National Parents Organization is proud to collaborate with 17 other organizations in the U.S. and abroad to challenge some very bad research on parental alienation that is, unfortunately, being cited in efforts to question the reality of parental alienation. The flawed research in question was paid for by your tax dollars!

In 2015 Joan Meier, Professor of Clinical Law at George Washington Law School, and four collaborators, received a grant of more than $500,000 from the National Institute of Justice, which is part of the Department of Justice, to do research premised on the presumption that parental alienation is a “pseudo-scientific theory” that is used to suggest that “when mothers allege that a child is not safe with the father, they are doing so illegitimately, to alienate the child from the father.”

Those familiar with parental alienation and aware of the more than 1,000 books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles on the topic, know that parental alienation is a well-researched phenomenon that is not gender-based in the way that Meier suggests. This research was done, in fact, by highly respected scientists, including psychologists and psychiatrists. Many know, as well, from painful personal experience how damaging parental alienation can be to the children and targeted parents—fathers and mothers—who are the victims of it.

National Parents Organization is collaborating with the Parental Alienation Study Group (PASG) to call for the retraction of badly flawed research denying the scientific research on parental alienation.

Parental alienation is a serious form of psychological abuse that causes enormous harm to the children and parents victimized by it. More than 1,000 books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles have been published on the topic and there is increasing scientific recognition of the existence, causes, and effects of parental alienation. It has been the subject of documentary films, such as Erasing Family, produced and directed by Ginger Gentile.

On July 27, by a voice vote, the Senate took action to address a long-standing problem in the child support system. Senate Bill 503 PARENTS Act of 2021, sponsored by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and co-sponsored by Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) expands the use of federal incentive payments to states to:

develop, implement, and evaluate procedures for establishing a parenting time agreement when establishing an initial or modified child support order or a medical support order (including procedures for carrying out a parenting time agreement made prior to the establishment or modification of any such order).

National Parents Organization is proud to announce the formation of the NPO Advisory Council. NPO employs a research-based approach to activism to reform the norms of separated parenting so that no child is deprived of a full relationship with both parents simply because the parents are not living together.

‘Research-based activism’ has two elements and our Advisory Council reflects both of these. In addition to world-leading researchers on child well-being, parental alienation, domestic violence, and child support, the Advisory Council also includes noted individuals to guide NPO to be more effective in its advocacy.

National Parents Organization wishes all fathers, everywhere, a happy Father’s Day. And we extend our sympathy to those fathers for whom this is a sad day because they have been wrongly excluded from their children’s lives.

Last year I wrote about the history of Father’s Day in the United States. It’s a longer and more interesting history than I’d realized before I started reading up on it. This year, I wanted to say a few words about Father’s Day around the world.

Well, not on your sleeve exactly. But you can wear your support for NPO and shared parenting on your t-shirt, or tank top, or your hoodie. You can display it on a coffee mug, a tote, or a pin.

NPO is proud to announce the opening of its merchandise store on TeePublic featuring these and many other items displaying the NPO logo or declaration of support for shared parenting. Of course you can purchase items that say ‘I Support Shared Parenting’. But you can also purchase merchandise with declarations of support for shared parenting that identify your relation to it: ‘Moms Support Shared Parenting’, ‘Dads Support Shared Parenting’, ‘Grandparents Support Shared Parenting’, and so forth.

It can be hard for those who aren’t scientists to separate good scientific research from bad research or even from pseudoscientific writing. This is true in the area of research on parental alienation as much as, and maybe more than, in other areas.

That is unfortunate because severe alienating behaviors are child abuse, a form of coercive control that is extremely damaging to children and to the targeted parent. This makes it all the more important to separate sound from shoddy research.

April 22, 2021

National Parents Organization is pleased to announce the launch of Shared Parenting News.

For many years, NPO has sponsored the NPO Blog, a platform for the expression of opinions on matters of interest to our readers. We are moving to the new platform, Shared Parenting News, which will focus on communicating important news and keeping readers apprised of developments related to NPO’s mission to “improve the lives of children & strengthen society by protecting every child's right to the love & care of both parents after separation or divorce.”

February 17, 2021 by Don Hubin, Ph.D., Chair, National Board of Directors

Using children as a weapon in divorce battles is horrible. Unfortunately, it’s more common than many people think. Many divorces and separations are accompanied by some stray negative comments from one parent about the other either overheard by the children or directed to them. In some cases, though, one parent engages in a systematic campaign of denigration against the other parent—a campaign aimed at alienating the children from the targeted parent.

February 4, 2021 by Don Hubin, Ph.D., Chair, National Board of Directors

It’s not unusual. Once again, the public is way ahead of our legislators, who are too often held back by the demands of special interests to which they are beholden.

Regular readers of the NPO Blog know that there is a strong scientific consensus that substantially equal shared parenting is, in the vast majority of cases, in children’s best interest. And, regular readers will recall, too, that NPO has done polling in a number of states that shows, beyond doubt, that the public overwhelmingly favors a legal presumption in favor of shared parenting.

December 21, 2020 by Don Hubin, Ph.D., Chair, National Board of Directors

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending the International Council on Shared Parenting’s 5th international conference, which was co-sponsored by National Parents Organization. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was a virtual conference. Though there are drawbacks to this format, there are also advantages. It made it possible to bring together scholars and audience members from around the world to address the focus of the conference: shared parenting and family violence. It was truly an international conference: drawing more than a thousand registrants from 56 different countries.

Over the course of several forthcoming blog articles, I want to share with you some of the important insights that emerged in the conference presentations. The first comes from Dr. William Bernet, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Since 2012, Americans have been taking part in a new post-Thanksgiving Day tradition that shows our generous spirit: Giving Tuesday. The uniquely American holiday, Thanksgiving, traditionally brings extended families together to give thanks for their blessings. (Of course, this can be a lonely day for those parents who cannot be with their children.) Merchants created Black Friday, which originally was just the day after Thanksgiving but now seems to begin weeks, if not months, earlier. The idea behind Giving Tuesday was to encourage people to step back from the commercialization of the season and show their gratitude for their blessings by giving to help others.

November 23, 2020 by Don Hubin, Ph.D., Chair, National Board of Directors

We have A. A. Milne, author of the beloved Winnie-the-Pooh stories, to thank for the word ‘woozle’. In Milne’s story, the woozle is a creature that Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet are tracking in the snow. As they follow the tracks, the footprints multiply and they are sure they’re hot on the trail of a woozle. As it turns out, though, they’ve been following their own footprints as they circle a tree. The woozle doesn’t exist and the “evidence” they’ve found of it is just a product of their own search for it.

In social science, though, ‘woozle’ has a different meaning. The term is familiar to shared parenting advocates because of important work by Linda Nielsen. Relying on work by Richard Gelles, who introduced the term to social science, here’s how Professor Nielsen describes a woozle:

October 21, 2020 by Don Hubin, Ph.D., Chair, National Board of Directors

National Parents Organization is committed to reforming the norms of separated parenting to make equal shared parenting the typical outcome when parents live apart. This is a battle that is fought on multiple fronts.

The legislative reform front is one that often receives the most attention. And statutory changes can be impressive, as NPO proved in Kentucky when it spurred the most dramatic improvement in a state’s child custody laws in the country, catapulting Kentucky from a ‘D-’ state in the 2014 NPO Shared Parenting Report Card to a ‘A’ in the 2019 report.

Well, it’s been a long time in the works and an even longer time that it’s been needed. Finally, though, I’m delighted to announce the opening of the new and improved National Parents Organization website.

Our old website had grown long in the tooth. It looked dated and, more importantly, didn’t display well and was hard to navigate on mobile devices. The new site has a modern look, is easy to view and navigate on mobile devices, and is much easier to update.