Colorado State University social scientists Jennifer Jill Harman and Zeynep Biringen want to bring attention to the prevalence, implications and dangers of parental alienation. They’ve written a book, Parents Acting Badly: How institutions and societies promote the alienation of children from their loving families, and they will be talking about it and signing copies Wednesday, April 13, 3-5 p.m. on the lower level of the CSU Bookstore.
Parental alienation is deliberately trying to sabotage a child’s relationship with the other parent in a divorce. It’s a topic familiar to most people, but in social, psychological and legal realms, it’s understudied, and under-discussed.
“There is so much more to this than just two parents fighting,” said Harman, associate professor of psychology in CSU’s College of Natural Sciences. “It’s a systemic, social problem.”
Harman is a social psychologist who studies intimate relationships, and Biringen, a professor of human development and family studies in CSU’s College of Health and Human Sciences, is a developmental psychologist who studies parent-child relationships, attachment theory and emotional availability.
