Parental Alienation - TED Talk

Parental alienation is a devastating problem affecting millions of families around the world. Unfortunately, much like how we addressed domestic violence several decades ago, we treat parental alienation as a domestic issue rather than as a problem that affects communities, school systems, police and court systems, mental health and financial institutions, and legislative bodies. I will discuss how our social and cultural systems sanction and even promote parental alienation at the expense of our children, and what can be done about it.

Dr. Harman is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Colorado State University and is the Program Coordinator for the Applied Social & Health Psychology Program. She is an accomplished and awarded teacher, and has published many peer-reviewed articles and textbooks on intimate relationships, such as The Science of Relationships: Answers to your Questions about Dating, Marriage and Family. She is also a contributor to ScienceofRelationships.com, a relationship science resource for the on-line community, and is interviewed as a relationship expert for many national and international media outlets (Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, NY Magazine, datingadvice.com, and the Irish Independent). She has more recently applied her research expertise in social psychology to better understand and find solutions for parental alienation because she has been a target of it herself.