Looking Beyond the Sorting Hat: Deconstructing the “Five Factor Model” of Alienation

A structured rubric for evaluating the many systemic variables that can contribute to parent–child contact problems (PCCP)

“…7 "… rejected parents will often react to their children's behavior in ways that reinforce the exaggerated or distorted negative image that the child holds of them, thereby giving credence to that negative image and strengthening the child's tendency to avoid" Friedlander and Walters 2010 p. 104. Garber & Simon, 2024;Joyce, 2019). It relies on circular arguments and is biased in favor of identifying the aligned parent as alienating.…”

“…Perhaps the most important lesson learned from this era is the error of approaching PCCP by asking the leading question, "Is this alienation?" Anchoring and confirmational biases (Garber & Simon, 2024) prompt responses focused on alienation that can blind evaluators, advocates, and courts to other complementary and competing hypotheses and result in premature closure. 9 Far more valid and meaningful is the open-ended question, "what factors are contributing to the child's polarized position?…”

“…The greatest number of relevant, published studies take a very narrow view of PCCP by exclusively examining questions about alienation (Harman et al, 2022). This is likely because the concept of alienation has a fifty-year 8 For example, the FFM stipulates that alienation cannot occur if a child did not once have a positive relationship with the rejected parent even though the reason that the child may never have had a positive relationship with the rejected parent may be alienation (see Garber and Simon, 2024). 9 "… precursors to the child's rejecting behavior toward one parent may … be obscured if there is a focus on or a search solely for evidence of one parent's post-divorce alienating behavior or the other parent's abusive behavior" Friedlander and Walters, 2010 p. 108.…”

“…As appealing as this model may be to custody litigants' confirmational biases, zealous advocates' win‐lose mentality, and the adversarial court system, it is flawed by its insistence on inferring cause from effect (Garber, 2019; Garber & Simon, 2024; Joyce, 2019). It relies on circular arguments and is biased in favor of identifying the aligned parent as alienating.…”