Parental alienation a sad reality here

The local newspaper published this letter:

Parental alienation a sad reality here

Santa Cruz, on the whole, approves of and even cultivates parental alienation Offra Gerstein, "Coping with being alienated from your child," Sentinel, June 27 as a legitimate weapon of war in family court. It's routinely recommended by many local attorneys, therapists, domestic violence counselors and others, as a likely-to-be successful strategy for disenfranchising the other parent, for the parent standing to be awarded sole custody if the court quashes the possibility of joint custody on grounds that there's significant conflict between the parents. Court-appointed reunification therapists do little good when the court concurrently does nothing to curb the alienating behavior of the parent causing it. They may even deepen the bind for the child. And the target parent will not receive even moral support from most practitioners and institutions involved with children in, and members of, at least this community. Parental alienation is not fundamentally an inevitable fact of life for anyone. It's a social dysfunction which society should cope with by reforming family law and working toward transforming community attitudes toward parenting.

William Spence, Santa Cruz