Hello to all and welcome to my blog for Module 5!
This week is about sources (what I currently consider to be the best sources) related to my topic of interest, parental alienation and child custody issues in family court. For my annotated list, I felt like in order to understand the issues surrounding family court, a person should have sources that can explain a bit of the background issues that directly deal with this topic of interest. I will include bigger organizations that hold stake in the issues as well as articles to show how psychologists dealt with parental alienation within the court system. I hope my list can shine some insight to those following along my blog to a topic I feel so strongly about.
The first source chosen comes from the group the National Parents Organization (NPO). This organization is one that follows state laws closely in order to affect a change towards equal parenting rights not only in the family court system but with personal stories of families that have been separated due to a one-parent custody presumption. This news story in particular is important to the future of awareness on shared parenting as it focuses on the recently appointed executive director for the organization who is also creating a documentary focused on shared parenting and how parental alienation affects people across the nation.
The second source I chose comes from the group The Fathers’ Rights Movement. While the name of the organization sounds as though they are only interested in the welfare of fathers involved in their children’s lives, it has become a bigger movement for the overall idea of shared parenting in the right circumstances across the nation. The article chosen describes what one father advises is “Two Types of Parental Alienation” and how to tell if one thinks they are being unjustly alienated from their children. This article serves as an opinion piece as many articles do as many are written by parents in current custody fights. I believe that a story and group like this offers support to many who don’t know where to research pertinent information that can help them with family court system struggles.
The third source I chose comes from Childwelfare.gov, which is a government site related to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that provides information about things that may affect the overall welfare of a child, their happiness within families, adoptions, and much more. The article chosen, which reads like much more of a statistical report, gives great state by state information about what rights unmarried fathers hold based on individual statutes within a family court setting. It is a source backed by reliable published legislation that can shine a light into the lack of rights unmarried fathers who want to be in their children’s lives currently have.
The fourth source chosen comes from U.S. News & World Report. I believe that many people many not always see parent’s affiliated groups as objectively showing what is in the best interest of a child due to what could be perceived as personal views. So I chose a report from this site that shares a rating system offered by the National Parents Organization which shows where states fall in regards to any present or future shared parenting legislation. Being that U.S. News & World Report offers news stories from all angles as well as reports showing objective statistics, it can offer more of a black and white statistical view of state legislation where shared parenting is concerned.
The fifth and final source chosen comes from Psychology Today. Psychology Today is a site that provides a monthly magazine with articles related to all things psychology, written by licensed psychologists. The fact that this source comes from this particular site is what made me want to include it as a great source for my topic. It is important to know what licensed professionals think about parental alienation and how it can affect children or the family court system. This source in specific dives into the subject of parental alienation in a specific court case and what the outcome was. It gives a deep look inside a typical family custody case where parental alienation played a big part in the separation of bond between a parent and child.
I hope once you read through these sources, you too will understand why they are so important to the media landscape of my topic of interest. I also hope that you are able to scour the sites I chose to obtain the sources from to gain more insight on parental alienation and issues that riddle the family court system.
Thank you for going through this list with me this week and until the next time!
