I was very pleased to see the topic of parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome discussed in this article but feel compelled to comment that there are really no data available to indicate that this is something that is mostly done by mothers to fathers. This was possibly the case a few decades ago when Richard Gardner first wrote about the problem but my research shows that many many mothers are also victims of this horrible, painful, and tragic problem. I have conducted two surveys of 100 targeted parents each on this topic and have found equal numbers of mothers and fate hrs participating. I have also conducted in-depth interviews with adults who were the child victims of PAS including those whose fathers were the alienating parent. There is simply no data at this point to confirm or refute the gender bias (what proportion of alienating parents are mothers) and to continue to present this problem as something that primarily happens to mothers does a disservice to all of the mothers out there who are suffering from this problem.

Amy J.L. Baker, Ph.D.
author, Adult children of parental alienation syndrome: breaking the ties that bind, W.W. Norton, 2007.