Children Influenced Against a Parent: A South African Family-Law Perspective

Abstract

The phenomenon of children becoming negatively disposed toward one parent during separation and divorce is neither new nor conceptually simple. It has been observed in legal and mental-health literature for more than a century, and in modern discourse has been described through a range of formulations including loyalty conflict, triangulation, pathological alignment, contact resistance, estrangement and, more controversially, parental alienation. Recent interdisciplinary literature often uses broader umbrella terms such as parent-child contact problems (PCCPs), strained parent-child relations (SPCR), and resist/refuse dynamics (RRD) precisely because the parental alienation label is so contested and inconsistently used.

In South African family law, the issue must be approached through the constitutional and statutory primacy of the child’s best interests, the child’s right to participate, and the obligation to protect children from emotional and psychological harm. This article argues that the broad phenomenon is best understood as a continuum of adverse post-separation influences on the child’s relationship with a parent, rather than as a single diagnostic category. It examines the historical development of the concept, the forms such influence may take, the relevance of South African legal principles, the need to distinguish justified estrangement from influence-driven rejection, and the implications for courts, clinicians, mediators and the Office of the Family Advocate.

Keywords: child best interests, parental conflict, child participation, estrangement, contact resistance, parental alienation, Family Advocate, South African family law

Introduction

South African family law increasingly encounters disputes in which a child resists, avoids, denigrates or rejects one parent during or after parental separation. Sometimes that resistance is grounded in the child’s genuine experience of fear, harshness, neglect, coercion or relational disappointment. At other times the resistance appears disproportionate to the rejected parent’s actual conduct and is shaped, reinforced or maintained by the conduct of the other parent, chronic inter-parental conflict, coalition dynamics, or systemic failures to protect the child from adult warfare.

Recent South African cases show that courts continue to confront allegations of “parental alienation”, but generally do so through the orthodox framework of best interests, factual enquiry, and professional investigation rather than by treating the concept as a free-standing rule of law. (Saflii1)

The subject is both clinically important and jurisprudentially delicate. Overstatement or denial can be harmful. To assume that every rejected parent is being unjustly alienated is simplistic. To assume that the phenomenon never occurs is equally untenable. South African law provides a principled basis for a more careful approach: the child’s best interests are paramount; the child’s views must be given due consideration in accordance with age and maturity; and decision-makers must attend to the quality of the child’s relationships, the likely effect of changes in the child’s circumstances, and the need to protect the child from physical and psychological harm.

This article contends that the most useful approach is to conceptualise the matter as a continuum of adverse post-separation influences on the child’s relationship with a parent. That continuum runs from ordinary loyalty conflict, through subtle denigration and triangulation, to active gatekeeping, pathological alignment and severe estrangement. A continuum model is better suited to South African best-interests adjudication than rigid, slogan-based categories.

Historical development of the concept

The phenomenon is historically well established. Nineteenth-century courts recorded cases in which one parent had, in effect, “poisoned” the mind of a child against the other. Later divorce literature described children being enlisted into the parental war. By the late twentieth century, the literature contained a proliferation of labels such as “pathological alignments”, “visitation refusal”, “contact resistance” and “parental alienation syndrome”. What is constant across these formulations is the recognition that family breakdown can distort a child’s relationship with a parent through repeated negative influence, loyalty pressure, emotional dependency, fear induction, or alliance formation.

The modern controversy has not concerned whether such dynamics can occur, but how they should be conceptualised, evidenced, and responded to. The term “parental alienation syndrome” in particular has attracted criticism because it risks prematurely pathologising the child, oversimplifying family dynamics, and obscuring cases in which rejection is realistically grounded in abuse, coercive control or severe parenting failure. For that reason, many contemporary writers prefer broader and more differential formulations that focus on the child’s resistance or estrangement and then analyse its causes.

For South African purposes, this more cautious approach is preferable. The legal question is not whether a disputed label has been established in the abstract. The question is what is happening in the child’s actual relational world, what has caused the present breakdown, and what outcome best serves the child’s welfare, dignity and developmental interests.

The South African legal framework: Constitutional primacy of the child’s best interests

Section 28(2) of the Constitution provides that “[a] child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child”. This is the foundational norm from which all enquiry in care, contact, residence, guardianship and related disputes must proceed.

That constitutional principle is operationalised in the Children’s Act 38 of 2005. Section 6 establishes general principles applicable to all proceedings, actions and decisions in a matter concerning a child. Section 7 sets out the best-interests standard and lists relevant factors to be considered. Section 9 reiterates that in all matters concerning the care, protection and well-being of a child, the best-interests standard is paramount. Section 10 provides for child participation.

This statutory framework is especially important in disputes involving alleged negative influence against a parent. The enquiry is not abstractly ideological. It is structured. One must ask, among other things, about the nature of the child’s relationship with each parent, the parent’s capacity to provide for the child’s emotional and intellectual needs, the likely effect of separation from either parent, the need for stability, and the need to protect the child from psychological harm.

Child participation

Section 10 of the Children’s Act gives every child of sufficient age, maturity and stage of development the right to participate in an appropriate way in any matter concerning that child, and requires that the child’s views be given due consideration. Section 31 further requires that, before major decisions affecting the child’s living conditions, education, health or personal relations are taken, due consideration be given to the child’s views and wishes. (2)

This has direct relevance to estrangement disputes. The child’s voice matters, but it cannot simply be equated with autonomous preference. In high-conflict family systems, children may express views that are sincere yet relationally shaped, developmentally overburdened, or constrained by fear and loyalty. South African law therefore requires child participation, but not uncritical surrender to whatever stance a child presently expresses. That distinction is vital.

Parental responsibilities, rights, contact and parenting plans

Section 18 of the Children’s Act defines parental responsibilities and rights, including care, contact, guardianship and maintenance. Sections 33 to 35 regulate parenting plans and provide that where co-holders of parental responsibilities and rights experience difficulty in exercising them, they should first seek to agree on a parenting plan. Section 35 criminalises unlawful refusal of access or prevention of another person’s exercise of parental responsibilities and rights where these exist under a court order or valid agreement. (2)

These provisions matter because the phenomenon under discussion often manifests not only in attitudes but in behaviour: obstructed transitions, repeated cancellations, undermined contact, manipulative scheduling, and entrenched non-compliance dressed up as child preference. South African law does not ignore such conduct.

The Family Advocate and mediation framework

The Mediation in Certain Divorce Matters Act 24 of 1987 establishes the Family Advocate and Family Counsellor framework. The Family Advocate may, at the request of a party or the court, conduct an enquiry and furnish the court with a report and recommendation on matters concerning the welfare of the child. The Family Advocate may also appear and adduce relevant evidence where required.(3)

The Department of Justice explains that the Office of the Family Advocate assists parties to reach agreement on disputed issues concerning children, interviews children so that they may be heard, and, where agreement is not possible, provides a recommendation to court based on its enquiry into the child’s best interests. The office also works in liaison with other professionals, including psychologists and social workers, where expert input is required. (4)

That institutional arrangement is particularly important in cases of alleged alienation or influence-driven estrangement, because such matters usually require careful multidisciplinary evaluation rather than slogan-driven litigation.

The phenomenon as a continuum

The most useful way of understanding this subject is as a continuum.

At the mild end of the continuum lies ordinary post-separation loyalty conflict. Many children feel torn after separation. They may feel guilty for loving both parents, anxious about hurting one by enjoying the other, or distressed by transitions between homes. This is common and does not by itself indicate alienating conduct.

A second level involves subtle negative influence. At this level the child is repeatedly exposed to facial expressions, tones, insinuations, sarcasm, selective omissions, or emotionally laden comments that cast the other parent in a negative light. The influencing parent may not openly instruct the child to reject the other parent, yet the child learns that warmth toward that parent is unwelcome and criticism is safer.

A third level involves triangulation and boundary collapse. The child is drawn into adult matters: infidelity narratives, maintenance disputes, litigation papers, allegations, or moral complaints about the other parent. The child becomes messenger, confidant, witness or ally. This is developmentally burdensome and often reshapes the child’s perception of the rejected parent.

A fourth level involves active undermining or gatekeeping. Contact is burdened or obstructed. The child is primed for difficulty before visits, interrogated afterwards, rewarded for refusal, or made to feel disloyal for enjoying time with the other parent. Here the influencing dynamic is no longer merely atmospheric; it is behaviourally organised.

At the severe end lies pathological alignment and entrenched estrangement. The child’s rejection becomes rigid, global and contemptuous. Past positive memories may be denied or rewritten. The child’s language may resemble adult legal or psychological jargon. There is often little ambivalence and little guilt about cruelty toward the rejected parent. In such cases the child’s inner freedom to know and love both parents in a reality-based manner has become profoundly constricted.

Forms of negative influence

For practical and forensic purposes, it is useful to itemise the conduct that may contribute to estrangement.

The first is denigration: repeated criticism, ridicule, contempt or moral condemnation of the other parent in the child’s presence.

The second is fear induction: conveying, directly or indirectly, that the other parent is unsafe, dangerous, unstable or morally contaminated without proportionate factual basis.

The third is loyalty coercion: structuring the emotional field so that affection for one parent feels like betrayal of the other.

The fourth is triangulation: placing the child inside adult conflict as spy, messenger, comforter, judge or witness.

The fifth is parentification and enmeshment: making the child emotionally responsible for the distressed parent and reducing the child’s freedom to hold independent perceptions.

The sixth is restrictive gatekeeping: obstructing contact, burdening transitions, creating avoidable obstacles, or using practical control to shape the child’s allegiances.

The seventh is narrative capture: imposing a single, rigid family story in which one parent is wholly good and the other wholly bad.

None of these forms should be assessed mechanically. The same overt behaviour may have different meanings in different contexts. A genuinely protective parent may restrict contact for sound reasons. Equally, a controlling parent may disguise exclusionary conduct as concern. Differential assessment is therefore indispensable.

Why children are vulnerable

Children are especially vulnerable because attachment, dependency and development intersect powerfully in family disputes. A child depends on caregivers not only for practical care, but for regulation, belonging and meaning. Where one parent is emotionally dominant, distressed, engulfing or punitive, the child may align with that parent in order to preserve attachment security.

Children are also developmentally prone to simplification. It is hard for them to sustain the idea that two parents can both be important, flawed, wounded and partly right. Under chronic conflict, black-and-white thinking offers relief. The child may therefore organise around an idealised parent and a devalued one.

This does not necessarily make the child manipulative or deceitful. It may instead reflect an adaptation to unbearable tension. A child may reject one parent not because attachment is absent, but because attachment to the other parent feels threatened.

Realistic estrangement, influence-driven estrangement and mixed cases

One of the greatest dangers in this field is premature closure. Not every rejected parent is being unfairly alienated. Some children are realistically estranged because the parent they reject has been frightening, abusive, neglectful, coercively controlling, intoxicated, profoundly misattuned or chronically unreliable. In such cases the rejection is not a distortion imposed from outside; it is a response to lived relational experience.

Conversely, some children reject a parent in ways that are disproportionate to that parent’s actual deficits and are significantly sustained by the conduct of the other parent or by the high-conflict system itself. In those cases the rejection may properly be understood as influence-driven estrangement.

Many cases, however, are mixed. The rejected parent may have genuine shortcomings, but the child’s hostility becomes amplified and rigidified by the other parent’s grievance, fear, coalition-building or reward structure. This mixed category is probably commonest in practice, and it is precisely why South African courts should avoid slogan-based adjudication in favour of fact-sensitive enquiry.

The South African judicial posture

South African courts have not developed a single, uniform doctrine of parental alienation. What emerges instead is a judicial posture of caution: allegations are entertained, but ordinarily channelled through the best-interests standard, factual evaluation, Family Advocate investigation, and, where necessary, independent psychological assessment. Recent cases illustrate that courts continue to encounter allegations of alienation, sometimes expressly, and may call for forensic investigation rather than immediate categorical findings.

That approach is sound. A court should not decide such a matter merely on the emotional force of one parent’s complaint, nor solely on the child’s present hostility. The child’s resistance must be contextualised. The court must consider whether the case reflects justified fear, unresolved trauma, loyalty conflict, induced estrangement, or some combination. The South African constitutional order is better served by disciplined complexity than by conceptual absolutism.

Implications for clinicians, mediators and legal practitioners

For clinicians, the central task is not to prove a slogan but to describe the child’s relational world with nuance. Assessment should ordinarily consider the quality and history of the child’s relationship with each parent, the child’s developmental stage, the pattern of transitions, the family’s conflict structure, possible abuse or coercive control, the child’s expressed reasons for rejection, and the presence of alliance dynamics, scripting, black-and-white thinking, or memory distortion.

For mediators and parenting coordinators, the challenge is to identify early signs of escalating loyalty conflict before they consolidate into rigid estrangement. South African policy and practice increasingly value child participation and child-inclusive processes, but such participation must be carefully bounded so that the child is heard without being burdened or instrumentalised. Recent scholarship on child participation in divorce mediation underscores the importance of structured, developmentally appropriate methods for including children’s views. perjournal.co.za

For legal practitioners, the temptation to deploy “parental alienation” as a forensic shortcut should be resisted. It is more effective, and more legally coherent, to plead and prove specific conduct: denigration, obstruction, gatekeeping, manipulation of contact, inappropriate exposure to conflict, role-reversal, emotional coercion, and resulting harm to the child’s relationships and well-being.

Conclusion

The negative influencing of children against a parent in family disputes is real, serious and historically enduring. Yet it is not a simple or singular phenomenon. In South African family law it is best understood through the constitutional and statutory framework of best interests, child participation, protection from psychological harm, and careful judicial enquiry. The concept is most useful when treated as a continuum: from ordinary loyalty conflict, through subtle undermining and triangulation, to severe and entrenched estrangement.

The decisive question is never merely whether a fashionable label applies. The decisive question is whether the child’s capacity to maintain a reality-based relationship with a parent has been impaired, why that impairment has occurred, and what legal and clinical response now best protects the child. In that sense, the deepest concern is not simply parental rights, nor even parental blame, but the child’s developmental freedom: the freedom to know, experience and love each parent, where safe and possible, without being made the carrier of adult war.

Footnotes

1. B J Fidler, N Bala and M A Saini Children Who Resist Postseparation Parental Contact: A Differential Approach for Legal and Mental Health Professionals (Oxford University Press 2013) 14; J Wallerstein and J Kelly Surviving the Breakup: How Children and Parents Cope with Divorce (Basic Books 1980).

2. See generally K Kelly and J Johnston “The alienated child: A reformulation of parental alienation syndrome” (2001) 39 Family Court Review 249; B J Fidler and N Bala “Children resisting postseparation contact with a parent: Concepts, controversies and conundrums” (2010) 48 Family Court Review 10.

3. Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 s 28(2).

4. Children’s Act 38 of 2005 ss 6, 7, 9 and 10.

5. Children’s Act 38 of 2005 s 18.

6. Children’s Act 38 of 2005 ss 31, 33 and 35.

7. Mediation in Certain Divorce Matters Act 24 of 1987 ss 4–5.

8. Department of Justice and Constitutional Development “Office of the Family Advocate”.

9. C van der Bijl “Investigating parental alienation as a form of domestic violence, child abuse and harassment: A legal hypothesis” (2016) 37(1) Obiter 127.

10. E Bosch-Brits “Fathers’ experience and perceptions of parent alienation in high-conflict divorce” (2018) 54(1) Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk 1.

11. V Nyaata “Including children’s views in divorce mediation: A comparison of Kenya, South Africa and Australia” (2024) 27 Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal.

12. P v P 2007 (5) SA 94 (SCA).

13. Y.S v S.S (9895/25) [2025] ZAWCHC 125.

14. B.P.M v J.L.M (1909/2024) [2025] ZALMPPHC 96.

Reference list

Books

Fidler BJ, Bala N and Saini MA Children Who Resist Postseparation Parental Contact: A Differential Approach for Legal and Mental Health Professionals (Oxford University Press New York 2013)

Wallerstein J and Kelly J Surviving the Breakup: How Children and Parents Cope with Divorce (Basic Books New York 1980)

Journal articles

Bosch-Brits E “Fathers’ experience and perceptions of parent alienation in high-conflict divorce” (2018) 54(1) Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk 1

Fidler BJ and Bala N “Children resisting postseparation contact with a parent: Concepts, controversies and conundrums” (2010) 48 Family Court Review 10

Kelly JB and Johnston JR “The alienated child: A reformulation of parental alienation syndrome” (2001) 39 Family Court Review 249

Nyaata V “Including children’s views in divorce mediation: A comparison of Kenya, South Africa and Australia” (2024) 27 Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal

Van der Bijl C “Investigating parental alienation as a form of domestic violence, child abuse and harassment: A legal hypothesis” (2016) 37(1) Obiter 127

Legislation

• Children’s Act 38 of 2005

• Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996

• Mediation in Certain Divorce Matters Act 24 of 1987

Cases

• B.P.M v J.L.M (1909/2024) [2025] ZALMPPHC 96

• P v P 2007 (5) SA 94 (SCA)

• Y.S v S.S (9895/25) [2025] ZAWCHC 125

[1]: https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZALMPPHC/2025/96.html "B.P.M v J.L.M (1909/2024) [2025] ZALMPPHC 96 (13 May ..."

[2]: https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/2005-038%20childrensact.pdf "Children's Act 38 of 2005"

[3]: https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/1987-024.pdf "Mediation in Certain Divorce Matters Act 24 of 1987"

[4]: https://www.justice.gov.za/fmadv/f_main.htm "Justice/Family Advocate/Home"

[5]: https://perjournal.co.za/article/view/14416 "Including Children's Views in Divorce Mediation"