and ideological nature of the associated criteria, and the fact that it remains faithful to Richard Gardner's controversial approach. Analysis of sociological interviews with women accused of “parental alienation” shows that their maternal strategies of protection against their ex-partner's coercive control are interpreted as parental alienation. They are likely to lose the children's residence, and live under the threat of losing it. This institutional violence is the result, on one side, of confusion between the interests or protection of the child and co-parenting and, on the other side, of the concealment of post-separation conjugal violence.