An Overview of Parental Alienation from the Framework of Ecological Systems Theory

Keywords: Divorce, high-conflict divorce, parental alienation, parental alienation syndrome, ecological system theory, children DIVORCE can be described as a complex process resulting in the legal dissolution of the marriage and causing the division or dispersal of the family psychologically and affecting all of the family members (Yörükoǧlu 2012). According to settlement and divorce statistics of Turkish Statistical Institute the divorce rate of the couples has increased in the last decade: 118,568 couples got divorced in 2010 while 155,047 couples were divorced in 2019 and 139,660 children were affected by the divorce having taken place in 2019 (TÜIK 2019). The attitudes and behaviors of the divorced parents towards each other and the children have a significant impact on the children and the children affected by the parental conflict could face a lot of problems such as interpersonal relations, academic success, psychological and social adaptation (Gregory Öngider 2016). The parental alienation concept has been studied in the direction of the clinical observations of the mental health professionals encountering with the state of the child denying to form a communication with a parent by choosing the other parent over this one and showing resistance on meeting and demonstrating alienated behaviours without showing an acceptable reason especially during the high-conflict divorce process (Wallerstein and Kelly 1976, Gardner 1985, Gardner 1998, Gardner 2002, Gardner 2004a, Gardner 2004b).