1 Introduction

The advancement of children's rights over recent decades has shifted family law systems towards participatory models in which children's voices are increasingly central to decisions about contact and residence (Corr and McAlister 2024; Lundy 2007). However, this shift raises critical questions in contexts where children's expressed preferences may be shaped, or even hijacked, by one parent against the other. At the heart of this dilemma lies a paradox: Although children are recognised as rights-holders with evolving agency under instruments such as Article 12 of the UNCRC (UNCRC 1989), their agency may be compromised in circumstances involving alienation and coercive behaviours, leaving professionals to navigate complex terrain between empowerment and protection (Freeman 2012; Smeets and Rap 2021).

1.1 Contested Understandings of Parental Alienation

Alienation and coercive behaviours refer to a process whereby one parent manipulates a child to unjustifiably reject the other parent, often through subtle or coercive psychological strategies. Parental alienation is increasingly recognised as a phenomenon with serious consequences for children, parents and wider family systems. It refers to the unjustified estrangement of a child from one parent, where the child becomes aligned with one parent and rejects the other in the absence of abuse or neglect (Baker and Darnall 2006; Verrocchio et al. 2017). The behaviours that underpin alienation—denigration, manipulation and restricting contact—have been well documented in the international literature and research demonstrates their long-term psychological impact on children, including anxiety, depression and difficulties with trust and identity formation (Bernet et al. 2020; Silberg and Dallam 2019). Although the concept has generated controversy in academic and policy debates, the evidence base increasingly supports its acceptance as a real and damaging phenomenon. Studies across jurisdictions highlight how alienation behaviours are observable, reproducible and distinct from situations of justified estrangement (McCormack, 2021; Verrocchio et al. 2017). Crucially, parental alienation is not gender-specific: Both mothers and fathers may be targeted. Feminist analyses show that the parental alienation of mothers frequently occurs in contexts of coercive control, where abusive fathers manipulate children and legal systems to undermine the mother–child bond. This constitutes not only a profound relational harm but also a form of emotional abuse against both mother and child. Though contentious in both definition and diagnosis, alienation is increasingly acknowledged in legal and academic spheres as a pattern of relational disruption, particularly in high-conflict separations (Doughty et al. 2018). Coercive control, in this context, operates not only as a form of domestic abuse between adults but also as a continuing form of abuse that may extend to the child's relationship with the targeted parent (Stark 2007; Katz 2015). When children internalise the alienating parent's narrative, their rejection may appear autonomous—yet in fact may reflect complex emotional coercion, thereby undermining their authentic will (Morrison et al. 2020). In such cases, statutory bodies, particularly social workers, play a critical role in assessing children's wishes and feelings, as well as evaluating allegations of abuse or neglect. However, social workers are themselves vulnerable actors: facing pressure from litigating parents and navigating adversarial frameworks that prioritise procedural defensibility over nuanced relational analysis (Munro 2011; Platt and Turney 2014). Family courts and child welfare systems have at times struggled to differentiate between genuine parental alienation and high-conflict parenting. However, emerging professional guidance (e.g., CAFCASS 2025) and international legal developments (e.g., UN recommendations and UK reforms) increasingly recognise the need to identify and address alienation in child safeguarding frameworks. Although parental alienation is increasingly framed as a credible and damaging phenomenon within family court discourse, this framing has not gone unchallenged. The World Mental Health Report (WHO 2022, 13) implicitly contests the medicalisation of psychosocial distress by affirming that ‘mental health is not a binary state … Rather, mental health exists on a complex continuum with experiences ranging from an optimal state of well-being to debilitating states of great suffering and emotional pain’. Similarly, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women (2023) has raised concerns that the concept of parental alienation is frequently used to undermine or dismiss allegations of domestic violence, particularly those made by mothers, thereby silencing survivors and compromising child safety. In contrast to this, a growing body of feminist scholarship critiques parental alienation not only as a rhetorical tool deployed to counter domestic abuse claims but also as a form of domestic abuse in its own right—including as an extension of coercive control exerted through institutional and legal systems. Recent research suggests that repeated litigation invoking parental alienation can operate as a mechanism of postseparation control, enabling abusive ex-partners to reassert dominance under the guise of protecting the child (McCormack, 2025). Although critics have rightly cautioned that the concept is often weaponised by abusive fathers to discredit mothers' accounts of violence, emerging feminist analyses also recognise that patterns of alienation in which fathers estrange children from their mothers constitute a gendered form of coercive control, thereby reconfiguring alienation itself as a manifestation of ongoing abuse rather than a psychological disorder.

This article builds on qualitative research conducted with legal professionals in Northern Ireland to examine how systemic pressures, professional defensiveness and limited training in alienation dynamics can lead social workers to misattribute blame, often assuming that the alienated parent is the problem. In doing so, statutory actors may inadvertently intensify alienation, becoming agents through which coercive control is institutionalised (McLeod 2018). Northern Ireland provides a particularly relevant setting for this analysis. With no specific statutory guidance on alienation and coercive behaviours and an adversarial family justice system under reform scrutiny, professionals operate with considerable discretion and inconsistency. The region's political context, marked by domestic abuse legislation reforms and increasing recognition of coercive control, highlights the urgency of interrogating how professional assumptions and power dynamics interact with children's rights (Barnett 2020).

Through a feminist legal lens and a children's rights framework, this article explores how protective systems can unintentionally perpetuate the very harms they are designed to prevent (Hunter 2006; MacKinnon 1989). Although the perspectives of social workers are often central in studies of child welfare decision-making, this article takes a novel approach by foregrounding the voices of legal professionals—those who observe, interpret and work alongside social workers within the family court context. This vantage point offers a distinctive institutional insight: Legal practitioners encounter the consequences of statutory assessments in real time, witnessing how social work interventions influence outcomes, shape narratives and impact parent–child relationships.

Rather than viewing this as a methodological limitation, the analysis embraces the indirect lens as an opportunity to trace how systemic patterns are perceived across professional boundaries. This cross-professional view enables reflection not only on individual practice but also on the structural conditions under which judgements about risk, agency and harm are made.

1.2 Conceptual and Theoretical Framework: Child Agency, Coercion and Procedural Institutional Oversights

This paper builds on interdisciplinary research at the intersection of children's rights, family law and feminist legal theory. The conceptual paradox at its heart—children's right to agency alongside their need for protection—has long been acknowledged in theoretical work on the UNCRC, particularly in relation to Article 12 (Lundy 2007; Freeman 2012). This right is often interpreted as requiring mechanisms for children's participation in legal proceedings, yet its implementation remains contested, especially in adversarial systems where binary framings of harm and loyalty frequently dominate. Recent research has deepened this debate, challenging assumptions that hearing the child's voice is sufficient in itself. Cashmore and Parkinson (2009) and Smeets and Rap (2021) have demonstrated that children's participation is frequently shaped, or constrained, by the structures in which it takes place. In adversarial proceedings, children's views may be filtered, reframed or used strategically by adults seeking to advance their own claims. As recent empirical work by Morrison et al. (2020) and Holt et al. (2008) shows, children caught in contested contact disputes often navigate complex emotional terrain, where their perceived autonomy may mask underlying pressures to align with one parent. Such insights demand a more relational interpretation of agency: one that recognises that children's voices are not mere expressions of preference, but products of evolving attachments, emotional contexts and institutional framing. This challenge is echoed internationally. Recent cross-jurisdictional research by Harvie-Clark (2019) highlights how even well-developed participation frameworks, such as those in Australia, Canada and Scotland, struggle to consistently realise children's rights within adversarial proceedings. Despite differing legal cultures, common challenges persist: Children's views are often filtered through adult interpretations, used selectively to support particular narratives or dismissed when they conflict with institutional logics of risk or alignment. Such insights reinforce the need to consider not only whether children are heard but also how their voices are shaped by context, relational dynamics and procedural expectations.

This paper also draws on feminist legal critique to interrogate how legal systems construct and interpret parental behaviour. Building on MacKinnon's (1989) notion of objectification and extended by researchers such as Hunter (2006) and Barnett (2020), the analysis considers how emotionality, especially when expressed by mothers, can be pathologised within family law. This intersects with coercive control literature (Stark 2007; Katz 2015), which highlights how manipulative dynamics may be extended through institutional compliance rather than overt aggression. In this way, procedural neutrality can obscure underlying power relations, especially when professional assessments rely on surface-level impressions. By combining legal theory, feminist critique and child-focused empirical research, this paper situates its analysis within a growing body of literature that critiques the adversarial system's capacity to respond to children's complex relational realities. It seeks not only to explore how agency is recognised or dismissed but also to ask what conditions are necessary for children's rights to be meaningfully realised, particularly when their voices emerge from within environments shaped by coercion, exclusion or institutional misunderstanding.

2 Framing the Paradox: Children's Agency, Professional Intervention and Coercive Control

The recognition of children as rights-holders with evolving capacities has reshaped family law and child protection practice. Yet in cases involving alienation and coercive behaviours, a troubling paradox emerges: The child's agency may be externally influenced to such a degree that professional deference to their expressed wishes risks reinforcing manipulation rather than safeguarding autonomy. This tension complicates decisions in contested contact and residence disputes and reveals deeper concerns about the interplay between children's rights, professional assumptions and systemic responses.

2.1 Children's Relational Agency

In this study, children's agency is understood not in the classical sense of autonomous, individual decision-making, but through a relational lens. Classical liberal models of agency often emphasise independence, rational choice and self-determination. Yet, as scholars of childhood studies have shown, children's voices and decisions are always situated within relational, institutional and cultural contexts (Alanen 2009; Esser et al. 2016). Relational agency recognises that children exercise influence and make choices, but these choices are shaped by loyalty conflicts, coercive pressures and the interpretive frames of adults around them. This perspective is crucial in cases of parental alienation, where a child's apparent rejection of a parent cannot be taken at face value but must be understood as embedded in dynamics of power, dependency and socialisation (Kitzinger 2015; Verrocchio et al. 2017). By adopting a relational view, this study avoids treating children's statements as either wholly autonomous expressions or mere echoes of adult influence. Instead, children's agency is conceptualised as dynamic, contextual and relationally co-produced, a framework that foregrounds the complexity of how children's voices are shaped and constrained within family law proceedings.

2.2 Feminist Legal Lens

The analysis is further guided by a feminist legal framework, which interrogates how gendered power relations and institutional practices shape outcomes in family courts. Feminist legal theory has long argued that law is not neutral but reflects and reproduces patriarchal structures (McCormack 2025; Bartlett 2017; Young 1990). In child arrangements disputes, this is evident in how mothers' protective actions are often reframed as obstructive or alienating, whereas fathers' rights are foregrounded as essential to children's welfare (McCormack 2025). A feminist lens highlights two key dynamics relevant to this study:

1. Gendered objectification—Mothers are frequently positioned within legal discourse as either ‘cooperative caregivers’ or ‘obstructive gatekeepers’. Their testimony may be undermined by stereotypes of irrationality or emotional instability, particularly when they raise concerns about domestic abuse (McCormack 2025; Hester 2011).
2. Institutionalised control—Family courts can function as extensions of coercive control when they prioritise paternal contact over safeguarding concerns. This institutional dynamic can silence women and children while reinforcing abusive patterns under the guise of neutrality (Stark 2007; McCormack 2025).

2.3 Professional Intervention and Institutional Objectification

Institutional objectification describes the process by which legal and welfare systems classify and manage individuals through reductive categories, thereby obscuring the complexity of their lived experiences. In family law, this often means treating mothers as either ‘hostile’ or ‘cooperative’ and children's voices as binary expressions of ‘want contact’ or ‘don't want contact’, rather than as contextually situated, relationally produced perspectives (Smart 1999; Hester 2021). From a feminist legal perspective, institutional objectification is a form of structural power: It transforms dynamic social relations into bureaucratic labels that legitimise particular interventions while delegitimising others. For example, when protective mothers are reclassified as ‘alienating’, their concerns about abuse are erased through institutional categories that prioritise paternal contact (Birchall and Choudhry 2018; McCormack 2025). In this way, institutional objectification is not merely a descriptive problem but a mechanism of control. It functions to depersonalise and depoliticise the experiences of women and children, embedding gendered assumptions into routine legal practices and reinforcing structural inequalities.

2.4 Parental Alienation and Coercive Control

Alienation has been defined as the unjustified rejection of one parent, facilitated by the psychological manipulation of a child by the other parent. Morrison et al. (2020) emphasise the challenge this presents for upholding the child's participatory rights when those rights are exercised in the context of coercive familial dynamics. Similarly, Doughty et al. (2018) caution that in the absence of clear evidence of abuse or neglect, it can be difficult for courts and professionals to distinguish between authentic expressions of will and those shaped by loyalty conflicts or pressure from one parent. Such complexity is exacerbated by the risk-averse environments in which social workers and legal professionals operate. Defensive practice, often driven by fear of scrutiny or procedural error, may contribute to bias in assessments of parental fitness or child preference. Research by Platt and Turney (2014) and Munro (2011) illustrates how child protection systems, shaped by managerialist cultures, frequently favour quick resolutions and may privilege compliance and presentation over careful relational enquiry. In adversarial family law contexts, this may result in the alienated parent being misidentified as the source of the child's distress, particularly when that parent is emotionally reactive, less legally resourced or lacks access to professional advocacy.

Adding further complexity is the role of coercive control beyond intimate relationships. Stark's (2007) formulation of coercive control as a patterned, non-physical form of abuse has since influenced legislative developments and scholarly critique, particularly in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Although legal systems have begun to recognise coercive control in adult relationships, its manifestation through postseparation parenting and its extension into statutory responses remain under-theorised. Studies by Birchall and Choudhry (2018) and McLeod (2018) highlight how institutional actors, intentionally or not, can become instruments of continued control when they uncritically accept narratives that align with the alienating parent's version of events. These intersecting literatures point to the urgent need for more nuanced frameworks for understanding children's participation rights in the context of high-conflict separations. The challenge lies in preserving the child's voice without allowing it to be weaponised and in supporting professionals to discern coercive influence without defaulting to blame. This article draws on empirical data from legal professionals in Northern Ireland to explore how such tensions are navigated within legal and institutional systems and how statutory actors may, in attempting to protect, inadvertently participate in the perpetuation of harm.

To clarify how the key analytical concepts interrelate in this study, it is useful to map their intersections. Although each concept—parental alienation, coercive control, institutional objectification and children's agency—has been theorised in distinct disciplinary contexts, their interaction is what shapes how children's voices are interpreted in family law disputes. As summarised in Table 1, the concepts of parental alienation, coercive control, institutional objectification and children's agency are interrelated, shaping how children's voices are interpreted in family law disputes. This schematic mapping responds to ongoing debates about the contested nature of parental alienation and situates the current study within a broader theoretical framework that foregrounds relational agency and feminist legal critique.

Taken together, these interconnections highlight the paradox at the heart of contested child arrangement proceedings: Children's voices must be heard, yet their meanings can only be understood when situated within relational, institutional and gendered dynamics. Building on this conceptual map, the following discussion examines how these frameworks have been developed in existing scholarship and how they inform the analysis presented here.

3 Legal Perspectives as Data: Investigating Professional Perceptions in Parental Alienation Cases

This article draws on qualitative data collected in an exploratory study of legal professionals' experiences with parental alienation in Northern Ireland. The original research sought to examine how those practising within family law—solicitors, barristers and judges—understand and respond to the phenomenon of alienation in private law proceedings, particularly where gender, power and coercion are at play. The data were generated through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 20 legal professionals: 12 solicitors, six barristers and two judges. Participants were purposively selected for their direct involvement in family law cases featuring high-conflict disputes over contact or residence. Both male and female practitioners participated and the sample included professionals practising in both rural and urban jurisdictions across Northern Ireland. The interviews typically lasted between one and one and a half hours and were guided by a thematic interview schedule focussed on participants' definitions of parental alienation, their experiences with contact disputes and their perceptions of statutory and institutional responses. Legal professionals, by engaging with multiple stages of proceedings and observing evolving case trajectories over time, offer a longitudinal perspective that frontline statutory actors may not always possess.

Thematic analysis, guided by Braun and Clarke's (2006) six-phase framework, was used to analyse the interview transcripts. This approach enabled both inductive and deductive engagement with the data: Although patterns were allowed to emerge organically from participants' narratives, coding was also informed by existing literature on coercive control, gendered dynamics in family law and professional decision-making. Attention was paid to how legal professionals described the roles and conduct of other actors involved in family proceedings, particularly social workers and how institutional responses were understood to influence or exacerbate alienation dynamics. Following Braun and Clarke's (2006) approach to reflexive thematic analysis, I coded participants' accounts inductively with a focus on how children's voices were described, constrained or interpreted within legal processes. Themes were then refined iteratively to capture both patterns across accounts and the interpretive positions of professionals. Although the study did not involve direct engagement with social work professionals, the data yielded a substantial secondary layer of insight into social work practice as experienced and interpreted by legal actors. Participants frequently reflected on the role of social workers in producing reports for court, engaging with families or offering recommendations on contact. Several described instances in which social workers, facing intense pressure from hostile parents or a lack of contextual understanding, appeared to misattribute blame, sometimes assuming that the alienated parent was the root of a child's resistance or emotional withdrawal. Others expressed concern that social work reports could be overly deferential to the parent perceived as more communicative or cooperative, often the alienating parent, thus inadvertently legitimising coercive patterns.

Using legal professionals' accounts as a form of institutional testimony offers a novel vantage point for understanding how child welfare decisions are influenced not only by statutory frameworks but also by interprofessional dynamics and courtroom hierarchies. Legal actors are often uniquely positioned to observe the cumulative effects of social work involvement over time, including how recommendations are formed, challenged or upheld within proceedings. Their insights therefore provide valuable interpretive data on how professional assumptions, procedural pressures and adversarial logics interact to shape outcomes in contested family law cases. The data reflect how legal professionals perceive and construct social work practice in this domain, rather than offering unmediated access to children's or social workers' experiences. These accounts therefore need to be read as interpretive frames that both illuminate and reproduce institutional logics.

This approach is grounded in the understanding that alienation and coercive behaviours are not merely a private or interpersonal phenomenon but one that emerges through and is reinforced by structural relationships, including those between legal and social care systems. By examining how legal professionals perceive and describe the role of statutory actors, this article draws attention to the institutional extensions of coercive control, particularly where systems intended to safeguard children may inadvertently contribute to emotional estrangement or misrecognise the agency of the child. The research was ethically approved by an academic institution in the United Kingdom, and all participants gave informed consent. Pseudonyms have been used and identifying information removed to ensure confidentiality. The ethical framework prioritised respect for participants' professional identities and the integrity of the families and systems they described.

3.1 Epistemic Standpoint and Cross-Professional Observation

The empirical material derives solely from interviews with legal professionals. This standpoint is significant: Solicitors, barristers and judges encounter social work mainly through reports, oral evidence and institutional recommendations, meaning that their insights are mediated by adversarial logics and evidentiary constraints rather than direct practice. Consequently, the analysis reflects not social work itself but its juridical construction as rendered legible in court, a process shaped by institutional epistemic frameworks privileging some forms of knowledge while marginalising others (Dillon 2018). Relying on legal professionals introduces epistemological bias: Their role is to resolve disputes, not to capture the lived experiences of children or frontline practitioners, creating what social epistemology terms a hermeneutical lacuna (Fricker 2007). Yet, legal actors hold a critical vantage point: Observing multiple stages of proceedings, they provide institutional testimony illuminating how courtroom hierarchies and procedural norms shape narratives of alienation. Future research should triangulate these insights with children's and social workers' perspectives to create a fuller account of how alienation is constructed across experiential and professional domains.

3.2 Limitations

As with all qualitative research, this study is shaped by its sample, scope and interpretive framing. The data were drawn exclusively from interviews with legal professionals, whose insights reflect their professional experiences within family court contexts. Although this perspective is valuable for understanding how legal processes frame and respond to allegations of alienation, the absence of direct input from social workers or children themselves limits the capacity to triangulate findings across professional and experiential standpoints. Furthermore, the study focuses on cases arising within Northern Ireland, a jurisdiction with distinct legal and statutory features, which may limit the direct transferability of conclusions to other legal systems. Finally, the interviews were conducted during a time of significant institutional strain in family justice services, which may have amplified perceptions of systemic pressure. These limitations do not diminish the value of the findings but emphasise the importance of further interdisciplinary research that includes the voices of children, social workers and other key actors.

4 Findings and Thematic Analysis

In discussing contact disputes and parental alienation, the legal professionals interviewed consistently acknowledged the challenging role played by social workers within the family court system. There was a shared recognition of the pressures facing frontline practitioners, including demanding caseloads, time pressures and the emotional toll of family conflict. The insights shared in interviews were not framed as criticisms of individual workers, but rather as reflections on how broader systemic conditions might shape assessments in ways that, at times, fail to account for the complexities of alienation. Interviewees did not present these observations as definitive or generalised trends, but instead offered them as reflections drawn from their case experiences. Four interlinked themes emerged informally through these conversations:

• The allocation of less experienced social workers to contact disputes;
• Assumptions made about the rejected parent;
• The influence of procedural processes on the amplification of one narrative; and
• The risks of interpreting children's views without sufficient relational context.

4.1 Theme 1: Observations on Experience and Case Allocation

Legal professionals noted that child arrangement cases were often viewed by statutory agencies as lower risk than child protection cases, and where those specialised and experienced in such cases within family law were unavailable, these were allocated to social workers who were earlier in their careers or from non-specialist backgrounds. Although this practice was understood in the context of resource pressures and prioritisation, several participants reflected that the subtle and relational nature of alienation and coercive behaviours required a level of experience that these professionals may not yet have had the opportunity to develop.

They're not coming in with the wrong intentions. But without much experience in post-separation cases, it's easy to miss the patterns—especially when everything looks calm on the surface, one solicitor remarked.

This observation demonstrates how institutional objectification begins at the point of case allocation. By categorising contact disputes as ‘low-risk’, the system applies a generic child protection lens, flattening the complex, relational dynamics of alienation into a simple binary of ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’. This procedural shortcut effectively sets the stage for a misdiagnosis, as the subtle signs of coercive control—often mistaken for calm composure in the alienating parent—are rendered invisible to an inexperienced eye. Some participants quietly questioned whether the social workers involved had the training to distinguish between genuine safeguarding risks and those risks that appear post-separation, often in the absence of any prior concern. These reflections were not voiced as criticisms but as contextual observations on the complexity of interpreting a child's distress after family breakdown. Several legal professionals spoke of the importance of understanding whether the child's resistance to contact followed an established pattern of concern, or whether it represented a new and unexplained rupture. Participants noted that some of these social workers were approaching the case through a protective lens, seeking to identify harm or risk. Yet in doing so, they sometimes overlooked key relational indicators, such as the fact that the child had previously shared a secure relationship with both parents and that sudden resistance to contact did not align with the family history. The importance of situating the child's expressed preferences within this context was raised frequently, though not always as a formal concern, more often as a point of consideration on how complex these cases can be. This failure to contextualise directly impacts the interpretation of children's agency. When a child's sudden resistance is assessed in isolation from their secure relational history, their voice is stripped of its context. What might be a relationally produced stance, shaped by loyalty conflicts or covert pressure, is misread as an autonomous, static preference—a clear example of how agency is co-opted by the very systems meant to listen to it.

4.2 Theme 2: Interpreting Parental Behaviour Through an Incomplete Lens

Practitioners shared examples where the alienated parent, typically the one no longer seeing the child, was perceived as problematic because of their emotional presentation. Reports sometimes described this parent as anxious, agitated or ‘obsessive’ in their attempts to maintain contact, whereas the other parent appeared calm, measured and cooperative. Legal professionals noted that these interpretations often lacked a relational or historical frame: They did not consider that the rejected parent's distress might reflect a sudden and unanticipated loss of contact or that the rejecting parent's composure might obscure more controlling behaviours.

We see parents who are absolutely broken by being cut off. And yet that grief is treated as instability, said one barrister.

This demonstrates the gendered and procedural logic of institutional objectification. The alienated parent's trauma is systematically recategorised from an understandable reaction to loss into evidence of their own unfitness. Meanwhile, the alienating parent's composure is objectified as ‘cooperation’, effectively weaponising procedural compliance.

This dynamic is a key mechanism of coercive control as it extends into the legal arena, where emotional regulation becomes a currency that the abusive parent is often better positioned to leverage. The misalignment between emotional response and perceived credibility was discussed cautiously, with participants emphasising how vulnerable parents could be misunderstood in the absence of a broader relational analysis. It was suggested that when assessments did not explore the quality of the parent–child relationship prior to separation, they risked pathologising the rejected parent's efforts to stay connected. There was a quiet concern that this dynamic could distort assessments. Without exploring the parent–child relationship prior to separation or the timing and context of the child's rejection, professionals might inadvertently interpret protective persistence as threatening and composure as inherently benign. This misattribution is not a neutral error but a form of institutional objectification that actively reinforces the alienating dynamic. The system, by privileging surface-level presentations over relational history, becomes an unwitting accomplice in pathologising the victim and legitimising the controller, thereby perpetuating the emotional abuse it is mandated to prevent.

Several participants highlighted that when a child's rejection emerges abruptly and without an identifiable trigger, it should prompt deeper enquiry, not into what the rejected parent has done wrong, but into what relational dynamics might be influencing the child's view. This was framed not as a fixed principle but as a matter of professional curiosity, one that becomes especially important when the child has previously enjoyed a consistent and affectionate bond with the now-alienated parent and their extended family, where children's loyalty-based preferences may be treated as static wills because of adult-centric readings.

4.3 Theme 3: Procedural Narratives and the Weight of Professional Authority

Legal professionals also reflected on how social work reports and recommendations, particularly when compiled under time constraints, could frame one parent's narrative in a way that shaped the direction of proceedings. They noted that in high-conflict cases, there is often a pressure to settle the case quickly with the belief that things will settle for the children and parents once the case is out of court. However, this can lead to deference to whichever parent presents as most coherent or consistent. This parent may be more available to professionals, quicker to respond and articulate their position in a manner that appears child-focused. The other parent, particularly if deeply affected by the separation or not seeing their child/children, may struggle to present themselves in the same way.

You end up with one version of the story written into the report and that becomes the working truth, one solicitor observed.

This process illustrates how coercive control is institutionalised. The alienating parent, often more skilled at narrative management and procedural engagement, successfully implants their version of reality into the official record. The court's reliance on these reports then concretes this narrative, demonstrating institutional objectification in action: A complex, multiperspective family history is reduced to a single, legible and court-friendly ‘truth’ that benefits the more procedurally fluent party. Legal professionals did not suggest that this occurred due to intentional bias, but rather as a result of cumulative institutional tendencies: the need for closure, reliance on statutory reporting and an underlying discomfort with complexity. Although this is often unintended, the effect can be significant. A child's resistance to contact may be accepted at face value, especially if it appears to align with the dominant parental narrative. Legal professionals expressed concern that once this version of events is institutionally documented, it becomes very difficult to challenge. Again, they stressed that without understanding the trajectory of the child's relationship with both parents over time, such reports risk reinforcing an emotionally constructed divide. This pattern demonstrates the flattening of relational agency into binary expressions. By treating the child's stated preference as decontextualised fact, professionals may unintentionally legitimise coercively shaped choices. This is a critical point where children's relational agency is fundamentally constrained. The child's voice, once absorbed into the institutional machinery, is no longer treated as a dynamic expression emerging from a relational context. Instead, it is objectified into an evidentiary fact, weaponised to validate the dominant parental narrative and cement the child's alignment. The system, in its quest for a clear narrative, thereby co-opts the child's expression to serve an institutional need for closure, rather than understanding it as a symptom of a relational problem that needs untangling.

4.4 Theme 4: Locating Children's Voices Within Context

Children's agency and participation were discussed with care and complexity. All participants affirmed the importance of listening to children and respecting their right to be heard. However, several interviewees expressed concern that children's stated preferences, particularly when rejecting their parent, were sometimes treated as straightforward reflections of their will, without adequate attention to the context in which those views had formed.

No one's saying the child's lying. But what they're saying might not be entirely their own thoughts, said a family law barrister.

This insight cuts to the heart of the paradox of relational agency. The child's expressed view is ‘authentic’ in the sense that they believe it, but it is not ‘autonomous’, as it has been coconstructed within a coercive relational environment. To take this voice at face value is to misunderstand the nature of agency in these contexts; it is to mistake a survival strategy for a freely formed preference and in doing so, to abandon the child to the very coercive control that has shaped their stated will. Legal professionals emphasised that when a child suddenly and strongly resists contact with a previously loved parent, this should prompt careful enquiry. What has changed? What messages, direct or indirect, has the child been exposed to? How has the postseparation dynamic reshaped their experience of loyalty, fear or emotional safety? These questions were seen as crucial to interpreting the child's voice meaningfully, rather than superficially. While recognising that some children can be manipulated in a deliberate or malicious way, participants spoke of the importance of recognising that children's views are formed relationally. This means their feelings, loyalties and fears are not simply internal states, but reflections of the environment around them. When children express a wish not to see one parent, that expression must be understood in light of their history with both parents, their current relationships and the influence, intentional or not, of the adults in their lives.

This theme aligns with this paper's central argument: that children's agency in alienation cases is best understood as situated rather than autonomous. Therefore, the professional failure to ask how a child's view was formed—to ignore the ‘relational’ in relational agency—does not merely constitute an oversight. It is an active process of institutional objectification that severs the child's voice from its emotional and relational roots. When the system then acts upon this decontextualised voice, it inadvertently co-opts the child's participation right to reinforce the alienating dynamic, ultimately constraining their long-term autonomy and psychological well-being. Only by interpreting their perspectives through a relational and developmental lens can courts meaningfully uphold the child's right to participate without inadvertently reinforcing coercive dynamics.

5 Discussion

The findings of this study can be more fully understood when viewed through the interconnections mapped earlier between parental alienation, coercive control, institutional objectification and children's agency. By situating the interview data within this conceptual map, it becomes clearer how legal professionals' interpretations both reflect and reproduce systemic omissions: Institutional processes simplify complex dynamics and children's agency risks being misread when abstracted from its relational context. This demonstrates the need for practice reforms that are attentive not only to children's voices but also to the conditions under which those voices are formed and interpreted.

5.1 Statutory Systems and the Institutional Facilitation of Emotional Abuse

The findings from this study demonstrate how statutory systems, particularly when operating under pressure, can unintentionally contribute to the emotional harm experienced by children and the alienated parent in cases of alienation and coercive behaviours. Legal professionals consistently emphasised that social workers acted in good faith, often under immense workload pressures and with limited training in the relational dynamics unique to private law disputes. Nevertheless, the institutional structures surrounding child arrangement proceedings may inadvertently position professionals to overlook or misinterpret patterns of coercive control. In particular, the perception of contact disputes as ‘low-risk’ or ‘standard’ cases leads to the allocation of less experienced staff, who may assess the situation using a conventional child protection lens. As highlighted in the thematic analysis, this lens is oriented towards observable harm and discrete incidents of abuse. It is less well-suited to recognising emotional manipulation, loyalty conflicts or the weaponisation of statutory authority. When a child's resistance to contact is interpreted in isolation, without adequate reference to the prior quality of the parent–child relationship or the relational rupture following separation, professionals may inadvertently legitimise a dynamic that is coercively shaped. This institutional oversight can facilitate what Stark (2007) refers to as ‘liberty deprivation’—where coercive control is extended through legal and procedural avenues. In alienation and coercive behaviours cases, the rejecting parent may appear compliant and cooperative, aligning themselves with the procedural expectations of the court. The alienated parent, in contrast, may be painted as unstable or obstructive because of their emotional presentation. The statutory endorsement of this framing, through uncritical acceptance of initial reports, can amount to a secondary form of abuse, one that legitimises and reinforces the primary alienating dynamic. Professionals operating within these structures may unknowingly become conduits for coercive control, institutionalising the very harm they are mandated to prevent.

5.2 A Feminist Legal Critique: Gendered Objectification and the Dual Weaponisation of Alienation

This analysis also intersects with feminist legal critiques that interrogate how procedural rationality in law can objectify individuals, stripping behaviour of its emotional and relational context. Parental alienation, originally theorised as a phenomenon disproportionately affecting fathers, has increasingly become a site of contested gendered narratives. Historically, alienation claims were advanced by fathers to challenge maternal gatekeeping or to highlight perceived emotional manipulation following separation. Over time, however, the concept has also been deployed against mothers, both in the form of counter-allegations that undermine claims of domestic abuse and through the alienation of mothers themselves from their children (McCormack 2025).

Legal professionals in this study noted instances where allegations of abuse made by mothers were reframed as attempts to alienate the child from the father, often without sufficient scrutiny of the abuse itself. In these cases, mothers risk being repositioned as the obstructive parent, with their protective actions interpreted as manipulative rather than safeguarding. This dynamic reflects a broader feminist concern: Institutions often undermine women's credibility when they express conflict or emotional distress. When mothers raise serious concerns about harm or coercion, they may be portrayed as unstable or vindictive, particularly if they struggle to present their position with composure. Simultaneously, mothers may also be the targets of alienation, experiencing the gradual or sudden erosion of their relationship with their child. In such cases, the mother's distress is sometimes viewed with suspicion, whereas the aligned parent, typically the father, presents as cooperative and child-focused. This dual exposure reveals the gendered paradox at the heart of alienation: Mothers can be cast as both manipulators and unfit carers, depending on the narrative adopted by the court. This process reproduces a logic in which emotional expression—grief, fear, persistence—is pathologised and composure is equated with reasonableness, regardless of underlying relational dynamics. When emotional responses are abstracted from context, they become signifiers of risk, rather than indicators of trauma. As MacKinnon (1989) argues, legal objectification transforms individuals into static, legible types—flattening their experiences to fit institutional expectations.

This critique echoes through the observations made by legal professionals, who quietly questioned whether procedural authority can ever fully accommodate the emotional complexity of alienation cases. The tendency to prefer calmness and narrative consistency over emotional distress reflects deeper legal epistemologies that prioritise clarity and efficiency over relational insight. It is within this framework that coercive control can be most effectively extended—not through overt dominance, but through institutional fluency, plausible narratives and the ability to mobilise procedural trust. In this sense, gendered objectification in family law is neither static nor consistently applied; rather, it operates through contradiction. The very same emotional responses that once characterised maternal devotion are now, in the context of alienation, read as potential instability. This not only marginalises the alienated parent but also suppresses the child's relational history, reducing their lived experience to a binary of preference and resistance, stripped of emotional depth.

5.3 Children's Rights, Relational Agency and the Need for Systemic Reform

The paradox of agency, central to this paper, crystallises in the treatment of children's voices during contact disputes. All legal professionals interviewed recognised the importance of listening to children and incorporating their views into proceedings. Yet, there were those who expressed unease about how these views are interpreted, particularly when they involve the rejection of a parent in the absence of clear historical risk. This concern speaks directly to the evolving conception of children's rights under Article 12 of the UNCRC, which affirms children's right to be heard. However, as critics have argued (Lundy 2007; Freeman 2012), voice alone is insufficient if not contextualised within the child's lived relationships and developmental capacity. Children's participation rights must be balanced with protection rights, particularly when their expressed preferences may reflect subtle or indirect forms of influence. The paper highlights how children's views, while authentic, are often entangled with loyalty, fear and emotional survival strategies. To treat these expressions as neutral or autonomous risks reinforcing the very dynamics that inhibit the child's genuine agency. The institutional tendency to seek definitive answers from children, particularly in emotionally charged cases, may inadvertently offload responsibility onto them. When a child says, ‘I don't want to see my father’ or ‘I'm scared of my mother’, these statements are understandably taken seriously. Yet, without a careful exploration of how such statements emerged—what the child has witnessed, what messages they have internalised, what relationships have shifted—there is a risk that the system mistakes survival for agency and trauma for choice. These examples illustrate not just that agency is constrained, but how professional interpretations, shaped by institutional logic, transform children's dynamic voices into fixed legal positions.

Systemic reform, then, must involve more than additional training. It requires a relational shift in how statutory bodies conceptualise children's rights, interpret family histories and understand harm. This includes

• Prioritising continuity of professional involvement in complex cases, to allow for deeper relational knowledge;
• Embedding reflective practice that invites professionals to interrogate surface narratives;
• Developing guidance specific to postseparation coercive dynamics, including emotional manipulation and alienation;
• Ensuring that children's voices are heard in context, not in isolation.

Ultimately, these findings affirm this paper's central claim: that children's rights in the family courts must be interpreted relationally, not reductively. Only by doing so can the law avoid reproducing the very conditions of emotional harm it seeks to prevent.

Although this study does not include interviews with social workers directly, the insights of legal professionals offer a valuable vantage point on how social work assessments are perceived and operationalised within the court system. Unlike frontline practitioners, legal professionals engage with multiple case trajectories over time, allowing them to observe patterns that may not be visible from within individual services. This cross-case, cross-professional perspective provides a critical layer of reflection on how systemic practices take shape and how institutional logics—particularly around risk, credibility and emotional presentation—are reinforced across professional boundaries.

6 Conclusion and Recommendations

This article has examined the paradox of children's agency in alienation and coercive behaviours cases, drawing on qualitative insights from legal professionals to explore how statutory systems, though well-intentioned, may unwittingly facilitate emotional harm. It has shown how inexperienced social workers, institutional time pressures and procedural narratives can obscure relational complexity and reinforce dominant parental perspectives. The findings complicate traditional framings of alienation as a straightforward matter of manipulation or resistance. Instead, they call attention to how coercive control may be extended through compliant systems and how children's voices, though central, can be misinterpreted when extracted from their relational context. In doing so, the study both corroborates existing feminist critiques of family law practice and offers original contributions by foregrounding legal professionals' accounts as a distinctive form of ‘institutional testimony’, a lens that reveals how courtroom logics and interprofessional dynamics shape outcomes in alienation disputes. To address these challenges, this paper proposes reforms in three key areas: social work practice, legal process and the interpretation of children's rights.

6.1 Practice-Based Reforms for Social Workers

Family courts often categorise separating families as low risk in comparison with child protection cases. However, interviewees in this study suggested that this framing can obscure the complexity of child arrangement disputes, particularly when emotional or relational dynamics are misread. These cases are frequently handled by social workers who are newly qualified or still in training and who have been shaped, often profoundly, by a practice culture rooted in the lessons of high-profile tragedies such as those involving Baby P and Victoria Climbié. For many of these practitioners, the imperative to ‘never miss harm’ is deeply embedded. Although this vigilance remains essential in child protection, it can translate into overly defensive or interventionist responses in family breakdown cases. When a child makes a comment that might otherwise be understood as situational frustration, grief or developmental ambiguity, there is a tendency to interpret it through a safeguarding lens. This can result in the construction of risk where none exists and in the escalation of concerns that were, in essence, relational rather than protective. Well-intentioned practitioners may misread emotionally charged comments, particularly if they lack experience contextualising them within the child's relational history. Professionals may default to binary judgements—safe versus unsafe, cooperative versus obstructive—rather than grounding their assessments in a fuller relational understanding of the family. This not only undermines the quality of assessments but can distort how the child's voice is heard and how parental behaviour is interpreted. At the same time, it is important to recognise that child arrangement disputes are not always without risk. The emotional volatility and potential for coercive control that can arise in postseparation contexts may present significant threats to the child's well-being and to their relationship with both parents and their wider extended family. Social workers therefore require specific support to navigate these complexities with nuance and confidence. Professionals involved in contact disputes must be supported to interpret children's behaviour and expressed preferences within a broader relational and historical context. This includes ensuring that

• Social work assessments include historical relational analysis, particularly the quality and consistency of the child's prior relationship with each parent.
• Practitioners are supported to move beyond binary safeguarding judgements, recognising that the imperative to ‘never miss harm’, while essential in protection contexts, can lead to overly defensive interpretations of ambiguous or relationally complex situations, especially when children's comments are not understood in light of their developmental or emotional context.
• Contact disputes are not automatically deemed low risk and that the allocation of social workers takes into account the complexity of postseparation dynamics.
• Specialist training on coercive control, emotional manipulation and alienation and coercive behaviours is embedded in both qualifying education and ongoing professional development.
• Reflective supervision supports practitioners to recognise when emotional responses from parents may reflect trauma rather than dysfunction.

6.2 Legal Safeguards for Alienated Parents

Alienated parents, whether mothers or fathers, are often disadvantaged by procedural assumptions and narrative consolidation. This study confirms prior findings that courts can unintentionally reinforce coercive dynamics when initial framings of hostility or resistance ossify into determinative narratives (McCormack 2025; Holt 2017; Meier and Dickson 2017). Its contribution lies in showing how legal professionals themselves recognise these dynamics as outcomes of ‘institutional objectification’, where parental behaviour is categorised into reductive binaries that obscure relational histories. To counter this

• Courts should critically examine shifts in the child–parent relationship, especially where rejection emerges abruptly and without a history of harm.
• Emotional expression by parents should be understood within the context of trauma and relational loss, not automatically treated as evidence of instability.
• Early neutral evaluations or multidisciplinary case conferences could help surface divergent narratives before statutory reports become determinative.
• Judicial training should reinforce the risks of over-reliance on social work reports, particularly when those reports lack depth or relational framing.

Such measures can prevent the ossification of initial narratives and ensure that legal determinations reflect a fuller understanding of family dynamics.

6.3 Rebalancing Children's Participation and Protection Rights

Finally, this article calls for a more relational interpretation of children's rights in family proceedings. Article 12 of the UNCRC guarantees the child's right to be heard, but this right must be exercised alongside the rights to protection, identity and connection.

• Children's voices should be interpreted relationally, recognising how loyalty conflicts, emotional survival and exposure to adult narratives may shape their preferences.
• Reports and recommendations should explicitly engage with the child's preseparation relationships, not just current statements.
• Independent advocacy or psychological input may help to situate children's views in a developmentally appropriate and emotionally informed framework.
• Participation must not entail responsibility—children should be listened to, but not burdened with resolving adult conflict.

In conclusion, this article affirms parental alienation as a phenomenon with profound implications for children and parents while extending the literature by conceptualising legal professionals' insights as institutional testimony. This interpretive lens demonstrates how juridical processes render social work and children's voices legible through epistemic frameworks that privilege certain forms of knowledge while marginalising others. Recognising this duality is essential: Children's agency is not simply voiced but co-produced within institutional contexts, where vulnerability and expression coexist. A child can express a view that feels authentic in the moment, yet still be constrained by relational dynamics beyond their control.