Like A Mother

On this Like a Mother episode I interview film maker Ginger Gentile, whose latest project is called Erasing Family, a documentary about parental alienation, focused on the now-adult children who grew up without knowing a parent, siblings, or extended family thanks to the wishes of another parent, and likely the motions of a court system. Parental alienation affects millions of families, with one third of children whose parents divorce or separate losing all contact with one parent. But parental alienation goes beyond missing out on a relationship with one parent. Parental alienation means lost relationships with siblings, extended family and friends. The reasons for this human rights travesty are complex, and unfair court systems, unstable, angry parents can be blamed.  But to stem parental alienation requires a drastic paradigm shift in this country, one that stops celebrating mothers as the default better parent, a stopping of upholding stay-at-home mothers as superior to working mothers, and gets away from