I just read the most troubling article in the Daily Herald. The author documented that a mother was charged with the sexual abuse of her daughter hoping to implicate the father in a custody battle. There is evidence of all kinds of problems with parents who are battling custody issues where the parents end up behaving badly. Parental Alienation Syndrome is one of them. I think we are seeing this more than we would like. The issues of divorce and custody are a serious problem, especially in high conflict cases. These are few and far between, but when we have parents resorting to abusing their children in custody battles, that's serious! Representatives Tim Cosgrove and Lorie Fowlke have both tried to create legislation that reduces the damage of divorce; however, when the state gets involved in family issues, I'm not convinced that they can improve the outcome.
I am really curious about whether or not the divorce education classes make a difference in the parents behavior in the case of divorce. Is the state of Utah doing any kind of evaluation to support the divorce education classes? Do they work? Or, we we causing parents to spend time and money that's just another hoop for them to jump through?
If you want to read the article, here's where I found the link:
http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/central/provo/article_13544491-50ae-558b-9ad1-6fb7ad27e27b.html
Follow up comment! Since the time I posted this, I found a great book about parenting roles in Divorce.
ReplyDeleteWhen the US divorce system requires adversarial roles rather than advocacy, you can see why parents turn to damaging their children in hopes that it will damage their spouse.
Check out Patrick Parkinson's book" The Indissolubility of Parenthood." Great read and certainly a different way to view the issue.
Yes it is true, many case comes like this, if a proper divorce mediation is made this issues can be avoided - Divorce Mediation Services
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