This blog critiques the persistent denial of parental alienation by feminist and domestic violence advocacy groups in Ireland, particularly Women’s Aid. In doing so, it draws a disturbing parallel between contemporary ideological silencing and the historical erasure of women and children in Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes.
The piece explores how this resistance to acknowledging parental alienation, especially when mothers are the rejected parents, undermines the very goals of feminist advocacy. It argues that by failing to address coercive post-separation dynamics, such as false mental health allegations, manipulated referrals, and the weaponisation of children through the family courts, current policy frameworks exclude a significant cohort of women’s suffering.
Drawing on emerging qualitative research, including State-Sanctioned Silence: How Irish Systems Fail Mothers in High-Conflict Divorce (O’Sullivan, 2025 in print), the blog urges a more ethically consistent, trauma-informed feminism, one that validates lived experience, engages with clinical literature, and embraces a gender-inclusive understanding of coercive control. Only by doing so can Irish feminism retain moral credibility and foster genuine justice in family law.
In the wake of revelations about Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes, one might expect that Irish society would become more alert to the dangers of systemic silence, especially when it comes to the lived suffering of women and children. And yet, a different kind of silence now looms over contemporary family justice: the persistent denial or minimisation of parental alienation by feminist organisations and domestic abuse advocacy groups, including Women’s Aid.
This denial is not only intellectually untenable but also morally hazardous.
Before delving into the blog proper, I would like to digress briefly to mention that critics often locate parental alienation as emerging in the mid-1980s; however, they omit to mention the following:
- The first documented case of parental alienation in Ireland occurred in the 1830s – the Earl of Westmeath v. the Countess of Westmeath, where the Countess was said to have been alienated from her child. She later collaborated with others to introduce the Custody of Infants Act 1839, giving mothers a greater say in custody battles for the first time.
- Albert Einstein (1914) wrote about alienation from his son when his marriage broke down
- Parental Alienation first entered the psychiatric and psychological literature in the 1940s.
Back to the blog:
Dangers of Denial: Collateral Damage to Women
One of the most harmful consequences of feminist resistance to acknowledging parental alienation is that it inadvertently abandons the very women feminism seeks to protect, that is, mothers who are victims of post-separation coercive control and who find themselves psychologically and physically erased (unjustly) from their children’s lives and their children unjustly erased from their mothers’ lives, often forever. Many well-meaning individuals will say, “They will be back when they are eighteen.” The empirical literature does not support that idea.
In today’s Ireland, alienated mothers report:
- False mental health allegations,
- Manipulated Tusla referrals,
- Systematic discrediting in court,
And ultimately, the unjustified rejection by their own children due to coercive tactics by ex-partners.
And yet, in many advocacy circles, their stories are omitted from policy discussions, dismissed as anecdotal, or worse, framed as suspect because they challenge dominant gender scripts.
By refusing to name or engage with the reality of parental alienation, especially when mothers are the rejected parents, feminist organisations replicate the same silencing mechanisms once used by church and state: discredit the woman, erase the child’s bond, and label the resistance as madness.
Challenges: Feminist-Centric Policy Dominance
The policy paralysis in Irish family law is shaped in large part by a fear of ideological backlash from feminist lobbyists who argue that recognising parental alienation could be “weaponised” by abusive fathers. This is not an entirely unfounded concern indeed; bad actors have co-opted the language of alienation in some custody disputes.
However, the challenge lies in mistaking the misuse of a concept for the invalidity of the concept itself.
To frame all uses of the term “parental alienation” as suspect is as flawed as assuming that all reports of domestic abuse are false.
Limitations: Exclusion of Lived Realities
By failing to engage with parental alienation as a legitimate clinical and forensic phenomenon, feminist organisations:
- Exclude a subset of women’s suffering from their advocacy.
- Reinforce a false binary (abuser vs. victim, male vs. female),
And undermine the credibility of female victims who defy their ideological script.
The study “State-Sanctioned Silence: How Irish Systems Fail Mothers in High-Conflict Divorce” (in print) clearly demonstrates that mothers are not only victims of male-perpetrated coercive control during the relationship but also of post-separation control via the courts and children. This pattern of psychological abuse by proxy is often labelled as ‘alienation’ in clinical literature. Denying this framework leaves women with no language to name their loss and no pathway to redress.
Opportunities: Toward an Ethically Consistent Feminism
The feminist movement in Ireland has an opportunity and indeed, a responsibility to recalibrate its stance. A feminism that is truly intersectional, trauma-informed, and justice-orientated must be willing to:
- Acknowledge that parental alienation exists and that it can harm mothers just as profoundly as fathers;
- Develop safeguards against misuse, without dismissing genuine cases;
- Collaborate with clinicians, legal scholars, and affected parents to refine definitions, indicators, and therapeutic/legal responses;
- Adopt a nuanced, gender-inclusive approach to coercive control that includes post-separation dynamics and children’s triangulation;
- Listen to women whose experiences fall outside the dominant victim narrative, and include them in policymaking and research.
This would not weaken feminist advocacy; it would strengthen its moral coherence and reclaim its credibility among a broader population of women who feel ignored, erased, or betrayed by ideological gatekeeping.
Conclusion
Just as Ireland has begun to reckon with its historical failures to protect vulnerable mothers and children, it must now face a new form of sanctioned erasure, one masked by progressive language but equally corrosive in practice.
To deny the existence of parental alienation, particularly when it affects mothers, is to commit a familiar sin: to disbelieve women, to erase children’s suffering, and to let ideology silence truth.
If feminism is to remain a force for justice in Irish family policy, it must make room for the alienated mother, whose voice, like so many before her, has been ignored for too long.
About Brian:
In addition to being an accredited forensic test user, trained forensic child interviewer, and family psychotherapist, Brian has spent several years as an expert witness in complex private family law proceedings. He has developed several accredited master’s degree programmes: a master’s degree in child and adolescent psychotherapy, a master’s degree in family therapy, and the only academically accredited master’s degree in parental alienation studies across the globe. See link here: https://parentalalienation.eu/masters-in-parental-alienation-studies/
He has conducted the only published study on parental alienation in Ireland along with several peer-reviewed papers on the subject abroad.
Additionally, he has spent over a decade lecturing on accredited undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes in psychological theory and practice and acts as a postgraduate research supervisor. Brian is a founding editor of the only peer-reviewed journal across the globe devoted to the scholarly exploration of parental alienation. See the link here: https://journal.parentalalienation.eu/index.php?route=product/catalog