Courts have been dealing with alienating behaviors in high conflict family litigation for hundreds of years. Experts in the behavioral sciences have been writing about mothers and fathers manipulating their children to disparage the other parent for more than seventy years. But in the last two decades some social scientists and legal professionals have questioned the legitimacy of parental alienation as a concept and its admissibility in child abuse and child custody litigation. This study was designed to examine the extent to which courts in the United States have found the concept of parental alienation material, probative, relevant and admissible. Thirty-four years of cases were found with a WESTLAW query and analyzed. Cases were selected for study only if the record reflected that a judge or an independent expert found the concept of parental alienation to be of value in the litigation. Results illustrate increasing awareness of the concept and document its admissibility in every one of the United States. The numbers, sex of the alienating parent and prevalence of significant custody changes are discussed. Limitations inherent in this form of quantitative analysis are also discussed with recommendations for future research.

中文翻译：

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美国法院的父母异化，1985 年至 2018 年

数百年来，法院一直在处理高冲突家庭诉讼中的疏远行为。70 多年来，行为科学领域的专家一直在撰写关于父母操纵子女贬低另一方父母的文章。但在过去的二十年里，一些社会科学家和法律专业人士质疑父母异化作为一个概念的合法性及其在虐待儿童和儿童监护权诉讼中的可受理性。本研究旨在检查美国法院在多大程度上认定父母异化的概念具有证明性、相关性和可接受性。通过 WESTLAW 查询发现并分析了 34 年的案例。只有在记录反映法官或独立专家认为父母异化的概念在诉讼中有价值的情况下，才会选择案例进行研究。结果表明人们对这一概念的认识不断提高，并记录了其在美国每个地方的可接受性。讨论了疏远父母的人数、性别和重大监护权变更的普遍性。还讨论了这种定量分析形式的固有局限性，并为未来的研究提出了建议。